Part 6 (2/2)

Dudley. To Doctor Dudley he became personally attached by sentiments of affection and esteem, which were warmly returned by his eminent preceptor; so that, when young Bush received the honor of the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1833, Doctor Dudley immediately appointed him his demonstrator and prosector in Anatomy and Surgery, to which branches of medical science and art Doctor Bush was ardently devoted.

This responsible office he filled with eminent ability and success until 1837, when he was officially made Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to his distinguished colleague and friend, Doctor Dudley.

He occupied this honorable position to the great satisfaction of all concerned until the year 1844, when he became the Professor of Anatomy, Doctor Dudley retaining the chair of Surgery. In the chair of Anatomy he continued until the dissolution of the Transylvania Medical School in 1857.

In the meanwhile this school, in 1850, had been changed from a winter to a summer school; Doctor Bush, with some of his colleagues and some physicians of Louisville, having thought proper to establish the Kentucky School of Medicine[85] in Louisville as a winter school. In this latter college Doctor Bush remained for three sessions--giving thus two full courses of lectures per annum--when he and his Lexington colleagues, resigning from the Louisville school, returned to that of Lexington, re-establis.h.i.+ng a winter session.[86]

Doctor Bush was ever a most conscientious and ardent laborer in his profession, and, during the lifetime of his preceptor, Doctor Dudley, was his constant a.s.sociate and a.s.sistant as well in the medical school as in his medical and surgical practice. On the retirement of that distinguished surgeon and professor, his mantle fell upon Doctor Bush.

In the language of his friend, the late Doctor Lewis Rogers, in 1873: ”When Doctor Dudley retired from teaching, Doctor Bush was appointed to the vacant chair. When Doctor Dudley retired from the field of his brilliant achievements as a surgeon Doctor Bush had the rare courage to take possession of it. No higher tribute can be paid to him than to say that he has since held possession without a successful rival.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR JAMES M. BUSH.

From a Photograph by Mullen.]

Most ably and successfully did he thus maintain himself as one fit to follow in the footsteps of our great surgeon. His sterling qualities as a man, his most kind and endearing manners as a physician, his great skill and experience in anatomy and surgery, which had been as well the pleasure as the devoted labor of his life; his remarkable accuracy of eye, the more acute because of congenital myopia, his delicacy of hand and unswerving nerve in the use of instruments in the most difficult operations, endeared him to his patients and won the respect and admiration of his medical brethren.

Doctor Bush was a lucid and impressive teacher of his peculiar branch of medical art and science, and always attached his pupils strongly to him as an honored preceptor and friend.

During his active lifetime, spent chiefly in acquiring and putting in practice the rare professional skill which distinguished him, he gave but little time to the use of his pen. Hence he left no large book as the record of his experience. His princ.i.p.al writings were published, in 1837, in the tenth volume of the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_, and these were written for that journal on the solicitation of the present writer, who edited that volume. They consist of:

1. A short report of a case of epilepsy, produced in a negro girl by blows of the windla.s.s of a well on the parietal bone, which was entirely and speedily cured under the preliminary treatment by Doctor Dudley of mercurial purgatives and low diet, preparatory to the use of the trephine, which, as is well known, had been used with great success by Doctor Dudley in such cases.

2. Report of a case of insidious inflammation of the pia mater, complicated with pleuritis--with the autopsy.

3. A more extended paper, ent.i.tled ”Remarks on Mechanical Pressure Applied by Means of the Bandage; Ill.u.s.trated by a Variety of Cases.”

In which the mode of application and _modus operandi_ are most clearly given, and ill.u.s.trated by many interesting cases, mostly from the surgical practice of Doctor Dudley.

4. ”Dissection of an Idiot's Brain.” The subject--a female twenty-five years of age--had been born idiotic, blind, deaf, and dumb; the head was very small, and the brain on dissection was found to weigh only twenty ounces, and to have large serous cavities in the coronal portions of the cerebral hemispheres. The anatomy of the eyes was perfect, but there was no nervous connection between the optic nerve and the _thalami nervorum opticorum_.

5. A short notice of three operations of lithotomy, performed on May 31, 1837, by Doctor Dudley, with his a.s.sistance.

6. ”Interesting Autopsy.” On the body of a negro man who had been the subject of sudden falling fits, and was under treatment for disease of the chest. The autopsy disclosed hypertrophy of the right side of the heart, and a most remarkable course and lengthening of the colon.

7. ”Observations on the Operation of Lithotomy, Ill.u.s.trated by Cases from the Practice of Professor B. W. Dudley.” An extensive and lucid description of the method of operation and the remarkably successful experience of Doctor Dudley in this part of his practice, giving report of one hundred and fifty-two successful cases up to that time.

In addition, the Doctor contributed an occasional bibliographical review or notice. And these seem to be the whole of his published professional writings.

Doctor Bush was married, in 1835, to Miss Charlotte James, of Chillicothe. Of their three children the eldest, Benjamin Dudley, was a young man of remarkable promise as a surgeon and physician when he was cut off, an event which cast a gloom over the remaining days of the life of his father. Few young men of his age had ever attained such proficiency or developed such sterling qualities.[87]

The death of Doctor Bush, which took place on February 14, 1875, was followed by general and unusual manifestations of respect and regret, not only on the part of the members of the profession, but by the people of the city at large. Few citizens were more extensively known, loved, and honored in life or followed to the grave by a greater concourse of mourning friends.

NATHAN RYNO SMITH, M. D.,

Was called from his residence in Baltimore, Maryland, to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania in the year 1838. He resigned the chair and returned to that city in 1840, having delivered three annual courses of lectures here. He was succeeded in this chair by Doctor Elisha Bartlett.

Doctor Smith was born May 21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, New Hamps.h.i.+re, where his father, Nathan Smith--afterward Professor of Physic and Surgery in Yale College--had been for ten years in the practice of his profession. In a brief sketch of his father, Doctor Smith unconsciously drew the outlines of his own character. ”In the practice of surgery,” he said, ”Professor Smith displayed an original and inventive mind. His friends claim for him the establishment of scientific principles and the invention of resources in practice which will stand as lasting monuments of a mind fertile in expedients and unshackled by the dogmas of the schools.” The father, at the age of twenty-four, after an early life of industry and adventure in the then new country, had been so impressed and attracted by witnessing a surgical operation that he at once devoted himself to surgery and medicine, and with such ardor and success that for forty years succeeding he was a distinguished member and teacher in his profession. The son, with much the same natural bent of mind, after receiving his early education at Dartmouth and graduating at Yale in 1817--spending a year and a half in Virginia as a cla.s.sical tutor--began the study of medicine in Yale, where his father was Professor of Physic and Surgery. He there received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in 1823. He began practice in Burlington, Vermont, in 1824. In 1825, he was appointed Professor of Surgery and Anatomy in the University of Vermont, the Medical Department of which was organized princ.i.p.ally by his exertions, aided by his father.

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