The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University Part 1

The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University.

by Robert Peter.

PREFACE

In preparing for publication the following sketch of the famous Transylvania Medical Department and its professors, I have placed in foot-notes, as far as practicable, my own additions to the text, so as to avoid making any radical change in my father's ma.n.u.script.

Portions of the history may seem fragmentary; some of the lives of the professors may be incomplete; some, no doubt, are insufficiently noticed, but this is easily understood when it is considered that my father wrote this narrative at irregular intervals of leisure in the years from 1873 to 1878, when some of the professors were still living; and that the writing was left by him in a yet uncompleted state and lacking those finishing touches which no other hand could so well give.

In what I have done I have striven for accuracy. My father's reminiscences will have due weight as coming from one most intimately a.s.sociated with Transylvania and her medical teachers--from the one colleague of all the brilliant company who could best transcribe them.

The notice of Doctor Eberle I have copied from the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_ of 1838, as the nearest I could get to the estimation in which he was held in the Transylvania School. The sketch of Doctor Bruce is gathered mainly from obituaries by his colleagues. That of Doctor Chipley--oftenest described, by those who knew him, as nature's n.o.bleman--was written by his daughter, Mrs. Boykin Jones, in answer to my letter to her. I have added a few words about Doctor Marshall, and Doctor Skillman, "the beloved physician," the last survivor of the Transylvania Medical Faculty. And I have given as best I could a description of the last declining years of Transylvania, with some account of the Medical Hall and its ultimate fate. Any biography of Doctor Peter, I fear, must be unsatisfactory unless written at length.

The brief summary of his life introductory to _The History of Transylvania University_, published by The Filson Club in 1896, was called "insufficient," "far too modest," etc. Such the story of a life so long, so full, and so many-sided must ever be unless a volume be devoted to it. In what I now say of my father I feel, even more than I did then, that I can not do justice. It is a mere itinerary of a life-journey. The same thing is true in varying degree of all the Transylvania professors, and I repeat here what I said of the former _History of Transylvania_--that all errors or faults must be ascribed to my own insufficiency to cope with the subject.

Nevertheless, with all its shortcomings, this is a record not unworthy of preservation, and while biographers point us to the fact that in the United States Senate there sat at one and the same time no fewer than _eight_ graduates of Transylvania University, including Jefferson Davis, afterward President of the Southern Confederacy, the student of these pages will remark that Transylvania's Medical Department had already won as abundant laurels in the field of science.

My grateful acknowledgments are due, first and for many kindnesses, to our invaluable President, Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, through whose unfailing interest, literary judgment, and tactful encouragement so many gems of Kentucky history have been preserved which otherwise had perished, and to the many friends of old Transylvania who have bid me G.o.dspeed in my undertaking. I am indebted to Mrs. Thomas H. Clay for letters and doc.u.ments bearing upon my subject; to Miss Mary Mason Brown for a copy of Jouett's admirable portrait of Doctor Brown which hangs in the old Brown homestead at Frankfort; to Mrs. Lawrence Dade Fitzhugh for data and the permission to use the beautiful portrait by Jouett of her ancestor, Doctor Richardson; to Mrs. Sallie Overton Bullock for the picture of Doctor Overton; to Mrs. Anderson Berry for the picture of Doctor Cooke; to Mr. William Short, of Louisville, for valuable suggestions and the fine likeness of Doctor Short; and to Doctor A. M. Peter for some of the ill.u.s.trations. The several descendants of Doctor Ridgely to whom I applied have, without exception, aided me most courteously and patiently in my search for a picture of Doctor Ridgely: a search which I abandoned with the utmost reluctance and with the feeling that his portrait, could I have found it, must have adorned this history as his life had adorned the times to which it belonged, and therefore be sadly missed from its place with Doctor Brown. To Doctor John W. Whitney, who was prosector of Surgery and Anatomy in the Transylvania Medical School in 1854-55, and is now the sole surviving representative of that school, I am indebted for a number of facts and suggestions.

JOHANNA PETER.

INTRODUCTION

The late Doctor Robert Peter, one of the most distinguished a.n.a.lytical chemists of his times, was a member of the Medical Faculty of Transylvania University from 1833 to the time of the dissolution of that inst.i.tution, and afterward occupied chairs in the different colleges into which Transylvania was merged. He was one of the most active of the professors, and did as much as any one else to raise the university to the lofty heights it attained as a school of literature, law, and medicine. It occurred to him after the merger of the Transylvania into the Kentucky University that an inst.i.tution which had led the way and done so much for literature, law, and medicine should not be permitted to vanish and leave nothing but a name and memory behind. He, therefore, went to work, after the weight of years was gathering fast upon him, to write the history of Transylvania University, and got his work almost finished in 1894, when death, which alone could have arrested him in his undertaking, relieved him of the task at the age of eighty-nine. His daughter, Miss Johanna Peter, with filial affection worthy of so excellent a father, and public spirit equal to the occasion, rightly estimating so good a work if it should be published and put into the hands of the public, undertook to prepare his ma.n.u.scripts for publication. One of these ma.n.u.scripts prepared by her embraced the literary department of Transylvania, and was published by The Filson Club in 1896 as its eleventh publication. When this publication was made, it was intimated, if not promised, that it would be followed in the near future by one of the medical department. Miss Peter, therefore, prepared this second ma.n.u.script of her father for publication, and The Filson Club now presents it in the pages which follow as the twentieth number in its regular annual series.

The medical department of the Transylvania University no longer exists. Indeed, nothing of the Transylvania University exists except its name. Its learned professors have gone the way of all flesh. The last one of them recently went down to his grave. Its buildings have been swept away by fire or have pa.s.sed to other inst.i.tutions with its library and apparatus. Yet all of this renowned University has not pa.s.sed away. Its fame yet lives, and will not perish while the memory of the living holds sacred the good deeds of predecessors. The distinguished professors made Transylvania University famous, and made history at the same time, and they themselves are now ent.i.tled to a place in history. It is the purpose of The Filson Club, by this publication, to a.s.sist in securing for them the place they deserve in the memory of mankind. Doctor Peter, the author, was the fittest of men to sketch these professors and to present life pictures of them.

His work, however, if it had remained in ma.n.u.script, as he left it, would have been seen but by few, and could have done but little good.

In this twentieth publication of The Filson Club, the ma.n.u.script will make its way to many and present them with likenesses of those who devoted their lives to instructing the young of our land in the art of administering to the sick and afflicted. The author knew all of his contemporary professors, and the likeness which he has given of some of them will be the ones by which they will be known in after years.

Pen pictures are sometimes as efficient as likenesses in oil, and the characteristic of Doctor Peter's pictures is fidelity so executed that they seem to be the originals standing in life before us. In a work like this the essence of its history is biographic, and Doctor Peter has made his work to consist chiefly of biographical sketches of those who made Transylvania University what it was. He gives the leading facts in the life of each of the professors he sketches, and enumerates the other colleges in which they occupied chairs, and gives the t.i.tles of the works they published either in book form or magazine articles. He omits nothing in the sketch that is necessary in forming a just idea of the character portrayed.

In the long career of Transylvania University she did not fail to make enemies, but she made more friends than enemies to remember her. A few of the living students and the many descendants of the deceased professors and graduates now scattered broadcast over the land will be glad to read what is here said of old Transylvania, and the work will thus be widely known and read. All who see it will be thankful to Doctor Peter for his ma.n.u.script, and to Miss Johanna Peter for preparing it for the press, and to The Filson Club for publishing it.

There is in our nature something like the love of the relic which makes us revere the memory of Transylvania University. Early in the year 1799 a medical department was attached to this University which was the first medical college in the great Mississippi Valley and the second in the whole United States. The medical department of the University of Pennsylvania antedated it, but it antedated all others afterward established in any part of our vast domain. We can not, like our English cousins, go back along the pathway of centuries to the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and revere them for their age; we have nothing in our new country that partakes of such age. We are a young people in a young country, and our Transylvania Medical College was old enough from our standpoint to be crowned with h.o.a.ry years. We revere it as the first medical college on this side of the Alleghanies. We revere it for the efforts it made to prepare our young physicians to cope with the diseases that afflicted our people. We revere it for the good name it gave our State in the fame it acquired.

We revere it for the success of Professor Brown in introducing vaccination in advance of its discoverer, for the brilliant and numerous operations in lithotomy by Professor Dudley, and for the n.o.ble efforts of others of its professors in prolonging human life and mitigating its pains. What it did in the day of its glory is set forth in the pages which follow, and he who reads them will hardly doubt that the medical department of Transylvania University is worthy of the record here made for it.

R. T. DURRETT,

_President of The Filson Club_.

MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

OF

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY

The history of medicine and of the earliest medical men in Kentucky cl.u.s.ters around the name of TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY.

The State of Virginia, in 1780--when "Kan-tuck-ee" or "Kentuckee," as this country was then called, was only a little-explored portion of that State--placed eight thousand acres of escheated lands within that county into the hands of thirteen trustees "for the purposes of a public school or _seminary of learning_," that they "might at a future day be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth; it being the interest of this Commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which might tend to the improvement of the mind and the diffusion of knowledge, even amongst the most remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science."

Three years thereafter (1783), when Kentucky had become a _district_ of Virginia, the General a.s.sembly, by a new amendatory Act, re-endowed this "public school" with twelve thousand acres more of escheated lands and gave to it all the privileges, powers, and immunities of "any college or university in the State," under the name of "_Transylvania Seminary_."

In the wild and spa.r.s.ely settled country this seminary began a feeble existence under the special fostering care and patronage of the Presbyterians, who were then a leading religious body, aided by individual subscriptions and by additional State endowments.

The Reverend James Mitchel, a Presbyterian minister, was its first "_Grammar Master_," in 1785. In 1789 it was placed under the charge of Mr. Isaac Wilson and located in Lexington, with no more than thirteen pupils all told. The Reverend James Moore, educated for the Presbyterian ministry but subsequently an Episcopalian and first Rector of Christ Church, Lexington, was appointed "Director," or the first acting President of the Transylvania Seminary, in 1791.[1] He taught in his own house for want of a proper seminary building, with the aid of a small library and collection of philosophical apparatus.

This library and apparatus had been donated by the Reverend John Todd, of Virginia, who, with other influential Presbyterians, had been mainly instrumental in procuring the charters and endowments from the General a.s.sembly of Virginia.

The offer of a lot of ground in the town of Lexington[2] to the trustees of _Transylvania Seminary_, by a company of gentlemen calling themselves the "_Transylvania Land Company_," induced the trustees to permanently locate the seminary in that place in 1793. On that lot the first school and college buildings were placed, and on it was afterward erected the more commodious _University_ edifice in which taught the learned and celebrated President, Doctor Horace Holley.

This first _University_ building was destroyed by fire May 9, 1829. In later years (1879) this old "College lot" was beautified and improved by tree-planting and otherwise by liberal citizens of Lexington, moved by the efforts of Mr. H. H. Gratz, and designated first "Centennial Park,"[3] and afterward "Gratz Park," in honor of Benjamin Gratz, being not now utilized for special educational purposes.

With limited success the first "_Director_ of Transylvania Seminary"

taught in Lexington until 1794, when he was superseded by the election by the Board of Trustees of Mr. Harry Toulmin as first President of the Seminary.

This gentleman, a learned Unitarian minister of the school of Doctor Priestly, and a native of England, resigned the Presidency in 1796, and was Secretary of State of Kentucky under Governor Garrard. (See _Collins' History of Kentucky_, volume 2, page 184.)

Intense feeling at the election of Mr. Toulmin on the part of the leading Presbyterians, who claimed the Seminary as their own peculiar inst.i.tution, caused them to obtain in 1796 a charter from the Legislature of Kentucky--now a State--for a new inst.i.tution of learning which they could more exclusively control. This was the "Kentucky Academy," of which the Reverend James Blythe, of their communion, was made President.[4]

On the establishment of the _Kentucky Academy_ by the dissatisfied Presbyterians in 1796, an active rivalry between that school and Transylvania Seminary operated to the injury of both inst.i.tutions as well as to the cause of education in general. Therefore, after two years of separate existence these two inst.i.tutions, with the consent of the trustees of both, were united in 1798 by Act of the General a.s.sembly of Kentucky into one, "for the promotion of public good and learning," under the t.i.tle of _Transylvania University_. The consolidation was made under the original laws which governed the Transylvania Seminary as enacted by the General a.s.sembly of Virginia.

TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY.

Under the act of consolidation of December 22, 1798, this University was organized by the appointment of Reverend James Moore, of the Episcopal Church, as first acting President, with a corps of professors. And now, _for the first time_ in the Mississippi Valley, was the effort made to establish a _medical college_.

Early in 1799, at the first meeting of the trustees of the new Transylvania University,[5] they inst.i.tuted "The _Medical Department_"

or _College_ of Transylvania--which subsequently became so prosperous and so celebrated--by the appointment of Doctor Samuel Brown as Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery, and Doctor Frederick Ridgely as Professor of Materia Medica, Midwifery, and Practice of Physic. Doctor Brown qualified as Professor October 26, 1799, and Doctor Ridgely the following November.

Doctor Brown was authorized by the Board to import books and other means of instruction for the use of the medical professors to the amount of five hundred dollars[6]--a considerable sum in those days--and he and his colleague were made salaried officers of the University.

A Law College was also organized at this time in the University by the appointment of Colonel George Nicholas, soldier of the Revolution and member of the Virginia Convention, as Professor of Law and Politics.

DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN,

The first Medical Professor of Transylvania University and of the great Western country, was born in Augusta, or Rockbridge County, Virginia, January 30, 1769, and died near Huntsville, Alabama, at the residence of Colonel Thomas G. Percy, January 12, 1830. He was the son of Reverend John Brown, a Presbyterian minister of great learning and piety, and Margaret Preston--a woman of remarkable energy of character and vigor of mind--second daughter of John Preston and Elizabeth Patton.[7] He was the third of four distinguished brothers--Honorable John Brown, Honorable James Brown, Doctor Samuel Brown, and Doctor Preston Brown.

After graduating at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania, where he had been sent by his elder brother, he studied medicine for two years in Edinburgh, Scotland. Doctor Hosack, of New York, and Doctor E.

McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, were of the same cla.s.s. Returning to the United States, he commenced practice in Bladensburg, but soon removed to Lexington, Kentucky, where he was made Professor of Chemistry, Anatomy, and Surgery in Transylvania University in 1799, as above stated. In 1806, he removed to Fort Adams, Mississippi, where he married Miss Percy, of Alabama.[8] Afterward returning to Lexington he was re-appointed in 1819 to a chair in the Medical Department of Transylvania, that of Theory and Practice. Here he was a distinguished colleague of Professors B. W. Dudley, Charles Caldwell, Daniel Drake, William Richardson, and James Blythe until 1825, when he finally left Kentucky.

Doctor Brown was a man of fine personal appearance and manners; an accomplished scholar, gifted with a natural eloquence and humor that made him one of the most fascinating lecturers of his day. Learned in many branches, he was an enthusiast in his own profession, scrupulous in regard to etiquette and exceedingly benevolent and liberal of his time and services to the poor. Although active in scientific pursuits he left no extensive work, and but a few detached writings to perpetuate his fame.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN.