The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University Part 9

Kentucky, and who first introduced there the moral treatment of the insane instead of forcible means, was appointed Professor of Materia Medica and Botany in 1851, and performed the duties of this chair with great ability until the end of the session of 1855, when he resigned that position.

DOCTOR WILLIAM STOUT CHIPLEY

Was born in Lexington, Kentucky, October 18, 1810, the only son of Reverend Stephen and Amelia Stout Chipley, the forefathers of both of whom were pioneers of Lexington. Doctor Chipley was graduated at Transylvania in 1832, with marked honor. Not a great while after his graduation he took issue with Doctor Benjamin Dudley, the oldest and most renowned pract.i.tioner of the State--or indeed of the whole country. Doctor Dudley had published a treatise upon the treatment of a special disease. Doctor Chipley took an opposite view, expressing himself most boldly and brilliantly. His article was published in an advanced medical journal and copied widely. Chipley received widespread encomiums. Indeed, he came off with raised banner, and his colors have never since been furled. His success was progressive this article exemplifying his determination when convinced he was right.

Later he went to Columbus, Georgia, feeling a.s.sured it was a fine opening for a young pract.i.tioner, and so it proved. He was soon launched into an almost phenomenal practice, extending across the Chattahoochee River into Alabama to the Indian nation, where his wonderful magnetism was felt to such a degree that he won the confidence--even friendship--of these savages. He would be detained days at a time ministering to them--a tribe, too, by no means regarded as friendly to the whites. In April, 1837, he married in Columbus, Georgia, Elizabeth Fanning, niece and adopted daughter of Colonel James Fanning, of Alamo fame. Doctor Chipley was at one time Mayor of Columbus, and made a brilliant reputation as an executive officer. At the entreaties of his mother and father, who were quite advanced in age, he turned a deaf ear to the opposition of his legion of friends in Columbus and returned to Lexington, Kentucky, where it seemed a flourishing practice did but await him. He was a very successful Professor of Transylvania in the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine, from 1854 to 1857, inclusive. As a lecturer he had a wonderful flow of language. The possessor of a perfect voice and delivery, he chained the attention of all listeners. Often have I heard his patients say his sunshiny presence, his gentle, sympathetic touch in the sick-room, dulled pain and was better than drugs. He was a brilliant and forceful writer, the author of many medical works and the writer of numerous articles published in medical journals of the highest note. One small book of his gave him much notoriety. Chief Justice George Robertson, of Lexington, regarded it of such high worth that he gave fifteen hundred dollars to have it published and placed as a healthful guide in certain schools for boys. It was in 1855 that he took charge of the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum at Lexington.

This proved a wide field for the development of the most astonishing tact and management of individuals. The attendants greatly admired him and yielded without question to his dictation. Gentle as a woman, adamantine after a decision, never acting hastily, maturing a subject before deciding--these characteristics were shown on all occasions where it pertained to the comfort of the poor creatures under his care. During his fifteen or sixteen years of most successful management of this inst.i.tution, he made many radical changes for the amelioration of the condition of these unfortunates. Winter after winter he haunted the legislative halls in behalf of the Asylum, spending his own personal means most lavishly to meet this end--presenting one bill after another, which sooner or later were always honored. His enthusiasm and faithfulness carried conviction with them. When he took charge of the Asylum he found it a conglomerate ma.s.s--many from other States there--incurables, epileptics, idiots--all huddled together. He went carefully over the records and proceeded to inst.i.tute a thorough weeding. First he notified the governors of the respective States to send for their own insane, giving them a stated time of grace, and telling them that if the call was not honored he would send the patients to their doors by one of his own attendants, which he did in several instances. This systematizing was a great step forward. The next thing he did was to induce the State to erect an inst.i.tution for idiots, believing there were few born who were not capable of receiving some degree of cultivation. In time a home was built at Frankfort, the result proving his great wisdom. It was a matter of wonderment to see these poor creatures developing from a driveling state of nonent.i.ty into some capacity for the enjoyment of life, and even to a degree of usefulness. There were but few incapable of being taught some employment which rendered their life more than a mere existence, akin alone to the lower animals. To have succeeded in this was enough to mark any man's life. His philanthropy never slept. Then, through his direct intervention, the Asylum at Anchorage for incurables was erected; all these changes making room for those who stood a chance of being cured instead of their being turned, for the lack of room, from the sheltering care which might restore them. I think his influence was brought to bear upon the advisability of an inst.i.tution for the deaf and dumb, which culminated in the home made for them in Danville.

I think it was in or about the year 1857 he went to Europe, absolutely for the purpose of gaining an insight into better ways and means of the treatment of the insane and the construction of the buildings which were their homes. Though there was such an emptying of the old Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum building, it soon became altogether insufficient to meet the demands. Applications poured in, and soon, after a hard-fought battle, the legislature made an appropriation to add to the old building, and promptly there was under construction a building which, when finished, for comfort and in a sanitary way was unequaled. This, years after his death, was destroyed by fire, and when rebuilt, I understand, was modeled after the old plan. He was his own architect, his whole heart and being merged in a desire to have all as nearly perfect as possible, developing thus a new talent. He always had in view a private asylum of his own. This purpose was crystallized when it became apparent that politics would govern the State inst.i.tutions, though in opposition to all that was humane. He resigned December, 1869. He purchased "Duncannon," the beautiful Duncan home near Lexington. The site selected, lumber on the place, all plans formulated, having gained such advanced ideas from his long and successful experience he hoped to have an ideal shelter for those who preferred private treatment. On December 9, 1871, at eleven o'clock at night, snow on the ground, standing with his family and several whom even then he had under his charge around him, after barely escaping with their lives, he saw the "Duncannon" mansion reduced to ashes. This disaster crippled his efforts to the degree that he was forced to forego that which if carried through would have proven a monument to his memory of no small magnitude. He then rented a house in Lexington, where he had some patients under his charge, with a private attendant who had won many laurels in this capacity.

Doctor Chipley was frequently called upon, even in other States, to decide in the courts as a specialist in insanity. He had a great number under his private treatment in their own homes, of whom the world never knew. He had innumerable offers of positions, but none seemed to appeal to him so much as one at College Hill, near Cincinnati, Ohio. He accepted this offer. His success here proved a very decided one, redeeming the inst.i.tution from great financial stress and opening up astonishing possibilities. He had four sons--only one now living (1903)--and one daughter (the present writer). He left many friends in Lexington who were ever beckoning him back, and to the last he hoped to return where his heart was. But after only a few years of service at College Hill he contracted a cold from which he never recovered. He died February 11, 1880. Invitations had been issued for a reunion in honor of his aged mother, who was ninety-seven the day he died. A train was to be chartered and Lexington friends were to come. He has left a memory of his gathered laurels and honored name more precious than the gems of the universe.

EMILY CHIPLEY JONES.

DOCTOR JAMES MORRISON BRUCE

Was a son[98] of John Bruce, a Scottish gentleman a.s.sociated with Colonel James Morrison and Benjamin Gratz in the manufacture of hemp at Lexington, Kentucky, and was born at that place in 1822. After completing a collegiate education, he studied medicine with Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, taking the degree of M. D. in Transylvania in 1843. He then spent three years in France, studying in the princ.i.p.al hospitals at Paris under the most eminent instructors. In 1846, he returned to Lexington to begin the practice of his profession. He was elected to the chair of Demonstrator of Anatomy in Transylvania Medical Department in 1850, continuing therein until the cessation of the school in 1857. Doctor Bruce's intrinsic merit was fully appreciated by his colleagues, who had great affection for him, but his excessively shrinking nature withheld him from taking the prominent position with the public to which his ability and learning ent.i.tled him. In truth, his chief characteristic was his modest, amiable, and retiring disposition. His specialty in medicine was eruptive disease. In the treatment of smallpox his professional brethren conceded him the highest place. For many years he was continuously elected City Physician, and holding this office he died, January 31, 1881, the sudden ending of his useful and kindly life being largely due to the exposure he so constantly and bravely encountered in his visits to the suffering poor during an unusually severe and trying winter. Says a fellow-physician,[99] "It was then that the great and good qualities of our friend and co-laborer, Doctor Bruce, shone pre-eminently. It was at a time when poverty and distress appealed to him that his great-heartedness, his forgetfulness of self, and his proficient medical skill forced itself before that public attention from which at all other times it timidly shrunk." Doctor Bruce married, in 1847, Miss Elizabeth Norton. Of his children Miss Elizabeth Bruce and Mrs. Charlotte B. Davis, of Lexington, survive him.

DOCTOR ALEXANDER KEITH MARSHALL,

Born February 11, 1808, performed the duties of the chair of Materia Medica in 1856. He had received a cla.s.sical education from his father, the celebrated Doctor Louis Marshall, of "Buck Pond"; studied medicine with Doctor Ephraim McDowell, and completed his medical course at Transylvania. He was a handsome man, a forcible speaker, a prominent politician and Odd Fellow, and a member of Congress in 1855. He died at the home of his son, Louis, near Lexington, April, 28, 1884.[100]

BENJAMIN P. DRAKE, M. D.,

A graduate of Transylvania Medical Department in 1830, occupied the chair of Materia Medica in the last year of the school in 1857.

During the last two years of the Medical Department of Transylvania University the Faculty were:

Ethelbert L. Dudley, Surgery.

James M. Bush, Anatomy.

William S. Chipley, Theory and Practice.

Samuel M. Letcher, Obstetrics, etc.

Henry M. Skillman, Physiology and Inst.i.tutes of Medicine.

Alexander K. Marshall, Materia Medica and Botany, 1856.

Benjamin P. Drake, Materia Medica and Botany, 1857.

Robert Peter, Chemistry and Pharmacy; Dean.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY--MEDICAL HALL.

Built in 1839--Burned in 1863.]

From 1850 until the end in 1857, the existence of the school seems to have been an heroic struggle against fate. In spite of the fine Medical Hall, alluded to on the day of its dedication (November 2, 1840) by President Robert Davidson,[101] as "colossal in size and surpa.s.sing in architectural beauty," in spite of liberal endowments and "costly and complete apparatus, superior to any in the valley of the Mississippi, and not surpa.s.sed, if equaled, by any on the continent,"[102] the school languished. Notwithstanding the efforts of zealous Trustees and generous citizens, notwithstanding the diligence of an able Faculty, the cla.s.ses steadily decreased from year to year until, in 1857, with only nine graduates, the Faculty in despair disbanded, and the time-honored Medical Department of Transylvania University was no more.

Two factors more than all else (except as before mentioned, the impossibility of securing sufficient material for clinical instruction) had contributed to its demise--the retirement of Doctor Dudley in 1850, and the difficulty that existed in establishing the needed railroads throughout the State. The latter cause had been operating unfavorably and with increasing effect almost ever since the introduction of steam transportation.

Enlightened thinkers had early recognized and urged the vital importance of railroads for Kentucky, and especially for Lexington and Transylvania, and had bravely advanced to conquer the difficulties of the situation, but with only discouragement and pecuniary loss for many years. The peculiar topography of the State, the constant alternation of hill and valley, the numerous streams, the hardness of the rock to be penetrated, made the building of railways very expensive, and capital was wanting. The wealth of Central Kentucky was in the soil, not in the purse, and without communication with the markets of the world this wealth was unavailable. In this manner enterprise was checked and Lexington sank into an apathetic state. It is true she had secured the distinction of having the first railroad in the West and the second in the United States,[103] but for years it only led to Frankfort, an interior town but twenty-eight miles distant. It was not until 1851 that it connected with Louisville.

Of Doctor Dudley's influence upon the medical school Doctor David W.

Yandell truly says:[104] "The history of the Medical Department of Transylvania University--its rise, its success, its decline, its disappearance from the list of medical colleges--would practically cover Doctor Dudley's career, and would form a most interesting chapter in the development of medical teaching in the Southwest. But it must suffice me here to say that Doctor Dudley created the medical department of the inst.i.tution and directed its policy. Its students regarded him from the beginning as the foremost man in the Faculty. That he had colleagues whose mental endowments were superior to his he himself at all times freely admitted. He is said to have laid no claim to either oratorical power or professional erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who at various periods taught at his side."

But although these two would appear to be the more obvious reasons for the decline of the Medical Department of Transylvania, we can by no means ignore the injurious effect of rival medical colleges growing up at points more accessible and more progressive than Lexington could possibly be without rapid transit of some sort to make her own peculiar advantages available. Nor can we overlook the evil consequences of the opposition systematically shown to the Transylvania Medical School by the faction originating in the attempt to disorganize the inst.i.tution in 1837.

However, in reviewing all these influences, the prosperity of Lexington to-day (1904), her rapid growth, her increasing enterprise, her vigorous trade, the flourishing condition of her colleges and seminaries--all of which has come to her since the completion of the railroads centering in her--abundantly prove that this communication, above everything else, was her indispensable requirement.

While the medical school was closed in 1857, the Academical Department of Transylvania University continued to be conducted at the Morrison College as a State Normal School,[105] under the Presidency of the distinguished Doctor Lewis W. Green, D. D., but was soon to be disorganized, after only two years of usefulness, on account of a supposed unconst.i.tutionality. Thus Transylvania was again humbled to a low estate in educational distinction. Lexington herself was suffering an era of banishment, as we may say, for without proper railroad connections she was excluded from progress and rendered inaccessible to both labor and capital. The financial prosperity of her citizens was not such as to warrant the lavish hospitality formerly shown to strangers within her gates, and especially to the students in Transylvania. The enterprising individuals who remained to her were not sufficient in numbers to dispel by their most strenuous exertions the lethargy which had fallen upon the place.

Such was the state of affairs immediately preceding the Civil War. The immense Medical Hall had reverted to the city and was deserted, save the laboratory in which was still being busily conducted the chemical work of the first Geological Survey of Kentucky; and save perhaps one of the smaller rooms, rented to a lodger. The survey had just received a sudden check in the death of the lamented Doctor Owen when the war still further darkened the prospect, during which, as a matter of course, the resumption of the survey was out of the question. The Morrison College was almost immediately appropriated by the United States Government for a general hospital, and, some time after, the Medical Hall, which as before mentioned was utterly destroyed by fire[106] during its occupation by the sick soldiers. The conflagration originated, it appeared, from a defective flue of a temporary frame kitchen, built adjoining.[107]

The corner-stone of this Medical Hall had been laid July 4, 1839; Robert Wickliffe, junior, the well-beloved, making the address. It was dedicated November 2, 1840. Of Grecian architecture, ma.s.sive and without ornamentation, it contained three great lecture rooms, with ample provision for light and ventilation. The amphitheatre was immediately below the cupola, being by this means lighted from above.

There were three other large apartments--for the library, the anatomical museum, and for other medical teaching. Smaller rooms accommodated the laboratory, Faculty room, janitor's room, etc.

Besides which were long halls or galleries utilized for natural history collections, museums of zoology, ornithology, geology, etc., as also for apparatus of divers sorts. The costly and complete chemical apparatus was well displayed and conveniently arranged in the immense lecture room for that department.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ABSOLOM DRIVER.

For many years Janitor at the Medical Hall of Transylvania University.]

In the s.p.a.cious lecture-room in the front of the building many fashionable and distinguished audiences had a.s.sembled on various occasions, not only to hear the gifted inc.u.mbent professors in due discourse of introductory or valedictory, but to be charmed with concerts by Ole Bull, Strakosch, Adelina Patti--who sang there on her first tour in this country--and other celebrities of the period. There the learned Guyot had instructed in geology; there unique "Tom Marshall" had uniquely delivered a unique course of lectures on History. Over the rostrum hung the portrait of Doctor Samuel Brown--the first medical professor. This lecture hall was lighted for evening a.s.semblages, from the sides mostly, by "scounches," as they were called by the "ole Virginny" negro janitor. This factotum, "Absolom Driver," is unforgotten by any whose path some time ran parallel with his. For many years the keeper of the Medical Hall, his zeal and vigilance were unimpeachable, his dignified solemnity on state occasions unsurpa.s.sed. Contemptuous of letters--except for doctors--and with unshakable prejudice against "book learnin' for n.i.g.g.e.rs," he was faithful in trusts with the matchless fidelity of the dog. "Bad boys"--the problem of philosophers and ordinary folk in all ages--was one of easy solution by "Uncle Absolom" with a bent nail at the end of a long pole. Charged upon with _elan_ with this unprecedented weapon, accompanied by an ominous war-cry, no truant could withstand, even though the artfully strewn broken bottles on the high back fence had been successfully outflanked. "Robbers" had their everlasting antidote at hand in the peculiarly uncanny, long, "one-barreled shotgun" with curious lock, which stood in the corner of the Faculty room. n.o.body ever heard it "go off," but the mystery of it was what appalled one. Happily "Uncle Absolom's" death was nearly coeval with the closing of the medical school. To have witnessed the burning of his sacred temple, the Medical Hall, after all his "keer,"

would have broken his heart indeed.

And now, bidding adieu to the shades of the grand old Transylvania Medical Department, conjured from the past by one now numbered with them, may the earnest wish be permitted with hope of realization, that some other hand with cunning in such craft will unveil to us the portraits of that bygone throng of brilliant men which const.i.tuted and which were the exponents of the honored Transylvania Law School.