Part 4

A schedule of the succession of the Professors of this Medical School will best illustrate the changes which occurred since 1819. (See Schedule A.)

Professor B. W. Dudley remained in the regular performance of the duties of his double chair--Anatomy and Surgery--with the able assistance of Doctor J. M. Bush, until 1844, when Doctor Bush was regularly appointed Professor of Anatomy. Doctor Dudley, as above mentioned, retained the chair of Surgery until 1850. In that year the Medical Faculty intermitted the winter session in Lexington, with the consent of the Trustees, in order to establish the "Kentucky School of Medicine" in Louisville as a winter school, retaining the Transylvania Medical College as a summer school. Doctor Dudley's last course of lectures was delivered in the session of 1849-50.

Simultaneously with the resignation of his professorship, he withdrew from his extensive practice and retired to his beautiful suburban residence, "Fairlawn," in the vicinity of Lexington. His death occurred in Lexington on the twentieth of January, 1870, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

Doctor Dudley was an earnest and laborious practical man. His whole time and energies were devoted to his profession, in which, like the celebrated John Hunter--the one of his early preceptors Dudley most admired--he sought instruction in the book of nature--in his practice--rather than in the written archives of science.

As a teacher and lecturer he was admirably clear and impressive. While no attempt at eloquence was ever made by him, and no early training or later readings in the classics gave ornament to his style, his terse and impressive sentences, as they were delivered apparently without the slightest effort or premeditation as also without hesitation or interruption, were the embodiment of the ideas to be conveyed, in the most lucid and concise language. It seemed impossible to use fewer or more appropriate words to convey to the least appreciative student the subject to be taught.

This, with his great practical skill as a surgeon, his minute and ready knowledge, his great experience, his unequaled success in his numerous operations, his suavity and dignity of manner, the magnanimity and liberality of his character, and his eminent devotedness to his profession, made his students most earnest admirers and followers and aided greatly in the establishment and maintenance of our Medical College.

Although possessed of the firmest nerves, so that his hand never faltered in the severest operation, his sensibility was so keen that he sometimes suffered from nervous prostration after the strain was over. Many of his pupils no doubt recollect with what feeling--manifested even by tears--he recited the sufferings and dangers of a patient of his who was the subject of obstinate secondary hemorrhage.

It was as a practical surgeon that Doctor Dudley justly attained a world-wide reputation, and especially as a successful operator in lithotomy. This operation he performed two hundred and twenty-five times, without losing a single patient until after his one hundredth operation, losing in the whole of his operations only about two per cent. So celebrated had he become for this operation as early as 1827 that the Kentucky Gazette for April 11, of that year, records that he operated three times for stone in one day.

He always performed the lateral operation with the gorget, and never until by previous preparation--by diet and medicine--he had brought the system of his patient to a proper state.

Then, with good nursing under his immediate direction in wholesome private lodging, the incision healed up by the first intention. Although the stone may have been so large that much effort was required to withdraw it through the incision--sometimes even attended with laceration--the patient was on his feet again in a surprisingly short period of time. The Doctor justly attached great importance to the preliminary constitutional preparation of his surgical patients.

A notice of two of his earliest operations of this kind is given in the Kentucky Gazette for Saturday, November 19, 1817. The one--the first he performed in Lexington--on Mr. S. Owen, of that place, and the other, "some time ago," on a little boy in Paris, Kentucky, which, according to Doctor C. C. Graham--who was his pupil at that time--was the first operation for stone performed by Doctor Dudley. He never used lithotrity or seemed to approve of that operation.

Another surgical specialty was his great use of judicious and regulated pressure by means of the roller bandage in the cure of abscesses, in the control of inflammation, in the treatment of fractures, aneurisms, etc. No surgeon probably ever used it so extensively or so successfully. Few, even of his pupils, seemed to be able to apply it with the skill and judgment which characterized their preceptor.

He was also an earnest advocate of the patient use of hot water--as hot as could be borne--in the control of inflammation. Where other surgeons resorted to poultices he applied hot water.

He was not ready with his pen; because, probably, of early neglect in the practice of composition. What he wrote was mostly at the urgent solicitation of his colleagues, and for the columns of The Transylvania Journal of Medicine, a quarterly which first appeared in Lexington February, 1828. It was then edited by his colleagues, Professors Cooke and Short; subsequently by Professor Yandell, then by Professor Peter, more lately by Professor T. D. Mitchell, and lastly by Professor Ethelbert L. Dudley.

In the first volume of this Journal appeared Doctor Dudley's first paper, a most remarkable article, showing by cases in his practice that epilepsy may be caused by pressure on the brain, the consequence of fracture of the skull, and, as demonstrated by five successive operations, might be cured by trephining, a fact and experience in surgery then entirely new, for which Doctor Dudley is entitled to the honor of discovery and demonstration.

In the same paper is communicated a novel and successful method of treatment of fungus cerebri, by means of dried sponge compresses. Doctor Dudley stated that by this means he had cured fungus cerebri within the space of five days.

In a second paper, in the next number of this volume, he gives an original and successful operation for hydrocele. In the fourth number he began an extensive article on his peculiar uses of the roller bandage in gunshot wounds, fractures, etc., which he continued through several volumes of the Journal. In the second volume he had given an interesting article on the use of the roller bandage in the treatment of ulcers, contusions, lacerations, effusions, etc. In the fifth volume he continued his remarks on epilepsy as treated by the trephine. In volume sixth he published a record of his experience in the treatment of Asiatic cholera in Lexington. In the ninth he continued his observations on the bandage and its very successful application in the treatment of fractures. A most interesting and valuable article on Calculous Diseases from his pen appeared in the same volume, illustrating not only his great practical skill but his courage and quick and clear judgment in cases of emergency. Volumes ten and twelve contained reports of his operations in lithotomy; volume eleven, a paper on Fractures and Calculous Diseases.

In the elegant and generally correct Memoir of Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, published by the late Lunsford P. Yandell, M. D., in the American Practitioner, 1870, these are stated to be the only writings of our late distinguished surgeon; but Doctor Dudley subsequently published three elaborate and highly valuable surgical papers, to wit:

1. On the Treatment of Aneurism, published in the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, edited by Professor Ethelbert L. Dudley, July, 1849.

2. On the Treatment of Gunshot Wounds. Ibid., December, 1849.

3. On the Treatment of Fractures by the Roller Bandage. Ibid., 1850.

This journal was a bi-weekly publication, the successor of the old Transylvania Medical Journal above mentioned.

These were the latest productions of Doctor B. W. Dudley. Engaged as he continually was in a daily round of engrossing surgical and medical practice, lecturing twice a day in the Medical School during its sessions, there was left to him but little time for the record or promulgation of his ample experience by his pen.

As a medical practitioner also he was original. He was among the first to discard the lancet in his treatment of disease. He used instead small doses of tartar emetic, or more recently, of ipecacuanha frequently repeated, with low diet; or cholagogue purgatives combined with ipecacuanha, etc. He confined himself to but few medicines, but in the application of these, and of diet and regimen, his clear and correct judgment was usually apparent. Polypharmacy he despised. New remedies were looked upon by him with incredulity and suspicion. Quinine, iodine, and other novelties in his time never were accorded approbation by him.

As a man and a citizen he was eminently liberal, charitable, magnanimous, public-spirited, and energetic. He bound his friends to him with the strongest ties and treated his hostile enemies--who were few--with a cordial hatred. His sense of honor and personal dignity was very delicate and high. No one so deeply despised a mean action. No one so readily forgave an injury which was confessed.

An exemplification of his character was given in 1817-18. A difficulty having originated between himself and Doctor Drake, in relation to the resignation of the latter and some matters connected with a post-mortem examination of an Irishman who had been killed in a quarrel, sharp pamphlets passed between them and a challenge to mortal combat from Dudley to Drake, which the latter declined, but which was vicariously accepted by his next friend, Doctor William H. Richardson. A duel resulted in which, at the first fire, Richardson was seriously wounded in the groin by the ball of Dudley, severing the inguinal artery. Richardson would have speedily bled to death--as it could not be controlled by the tourniquet--but for the ready skill and magnanimity of Dudley. He immediately asked permission of his adversary to arrest the hemorrhage, and by the pressure with his thumb over the ilium gave time for the application of the ligature by the surgeon of Richardson--thus converting his deadly antagonist into a lifelong friend.

Notwithstanding Doctor Dudley had contributed tens of thousands to public improvement and to private charities, and never regularly kept accounts against his patients, he acquired a considerable fortune. His latter days were passed in the society of his children and grandchildren in the household of his son, the late William A. Dudley, surrounded by all the comforts which a large competency and a devoted family could provide. Thus, in the quiet of domestic retirement, passed away the last days of a most active and eminently useful and distinguished life.

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