Читать книгу The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University - Robert Drummond Peter - Страница 11

Of a well-known family in Maryland,[10] and one of the most celebrated of the early physicians of the West, studied medicine in Delaware, and attended medical lectures in Philadelphia.

He was appointed Surgeon to a rifle corps in Virginia when only nineteen years of age, and served in different positions as Surgeon throughout the Revolutionary War. He came to Kentucky in 1790, was Surgeon-General in General Wayne's army in 1794, and after that decisive campaign was ended returned to Kentucky in 1799 and was made Professor of Materia Medica, Midwifery, and the Practice of Physic in the same year in the Medical Department of Transylvania University at the first organization of this department.

Widely known as a successful practitioner and a gentleman of great benevolence, disinterestedness, and affability, he was also one of the medical preceptors of Kentucky's distinguished surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley, and for many years gave active support to Transylvania University as a member of the Board of Trustees. In 1799–1800, he delivered to the small class of medical students then in attendance a course of public instruction which did him much credit—a fact of peculiar interest, "as it proves him to have been," with his able colleague, Doctor Samuel Brown, "the first who taught medicine by lecture in Western America." He died at the age of sixty-eight at Dayton, Ohio, December 21, 1824.

These first medical professors in Transylvania University were no doubt the first in the promotion of medical education in the West. Medical and Law societies were soon established and were in active operation—as we learn from the columns of the Kentucky Gazette, published at the time. How many pupils they attracted and taught we can not now definitely ascertain.

In 1801, the meager existing records of the University show a reorganization, in which the Reverend James Moore—who had been replaced in 1799 by a Presbyterian clergyman, the Reverend James Welsh—was restored to the Presidency. "Doctor Frederick Ridgely was made Professor of Medicine, and Doctor Walter Warfield was made Professor of Midwifery, in addition to Doctor Samuel Brown." Doctor Warfield, a physician of Lexington, did not long occupy this chair, and appears not to have lectured in it.

In 1804, the Reverend James Blythe, D. D., of the Presbyterian church, who had been President of Kentucky Academy, was made acting President of Transylvania University, which position he held until 1816. He was subsequently, in 1817, under Doctor Holley's administration, appointed Professor of Chemistry, etc., in the Medical Department. This position he retained until, in 1831, he accepted the Presidency of Hanover College, Indiana.

Doctor Blythe died in 1842, aged seventy-seven, having devoted his life mainly to religion; having been one of the pioneers of the Presbyterian church in Kentucky. He made no distinguished reputation as a chemical professor in the Medical School, for chemistry in those days had few advocates, but he did good service in the University as a teacher of what was called "Natural Philosophy" in early times.

The Medical College of Transylvania University seems not to have attracted many students in this early period of its history, nor were its means of instruction or its organization complete.

In 1805, Doctor James Fishback, D. D., was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in this department.[11] He was characterized as an eloquent, learned, though erratic divine; an able writer; a physician in good practice; an influential lawyer, and an upright man. He was the son of Jacob Fishback,[12] who came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1783.

He resigned this chair in 1806, having given lectures to such small medical classes as were present. In 1808, he was elected Representative to the General Assembly of Kentucky. In 1813, he published The Philosophy of the Mind in Respect to Religion, and, in 1834, Essays and Dialogues on the Powers and Susceptibilities of the Human Mind to Religion. He was also preceptor in medicine, and for a time partner in the practice, of the celebrated surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley. He died at an advanced age in 1854.

An effort was again made to organize a full Faculty and establish a medical school in Transylvania University in the year 1809, when Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley was appointed to the chair of Anatomy and Physiology, Doctor Elisha Warfield to Surgery and Obstetrics, Joseph Buchanan, A. M., to the Institutes of Medicine, and Doctor James Overton to Materia Medica and Botany.[13] But Doctor Warfield resigned in the same year, and Doctor Buchanan in 1810. The late Lewis Rogers, M. D., of Louisville, thus mentioned Doctor Buchanan in his inaugural address as President of the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1873: "He died in Louisville in 1829: and I call up from the memories of my boyhood with great distinctness his slender form, massive head, and thoughtful, intellectual face. He was a man of great and varied powers of mind. He was a mechanical, medical, and political philosopher. His 'spiral' steam-boiler—the prototype of the exploding and exploded tubular boiler—and his steam land-carriage were among the wonders of the day. As a physician his papers attracted distinguished notice from the medical savants of Philadelphia, then the center of medical science."

As a political writer he ably discussed the most weighty problems of the times, he being editor of the Louisville Focus. Want of concentration of his wonderful mind prevented him from becoming eminent in medicine as in other pursuits which divided his mental powers.[14]

No systematic medical instruction seems to have resulted from this imperfect organization of the Medical School in 1809, although occasional lectures may have been delivered and private instruction given.

Doctor Dudley, after having graduated in medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, visited Europe in 1810, spending four years in Paris and London in the arduous pursuit of medical and surgical information and experience under the celebrated teachers of that day. Returning then to Lexington he began a career as a practical surgeon and teacher, in which his name became distinguished throughout the civilized world.