Part 2 (2/2)
The _Kentucky Gazette_ of March 10, 1817, contains a card published by a committee of the medical students of Transylvania, signed David J.
Ayres, Thomas J. Garden, and Charles H. Warfield (committee of the medical cla.s.s), headed a ”Tribute of Grat.i.tude,” in which they return grateful thanks to their professors, Doctors B. W. Dudley, James Overton, and the Reverend Doctor Blythe, for the ability, fidelity, and perseverance with which they had taught. A further proof that a medical session was held in the Transylvania School in 1816-17.
Many circ.u.mstances in these early times favored the establishment of a medical college in Lexington. Not only had that city been recognized for many years as a great center of public education for the whole State--made so by the location in it of the State's University, ”Transylvania”--but it was also at that time the great metropolis of the West. The country around it, though fast becoming settled and improved by enterprising pioneers, had not as yet been provided with roads, or good means of communication with older settlements. To ascend the Ohio River and cross the Alleghany Mountains to Philadelphia, where the only other medical school then existed, was a tedious and laborious undertaking, not devoid of danger.
The celebrated French botanist, F. A. Michaux, who visited this country in 1802, was obliged to walk most of the way over the mountains to Pittsburg. Descending the Ohio River in a canoe and landing at Limestone (now Maysville), he consumed two days and a half on horseback on his journey from that place to Lexington, having been obliged to leave his baggage behind. The late Professor Charles Caldwell records, in his remarkable _Autobiography_, that as late as 1820, when he set out from Lexington for Europe to purchase books and apparatus for the Medical Department of Transylvania, he was compelled to travel from Lexington to Maysville on horseback, with his baggage on a pack-horse conducted by a servant on a third horse. ”The animals were all powerful and active,”
but ”so deep and adhesive was the mud that they did not reach Maysville--only sixty miles distant--until an early hour on the fourth day,” although diligence on his part was not wanting. Students of this region had to overcome very great difficulties when they set out in search of instruction in the medical schools of Philadelphia.
On March 2, 1816, one thousand dollars were appropriated by the Trustees of Transylvania and placed in the hands of Doctor Blythe and John D. Clifford for the immediate purchase of chemical apparatus.
Doctor Blythe, who had been acting President of the University up to this time, resigned and accepted the position of Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department.
In 1817 the Medical Faculty was further reorganized by the appointment of the late celebrated, talented Doctor Daniel Drake to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany. The organization was then as follows:
Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.
Doctor James Overton, Professor of Theory and Practice.
Doctor Daniel Drake, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany.
Doctor William H. Richardson, Professor of Obstetrics, etc.
Doctor James Blythe, Professor of Chemistry, etc.
Doctor Drake has stated that twenty pupils attended this course of lectures, and the degree of M. D. was--for the first time in Lexington--conferred on John Lawson McCullough of this city.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR WILLIAM H. RICHARDSON.
From a Portrait by Jouett.]
Each professor lectured three times a week, and his ticket was fifteen dollars. During this session ill feelings arose between Doctors Dudley and Drake, leading to the duel between Doctors Dudley and Richardson already described.[26]
Doctor Drake resigned his professors.h.i.+p and returned to Cincinnati at the end of this session, returning subsequently in 1823 to occupy the same chair, to resign it again in 1827. Professor Richardson did not lecture this session. He, not having yet received the degree of M. D., was allowed to be absent.[27]
PROFESSOR WILLIAM HALL RICHARDSON
Taught in the Medical Department of Transylvania until the time of his death in 1844, and was highly respected by his pupils as a practical teacher in his especial chair, notwithstanding he had not the advantage of early educational training. He was a man of great energy and of many admirable traits of character. His pupil, the late Lewis Rogers, M. D., in his address as President of the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1873, thus spoke of his old preceptor and friend:
”Few men ever had n.o.bler traits of character. He was warm-hearted, brave, and a sincere friend. I knew him from my earliest boyhood, and have pa.s.sed away many happy and instructive hours at his magnificent home in Fayette County.[28] His hospitality was profuse and elegant. I listened to his public teachings as a professor with interest and care, because I knew he taught the truth as far as he possessed it. He was not scholarly or graceful and fluent as a lecturer, but he was ardent and impressive, sufficiently learned in his special branch, and had at his command a large stock of ripe experience. I honor his memory beyond most men I have known.”
In 1819, a new and brilliant era for the University, and for the Medical Department of Transylvania, was inaugurated by the appointment of Reverend Horace Holley, LL. D., to the Presidency of the University. Doctor Samuel Brown was recalled to the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, which he retained until 1825. Doctor Charles Caldwell was induced to remove from Philadelphia, where he had an official connection with the University of Pennsylvania, and to accept the chair of the Inst.i.tutes of Medicine and Materia Medica here, thus completing the organization with the existing professors, Benjamin W. Dudley and William H. Richardson, and the election of Reverend James Blythe to the chair of Chemistry. The celebrated naturalist, C. S. Rafinesque, was advertised to lecture on Botany and Natural History in this and the following year.[29]
CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE,[30]
A naturalist, antiquarian, etc., who stated in 1836 ”that in knowledge he had been a botanist, naturalist, conchologist, zoologist, geographer, esentographer, physiologist, historian, antiquary, poet, philosopher, economist, and philanthropist; and by profession a traveler, merchant, manufacturer, collector, improver, professor, teacher, surveyor, draftsman, architect, engineer, author, editor, bookseller, librarian, secretary, chancellor, etc.”--and believed he could have been any thing, as he ”always succeeded in whatever he undertook.” This statement gives a key to his life, which was one of great and untiring activity, as well as to his mental character, which enabled him to acquire the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his day. Born in Galata, Constantinople, the son of a merchant, in 1784, after living in France and Italy he came to America in 1802, returning to France in 1805, with a very large botanical collection.
Spending ten years in Sicily in making natural history collections and writing various essays, he published in 1815 his _a.n.a.lysis of Nature_.
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