The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University Part 3

The same year he sailed for America, but was wrecked on Long Island, losing most of his collections and effects. Induced to come West from Philadelphia by John D. Clifford, of Lexington, in 1818, he was elected Professor of Botany and Natural History in Transylvania University in 1819, lectured to the students in the Medical College, was librarian, and taught French, Spanish, and Italian.[31] He also traveled and made collections in botany, natural history, etc., publis.h.i.+ng various papers and pamphlets and preparing materials for his proposed great work, _Tellus, or the History of the Earth and Mankind, Chiefly in America_, of which in ten years he had, he said, prepared five thousand pages of ma.n.u.script and five hundred maps and figures. An idea of what this work might have been may be gathered from a remarkable essay--_Ancient History or Annals of Kentucky_--which was published in 1824 as an introduction to _Marshall's History of Kentucky_, in which, in twenty-eight small octavo pages, he professes to give not only the migrations, changes, filiations, annals, and descriptions of all the various tribes and peoples which inhabited Kentucky since the creation of man, but gives also a history of all the changes of geology and natural history, according to his views and in accordance with Mosaic cosmogony, subst.i.tuting epochs for days, however. An essay which may be characterized as a very terse and dry recital of numerous doubtful statements, woven in a web of very audacious speculation. His success as a teacher in Transylvania was not great. He died in Philadelphia September 18, 1840, having published in 1836 his life, travels, and researches in North America and Europe from 1802 to 1835, and several small works on natural history, botany, etc.

A project inaugurated by Rafinesque while professor in Transylvania was that of a botanic garden at Lexington called "The Botanical Garden of Transylvania University." A company was chartered by Act of Legislature January 7, 1824, with a capital stock of twenty-five thousand dollars, five hundred shares of fifty dollars each. William H. Richardson, President; Thomas Smith, Joseph Ficklin, John M. McCalla, Thomas L.

Caldwell, Directors; William A. Leavy, Treasurer; C. S. Rafinesque, Secretary. Other members were William Leavy, senior, Elisha Warfield, J.

Harper, James W. Palmer, Horace Holley, Charles Caldwell, Benjamin W.

Dudley, Charles Humphreys, Gabriel Slaughter, Thomas Wallace, John Roche, Charles Wilkins, Benjamin Gratz, Richard Higgins, John W. Hunt, B. R. McIlvaine, Joseph Boswell, Samuel Brown, and Daniel Drake. We gather from the prospectus (1824) that this garden was intended to be a charming resort for the elite of Lexington, who were expected to stroll at eve, perchance, through sylvan bowers; it was also to benefit farmers and "the whole Western country" by supplying "the best kinds of fruit trees and grape vines, mountain rice, madder, senna, opium, ginseng, rhubarb, castor oil, new kinds of grain and pulse, etc." It was to be valuable especially to the medical students of Transylvania by affording opportunity to study the plants used in medicine. The single product of opium, it was judged, could be made to cover the annual expense of the garden. There was to be "a small but elegant building, with a portico, green-house, aviaries, bowers, museum, library, and many other suitable ornaments." Lectures and "practical demonstrations" were to be given there in Botany, Agriculture, Horticulture, Domestic Economy, etc.

"Every individual admitted in the garden to hear a course of lectures"

to pay "at least one dollar." To these ends a lot was procured on the south side of East Main Street,[32] within the city limits, and gardening operations commenced; but the garden was not a success. Though patronized for a time, as in duty bound, by its influential shareholders and diligently strolled in by the friends, princ.i.p.ally, of the medical students, it was, after the departure from Lexington of Rafinesque, finally p.r.o.nounced to be nothing more than a weed-patch and abandoned before any building was erected on it. In fact, from the testimony of old citizens, it would appear that no improvements were ever made there except the laying out of wide walks and the planting of various shrubs and wild flowers, chiefly such as were common upon the highways in Kentucky, but which unquestionably seemed remarkable to Rafinesque, who viewed them with the eye of a botanist exclusively.

The organization of the Medical Faculty of 1819, already described, remained unchanged until 1823, when Doctor Daniel Drake was recalled to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany, Doctor Caldwell retaining that of the Inst.i.tutes of Medicine. The chair of Chemistry was also strengthened by the appointment of Doctor Robert Best[33] as adjunct professor, who resigned, however, at the end of two years.

Doctor Drake was transferred in 1825 to the chair of Theory and Practice on the resignation of Doctor Samuel Brown, and Doctor Charles Wilkins Short was called to that vacated by Doctor Drake. Doctor Drake resigned finally in 1826, to be replaced by Doctor John Esten Cooke.

We will not in this place note all the changes which occurred in the Faculty up to the time of its dissolution, but will append them in the form of a schedule. (See Schedule A.)

DANIEL DRAKE, M. D.

Born at Plainfield, New Jersey, October 20, 1785, and brought to Mason County, Kentucky, in 1788, was, in 1800, the first medical student in Cincinnati. He began to practice in 1804, when he was only nineteen years old. He spent the winter of 1805-6 as a student in Philadelphia, and the succeeding year in practice at his old home in Mayslick, removing for life to Cincinnati in 1807.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANIEL DRAKE, M. D.]

He was made Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in Transylvania University in 1817, but returned to Cincinnati to found the Medical College of Ohio in 1818, from which, however, his connection was suddenly severed, after a bitter controversy, May, 1822. He resumed a professors.h.i.+p at Lexington 1823-27, being Dean of the Faculty, and declined a chair in the University of Virginia in 1830. He accepted one in the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, 1830-31, and again in the Medical College of Ohio in 1831-32. He founded a new school as a department of Cincinnati College and taught in it 1835-39; was professor in the Louisville Medical Inst.i.tute 1839-49, and afterward accepted a chair in the Medical College again in 1849-50. In 1827 he was editor of the _Western Medical and Physical Journal_, etc., but his chief work is his _Treatise on the Princ.i.p.al Diseases of the Interior Valley of America_, published in 1850--a wonderful tribute to American medical science. His contributions to scientific journals were numerous, and many of his medical lectures and scientific and historical addresses have been published.[34] He died at Cincinnati November 5, 1852, aged sixty-seven years.[35]

Doctor David W. Yandell says: "As a lecturer Doctor Drake had few equals. He was never dull. His was an alert and masculine mind. His words are full of vitality. His manner was earnest and impressive. His eloquence was fervid." Soon after Doctor Yandell had entered the practice of medicine Doctor Drake told him: "I have never seen a great and permanent practice the foundations of which were not laid in the hearts of the poor. Therefore cultivate the poor. If you need another though sordid reason, the poor of to-day are the rich of to-morrow in this country. The poor will be the most grateful of all your patients.

Lend a willing ear to all their calls."

Such enthusiasm in the establishment of the Medical Department of Transylvania existed at this time (1819) that liberal citizens of Lexington freely subscribed money to the amount of more than three thousand dollars to guarantee to Professors Caldwell and Brown each an annual sum of a thousand dollars for three years, and this salary was paid to them accordingly. Professor Caldwell visiting the Legislature of Kentucky in 1820, induced that body to give five thousand dollars for the express purpose of the purchase of books and apparatus for the Medical College in Transylvania University, which, as declared in the Act, was to remain "the property of the State of Kentucky."

Moreover, the city of Lexington at the same time loaned to the college, for the same specified purpose, six thousand dollars, reserving a lien on the books. This loan subsequently became a donation. In addition many physicians of the South, of Kentucky, and of Lexington made further subscriptions, making altogether a gross sum of about thirteen thousand dollars, with which Professor Caldwell was enabled to purchase in Europe, in 1820, the foundation of the library, apparatus, and museum of the Medical Department.[36]

Again, in 1827, certain citizens of Lexington and medical professors, forming a joint-stock company, furnished the means to build the first Medical Hall for the special uses of this department, on which, until 1839, when a new Medical Hall was erected, the medical professors paid an annual interest of six per cent on the cost. This old hall stood, before it was destroyed by fire (in 1854, while being used as a City Hall, etc.), on the site of the Lexington City Library, corner of Market and Church streets. It is thus described in the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_, Volume I, 1828: "This building, a vignette view of which is seen on the cover of this Journal, was erected by the private munificence of citizens of Lexington during the last season.

The corner-stone was laid with Masonic ceremonies on the fifteenth day of April, and the edifice was complete and in readiness for the reception of the medical cla.s.s at the commencement of the session the first of November.

"In an excavation made in the corner-stone was deposited a gla.s.s bottle enclosing a parchment roll on which were written the name of the President of the United States, those of the heads of departments, the Trustees of Transylvania University, the medical professors, trustees of the town, officers of the Grand Lodge who a.s.sisted at the ceremony, building committee, architect, etc. On a marble tablet over the front door of the house is the following inscription:

COLL. TRANSYL. MEDIC.

FUND. A. D. MDCCCXVII.

"Though plain and unostentatious, the style of its architecture is chaste and neat, its execution is solid and substantial, and its interior arrangements are of the most convenient, comfortable, and commodious kind.

"The bas.e.m.e.nt story of the building is chiefly appropriated to the chemical professors.h.i.+p and contains a lecture-room forty-five by fifty feet in dimensions, in which the seats and lecturing stand are arranged in the best manner for perfect vision, a lobby, an anti-room, a chemical laboratory well supplied with all necessary apparatus, and a dormitory for a resident pupil who acts as librarian.

"These in connection with the very handsome and commodious anatomical amphitheater which was built during the preceding season, together with its preparing- and dissecting-rooms, present a suit of lecture-rooms, apartments, etc., not surpa.s.sed in point of excellence of light for demonstration, or in ease, comfort, and convenience to the pupil by any similar inst.i.tution in America. The whole is situated in a pleasant and central part of the town, easily accessible from the chief boarding-houses in the worst weather."[37][38]

From the time of the reorganization in 1819, the cla.s.ses in the Medical College increased rapidly--from only twenty, with a single graduate in 1817-18, to two hundred students and fifty-six graduates in the session of 1823-24. A rapid increase in patronage almost unparalleled in the history of medical schools, owing, no doubt, largely to the great increasing demand for medical instruction in this fast improving country and to the temporary extreme difficulty of the journey to the great medical school of Philadelphia, but also to the _eclat_ of the University under the administration of Doctor Holley,[39] to the just fame of Doctor Dudley as a surgeon and medical teacher, to the reputation of Doctor Samuel Brown as a popular and cultivated physician and professor, and to the brilliant and popular talents of Doctor Charles Caldwell.

DOCTOR CHARLES CALDWELL.

The a.s.sociation of this distinguished professor with the fortunes of the Medical Department of Transylvania, which extended from 1819 to 1837, marked the era of its most rapid development, and embraced a large portion of the time of its greatest prosperity.

The life, character, and writings of Doctor Caldwell are no doubt now well known to the medical profession through the numerous biographical notices which have appeared, especially those by the late Professor Lunsford P. Yandell, M. D., in Lindley's _Medical Annals of Tennessee_, and as amplified in the _Transactions_ of the Kentucky State Medical Society in its twenty-first annual session in 1876, and other published sketches. But it may also be studied in his somewhat unfortunate _Autobiography_, which was published in Philadelphia in 1855, two years after his death, edited by the sister of his widow, Miss Harriet W. Warner.

It is said of t.i.tian, that when in his old age he took it into his head to _improve_ some of his best pictures by retouching them, his judicious pupils mixed his paints with olive oil so they would not dry and could be easily washed off again, thus restraining him from marring or destroying his finest works and his fame together.

Fortunate would it have been for the venerable Doctor Caldwell had much of this senile production--written only seven or eight years before his death--been canceled by a friendly hand. The too harsh criticisms in which he indulged, which placed some of his late colleagues sharply on the defensive and which also gave them powerful weapons of offense, as well as defense, had then been suppressed!

On Page 315 of this autobiography he characterized the time-honored maxim, "_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_," as "an ill-founded and dangerous precept." Hence Doctor Yandell, whom he had denounced in this work in the most opprobrious terms, felt justified in his notice of this autobiography in his paper on the _Medical Literature of Kentucky_, published in the _Transactions of the Kentucky State Medical Society_, 1876, Page 62, in the following terms: "It is not only egotistical and vainglorious beyond anything, I believe, to be found in the English language, but it is at the same time defamatory. The author holds himself up to admiration on all occasions and everywhere from boyhood to old age a very hero of romance." And literal quotations from the unfortunate volume give support to these allegations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES CALDWELL, M. D.]

Under the provocation of Doctor Caldwell's posthumous attack, Doctor Yandell defended himself and retorted with the weapons which Doctor Caldwell himself had supplied. But, in later years, not long before his death, Doctor Yandell expressed to the writer, in a friendly letter, something like regret that he had not in this case adhered more closely to that maxim in relation to the dead, above quoted, which Doctor Caldwell had condemned as "ill-founded and dangerous." It must be admitted, however, that the provocation was great.[40]

Doctor Caldwell was born, the youngest son of a large family, May 14, 1772, in Caswell County, North Carolina, and died in Louisville July 9, 1853, in his eighty-third year. His parents had emigrated from Ireland. His father--who was described by Doctor James Blythe, who knew him, as "very poor, and very, very pious"--destined Charles for the Presbyterian ministry. Accordingly he was measurably released from the labor of the farm on which the family lived and was allowed to pursue his studies in a solitary log hut which he had built for himself for the purpose--"his books his chief companions."

He says he commenced to learn the ancient languages at twelve, and was already princ.i.p.al of a literary academy at eighteen. He says further of himself: "From an early period of my life I was actuated by a form of ambition and a love of disquisition and mental contest, which not only marked in me somewhat of a peculiarity of native mind and spirit, but tended also to strengthen them." In his subsequent life he delighted in debates, discussions, and mental contests. He acknowledges (Page 53) an early propensity to array himself in argument "on the wrong side of the question under consideration, in order the more certainly to produce discussion by my advocacy of a paradox, and to make a show of my ingenuity and ability in defense of error."

But, as he acknowledged, "this kind of gladiators.h.i.+p began to blunt his appreciation of truth as distinguished from error, and hence he endeavored to restrain this impulse"--not always successfully, perhaps.

Although his taste and talents inclined him to the legal profession he was induced to study medicine, somewhat against his own judgment. His medical education was obtained in Philadelphia, in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, then the only medical college in America, which he entered in 1792, and from which he graduated. While there he industriously employed his time and faculties in study, debate, and discussion, and his pen in numerous publications, the princ.i.p.al of which was a translation of Blumenbach's _Elements of Physiology_--which he completed before graduation. He managed to antagonize, amongst many others, his medical preceptor, the celebrated Doctor Rush, much to his own detriment, as he in his autobiography acknowledges.

In the following year, 1793, on the outbreak of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, he distinguished himself by his courage and self-sacrifice in voluntarily attending and nursing the sick. And again, by his pen and otherwise, in theoretical discussions on the origin of the pestilence.

According to his own representations and the testimony of his friends, he was exceedingly methodical in his habits, dividing his time with rigorous system; but we may well feel a little skeptical as to his a.s.sertion that he "rarely slept more than four hours," and at one time but three hours and a half. His mental activity and labor, however, in his youth, must have been very great. Apart from his necessary studies and his active and constant partic.i.p.ation in the discussions of the Medical Society, he delivered more public addresses, for the Society and on other occasions, "than all the other members of the inst.i.tution united" (Page 254), besides employing his pen in numerous ephemeral productions for the press.

In speaking of his early life in Philadelphia (Page 330) he says: "I was a young man for the scenes in which I had acted; proud and ambitious certainly, and probably not altogether untinctured with vanity.... In truth it is hardly to be denied that, for a time at least, I was somewhat spoiled [by the compliments paid him] on account of my attributes and performances, both mental and corporal.... No wonder, therefore, that I felt, or conceited I felt, a decided superiority to most medical pupils, as well as the ordinary cast of young physicians.... I certainly did both indulge and manifest it to the extent, at times, of giving serious offense." This was not the worst.

His bold self-confidence and a.s.sertion having placed him in a position of antagonism toward his friend and preceptor, Doctor Rush, as well as toward other influential medical men of Philadelphia, defeated the great ambition of his life--that of occupying the chair of the Inst.i.tutes of Medicine in the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania.

When informed by Doctor Rush (Page 290, autobiography) that although his friends spoke in flattering terms of "your talents, attainments, and powers in lecturing and instruction ... they are reluctant to recommend you to the Board of Trustees in the light of a professor,"

he indignantly declared that "if the door of the University of Pennsylvania was thus closed to him he would soon occupy a chair equally honorable with that of Doctor Rush in some other school." And he shortly thereafter was induced to push his fortunes in the great and growing West.

Coming to Lexington with his s.h.i.+ning and commanding talents, his determination to conquer success, and the brilliant reputation he then had as an independent writer and lecturer; to become a.s.sociated with the yet more brilliant President Holley, and the already well-known and appreciated medical teachers, Doctors Dudley and Brown; at an auspicious time when the rapidly improving country felt the want of medical instruction at home--the rapid success of the Medical Department of Transylvania (to which he materially contributed by his able efforts before the public) might well excuse him in his belief[41] that he had come to Lexington to be the "_premier of the school_,"[42] that he had come to train and induct his colleagues ("a most miserable Faculty," he calls them) into efficiency and fame, and that the success of medical education in Lexington was due mainly to his individual efforts. Candor obliges us to admit, however, that there is some truth in the statement of the late Professor Yandell, in the memoir above quoted. Doctor Yandell was a student in the Medical Department of Transylvania in 1823, and a most ardent admirer of the brilliant talents of Professor Caldwell, yet he found that both Professors Dudley and Drake were more popular with the students, as teachers, than he. He says (Page 56): "Students, in truth, generally turned listlessly away from his polished discourses on Sympathy, Phrenology,[43] the Vital Principle, and other kindred themes, and hurried off to the lectures on Materia Medica and Anatomy."[44]

In short, Doctor Caldwell excelled in the brilliant discussion of speculative and theoretical subjects. The extent of his positive knowledge, as remarked by Doctor Yandell, was greater in superficial area than in depth; whilst in the terse and lucid exposition of definite facts, which characterized the instruction of Professor Dudley, the student felt he was acquiring knowledge which not only was real but was of practical utility.

The history of the _rise and fall_ of this school of medicine is ill.u.s.trated in the detailed list of its cla.s.ses and graduates as shown in the annexed _Schedule B_.

The total number of students in the Medical School of Transylvania during the term of its existence was, as far as can now be ascertained, more than six thousand four hundred (6,456); the total number of its medical graduates eighteen hundred and eighty-one (1,881).[45] During the late civil war the commodious Medical Hall of Transylvania, built in 1839 by the munificence of the city of Lexington, and which had been seized by the United States Government for use as a United States General Hospital, was destroyed by fire while occupied for that purpose.[46] But the medical library,[47] apparatus and museum, etc., were mainly preserved, and are now in the custody of the Curators of Kentucky University, with which inst.i.tution old Transylvania University was consolidated in 1865, "all the trusts and conditions" of her property being preserved in the Act of Consolidation.

The Medical Department may yet be resuscitated when in the course of events our city again becomes an eligible site for modern medical instruction, and when special means can be obtained properly to equip and re-establish it on a basis suited to the existing times.

The gradual decline of this school, like its rapid rise, was due greatly to the changing conditions of the country. When, shortly after 1812, steamboat navigation began to manifest its superiority and influence on the channels of commerce, population and business deserted measurably the interior routes and locations and transferred themselves to the river valleys and neighborhoods. Gradually during this change--notwithstanding the talents, ability, and fame of our Brown, Dudley, Caldwell, Cooke, Short, Yandell, Bartlett, Mitch.e.l.l, Smith, and others, and the generous support of the city--the school declined; more especially because of the establishment of rival colleges at more eligible points, in growing and populous cities.

Lexington lost its pre-eminence as the "_Metropolis of the Western Country_," and Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and other places which had been villages supplied with her manufactures, rapidly became great cities; while she declined from a population of about eight thousand in 1814, down to a little over four thousand in 1820, with an immense loss to her citizens in the value of her property and the destruction of her industries. In this year (1820) the population of Cincinnati, which in 1810 had been only two thousand, three hundred and twenty, had risen to nine thousand, six hundred and forty-four; and in 1830, when the population of Lexington was yet only five thousand, six hundred and sixty-two, that of Cincinnati was twenty-four thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one. When the present writer came to Lexington in 1832 the population had remained nearly the same, and an era of decrepitude and decline of all her industries still prevailed. Lexington had not yet finished her first railroad.

This railroad, the "Lexington & Ohio," was begun in 1831 and completed as far as Frankfort--twenty-eight miles--in 1835. It was composed of stone sills laid side by side, with a dressed surface on the portion upon which the wheels were to run. The cars resembled an old pattern of street car and were drawn by horses.

The imposing ceremony of laying the first "stone sill" took place on Water Street, October 21, 1831, "amid a vast throng of people." Indeed, it was made a very great occasion, which might have been marked with still greater pomp and circ.u.mstance, as the newspapers inform us, had "more notice been given beforehand." As it was, a large procession, civic and military, was formed, marshaled by General Leslie Combs, the renowned "boy-captain of 1812," a.s.sisted by handsome James B. Coleman.

Three military companies, including "Hunt's Artillery" and "Captain Neet's Rifle Guards," were on parade with a fine military band playing "Yankee Doodle," "Hail, Columbia," and other patriotic airs.

Major-General Pendleton and staff, on horseback, led the march. Governor Metcalfe and Reverend Nathan H. Hall supported the orator of the day.

The Trustees of the town, the President and Directors of the railroad, the President and all the officers and Trustees of Transylvania University, and all the societies of the University and of the town, were in line. "At eleven o'clock," says the _Lexington Reporter_, "the three military companies which formed the escort marched from the place of rendezvous to the college lawn, where they were met by the various societies and individuals. For many years we have not witnessed such a pageant, and never a more interesting.