Part 5

The annals of the earlier efforts to establish medical education and a medical college in connection with Transylvania University--the first in the whole West and the second in the United States--are meager and unsatisfactory.

As already stated, the first Medical Professors in this University--Doctors Samuel Brown and Frederick Ridgely (1799)--no doubt taught and lectured occasionally to such students as were present. The files of the old Kentucky Gazette show that Doctor James Fishback, who was unanimously appointed to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania in 1805, advertised to lecture, and did probably lecture on these subjects. But he resigned in 1806. Doctor James Overton, who had been appointed to the chair of Materia Medica and Botany in 1809, said in his letter of acceptance (on the occasion of his reappointment in the reorganization of the Medical Faculty in 1817) that he "had engaged for some time in giving lectures on Theory and Practice in this town," etc.

According to the best recollection of the late Doctor Coleman Rogers--for a long time before his death a resident in Louisville--the Medical College of Transylvania University was reorganized in 1815 by the appointment of the following Faculty:

Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.

Doctor Coleman Rogers, adjunct to this chair.

Doctor James Overton, Theory and Practice.

Doctor William H. Richardson, Obstetrics, etc.

Doctor Thomas Cooper (Judge Cooper), of Pennsylvania, to the chair of Chemistry, Mineralogy, etc.

Doctor James Blythe, then acting President of the University, was to give chemical instruction. Doctor Cooper and Doctor Rogers did not accept this appointment. According to Doctor Rogers' recollection a regular course of lectures was not delivered by this Faculty, although Doctors Dudley and Overton probably both lectured or taught "as they previously had done."

Doctor Dudley's own recollection, as detailed to the present writer, was also that he and Doctor Overton, as well as Doctor Blythe, lectured in 1815-16 to about twenty students, of whom the late Doctor Ayres and the yet surviving Nestor of Transylvania graduates, Doctor Christopher C. Graham, of Louisville--now almost a centenarian--were in attendance as pupils. Very little can now be ascertained, from existing records, of the character of Professor James Overton, M. D. Doctor Christopher C. Graham, in a recent letter to the writer, gives some of his reminiscences of him in the following language: "Doctor Overton was a small, black-eyed man, very hypochondrical and sarcastic (notoriously so), and yet quite chatty, humorous, and agreeable; telling his class many funny things.... He was well educated for his day and plumed himself especially on his Greek." Doctor Overton removed from Lexington to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1818.

From a Portrait made in Philadelphia before 1815.]

The late Doctor Ayres, of Danville, and latterly of Lexington, informed the writer that, in 1815, Doctor Dudley, having recently returned from Europe, was invited by himself and other medical students to demonstrate to them in anatomy and surgery. Learning that he would lecture to them if a class were formed, they made up one of from twenty to twenty-five, and Doctor Dudley lectured to them on anatomy and surgery in "Trotter's Warehouse," a house situated on the south-east corner of Main and Mill streets, opposite the site of the old original Lexington block-house. In the next winter, he recounts, he lectured to about fifty or sixty students, some of whom were from Ohio. Doctors Overton and Blythe, one or both, also lectured in both winters.

This may be said to be the real beginning of the successful career of the Medical Department of Transylvania University, and of that of Doctor Dudley as a medical professor.

The Kentucky Gazette of March 10, 1817, contains a card published by a committee of the medical students of Transylvania, signed David J. Ayres, Thomas J. Garden, and Charles H. Warfield (committee of the medical class), headed a "Tribute of Gratitude," in which they return grateful thanks to their professors, Doctors B. W. Dudley, James Overton, and the Reverend Doctor Blythe, for the ability, fidelity, and perseverance with which they had taught. A further proof that a medical session was held in the Transylvania School in 1816-17.

Many circumstances in these early times favored the establishment of a medical college in Lexington. Not only had that city been recognized for many years as a great center of public education for the whole State--made so by the location in it of the State's University, "Transylvania"--but it was also at that time the great metropolis of the West. The country around it, though fast becoming settled and improved by enterprising pioneers, had not as yet been provided with roads, or good means of communication with older settlements. To ascend the Ohio River and cross the Alleghany Mountains to Philadelphia, where the only other medical school then existed, was a tedious and laborious undertaking, not devoid of danger.

The celebrated French botanist, F. A. Michaux, who visited this country in 1802, was obliged to walk most of the way over the mountains to Pittsburg. Descending the Ohio River in a canoe and landing at Limestone (now Maysville), he consumed two days and a half on horseback on his journey from that place to Lexington, having been obliged to leave his baggage behind. The late Professor Charles Caldwell records, in his remarkable Autobiography, that as late as 1820, when he set out from Lexington for Europe to purchase books and apparatus for the Medical Department of Transylvania, he was compelled to travel from Lexington to Maysville on horseback, with his baggage on a pack-horse conducted by a servant on a third horse. "The animals were all powerful and active," but "so deep and adhesive was the mud that they did not reach Maysville--only sixty miles distant--until an early hour on the fourth day," although diligence on his part was not wanting. Students of this region had to overcome very great difficulties when they set out in search of instruction in the medical schools of Philadelphia.

On March 2, 1816, one thousand dollars were appropriated by the Trustees of Transylvania and placed in the hands of Doctor Blythe and John D. Clifford for the immediate purchase of chemical apparatus. Doctor Blythe, who had been acting President of the University up to this time, resigned and accepted the position of Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department.

In 1817 the Medical Faculty was further reorganized by the appointment of the late celebrated, talented Doctor Daniel Drake to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany. The organization was then as follows:

Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.

Doctor James Overton, Professor of Theory and Practice.

Doctor Daniel Drake, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany.

Doctor William H. Richardson, Professor of Obstetrics, etc.

Doctor James Blythe, Professor of Chemistry, etc.

Doctor Drake has stated that twenty pupils attended this course of lectures, and the degree of M. D. was--for the first time in Lexington--conferred on John Lawson McCullough of this city.

From a Portrait by Jouett.]

Each professor lectured three times a week, and his ticket was fifteen dollars. During this session ill feelings arose between Doctors Dudley and Drake, leading to the duel between Doctors Dudley and Richardson already described.

Doctor Drake resigned his professorship and returned to Cincinnati at the end of this session, returning subsequently in 1823 to occupy the same chair, to resign it again in 1827. Professor Richardson did not lecture this session. He, not having yet received the degree of M. D., was allowed to be absent.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM HALL RICHARDSON