Robert Peter

“ A man so full of life will rarely be found so gentle and quiet in all his ways.... The same qualities which fitted him for a public speaker naturally gave him signal success as a teacher. Had he possessed nothing but his clearness and eloquence of language and elocution, he could hardly have failed to find a popular welcome.... He had a manner at once impressive and pleasing, a lucid order which kept the attention and intelligence of the slowest hearer, and attractions of a personal character always esteemed and beloved by students.... ”

“ The intercourse which has existed between us for the three years during which we have been associated has been of the most harmonious and pleasant character, and the ability with which you have performed the duties of your chair increases the reluctance with which we give up the expectations of a longer co-operation with you under the auspices of Transylvania University. With the most sincere wishes for your continued increase in fame and prosperity, we remain your friends and colleagues. ”

“ Soon after Doctor Yandell had entered the practice of medicine Doctor Drake told him: "I have never seen a great and permanent practice the foundations of which were not laid in the hearts of the poor. Therefore cultivate the poor. ”

“ He was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1848. In 1851, he was appointed Professor of General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology, which position he occupied with skill and success until the close of the Medical College in 1857. Since that time he has devoted himself to the duties of his profession in medicine and surgery, being "one of the most skillful, successful, and accomplished physicians in Kentucky," and "having inherited the admirable qualities of his parents, is one of the most honorable and useful citizens of Lexington." ”

“ When, during the Civil War, a struggle was imminent between the secessionists and the Home Guard for possession of a large shipment of arms and ammunition sent into Kentucky by the United States Government for the arming of Union soldiers and citizens, Dudley, fearing the Home Guard at Lexington would be overpowered and the munitions captured on arrival, sent as a trusty messenger to General Nelson, at Camp Dick Robinson, to ask for troops—a midnight journey of twenty miles through a hostile country—his only son, Scott Dudley, a youth scarcely seventeen. ”

“ Doctor Bush was married, in 1835, to Miss Charlotte James, of Chillicothe. Of their three children the eldest, Benjamin Dudley, was a young man of remarkable promise as a surgeon and physician when he was cut off, an event which cast a gloom over the remaining days of the life of his father. Few young men of his age had ever attained such proficiency or developed such sterling qualities. ”

“ Few there are in our profession whose labors have given them such extensive celebrity as fell to the lot of Professor Eberle. His Practice of Physic is in [Pg 109] almost every medical library in the West, and has been noticed with high commendation by foreign journalists. His death has left a chasm in the profession, and especially in the school of the West, that is greatly lamented.
Doctor Eberle died at Lexington, Kentucky, February 2, 1838, while filling the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. ”

“ That full preparation and training, in a sufficient period of time, shall be required of the candidates into whose hands the health and lives of communities are to be committed. On such a basis—when our city may have acquired increased facilities for clinical instruction, and when anatomical studies will not be cramped for want of means of demonstration—the old Medical College of Transylvania may revive under the wing of a people's educational institution such as Transylvania is and always was—a "State University." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg x] the other colleges in which they occupied chairs, and gives the titles 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. ”

“ 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 assemblages, 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 26] 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. [20]
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. ”

“ In 1831 my name was before the Trustees of Jefferson Medical College for the chair of Materia Medica vacated by the resignation of Dr. Eberle, and I would have been appointed, as I have since been informed by Gen. Duncan, one of the Trustees, if I had not agreed to join with Dr. Eberle a new faculty at Cincinnati. If any object that a Prof'r of Chemistry can not make a good Prof'r of Theory and Practice, I have only to refer to the case of the celebrated Dr. Rush, who passed directly from Chemistry to Theory and Practice, as the published records of the University of Penna. will show. ”

“ 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 institutions as well as to the cause of education in general. Therefore, after two years of separate existence these two institutions, with the consent of the trustees of both, were united in 1798 by Act of the General Assembly of Kentucky into one, "for the promotion of public good and learning," under the title of Transylvania University. ”

“ In Louisville he was editor for some time of the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, in both cases filling the editorial chair with characteristic activity and ability. He was always a contributor to the medical literature of his day in numerous papers, especially in biographical sketches and obituary memoirs of medical men of Kentucky and Tennessee, a more complete collection of which he was said to be preparing at the time of his last illness. He held a facile pen; few writers of our times have produced more classical and graceful essays. ”

“ The history of medicine and of the earliest medical men in Kentucky clusters 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 ”

“ Lexington herself was suffering an era of banishment, as we may say, for without proper railroad [Pg 161] 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. ”

“ Our city has steadily risen to about seventeen thousand (1873) , with a good prospect of a further increase of prosperity and population as railroads centering here may be extended. Then may we hope to put into active operation once more our time-honored Medical College, and to attract to it a creditable number of students. More [Pg 61] particularly if, with the co-operation of the more enlightened members of our profession, an effort be faithfully made in the renovated college to bring about the much-needed reform in medical education, the necessity for which is now generally recognized. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gradually during this change—notwithstanding the talents, ability, and fame of our Brown, Dudley, Caldwell, Cooke, Short, Yandell, Bartlett, Mitchell, Smith, and others, and the generous support of the city—the school declined; more especially because of the establishment of rival colleges at more eligible points, in growing and populous cities. Lexington lost its pre-eminence as the "Metropolis of the Western Country," and Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and other places which had been villages supplied with her manufactures, rapidly became great cities ”

“ While attending the lectures in the Transylvania Medical College he became favorably known as a young man of industry, good attainments, and ability, and of popular manners. Especially was he a favorite pupil of Professor Charles Caldwell, who became his ardent friend, and through whose active influence, mainly, he was called in 1831—after he had received the degree of M. D. from the University of Maryland—to occupy the Chemical chair in the Transylvania School. ”

“ We can not, like our English cousins, go back along the pathway of centuries to the [Pg xi] 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 hoary years. ”

“ Doctor Yandell asserts in this memoir that in this "extraordinary practice, Doctor Cooke was not less successful in the treatment of cholera than his medical brethren in Lexington." But the fact was that none were very successful and that as many as fifty died in a day of a population of a little over six thousand. [51] The writer recollects that Doctor Cooke only practiced in the earlier period of this famous epidemic, having been [Pg 68] disabled by a fall in attempting, in his hurry to attend a professional call, to put on his coat while running down stairs. ”

“ Spending ten years in Sicily in making natural history collections and writing various essays, he published in 1815 his Analysis of Nature. The same year he sailed for America, but was wrecked on Long Island, losing most of his collections and effects. Induced to come West from Philadelphia by John D. Clifford, of Lexington, in 1818, he was elected Professor of Botany and Natural History in Transylvania University in 1819, lectured to the students in the Medical College, was librarian, and taught French, Spanish, and Italian. ”

“ For two years during the Civil War he was contract surgeon for the Government.
Doctor Skillman's father, Thomas T. Skillman, a native of New Jersey, came to Lexington in 1809, and [Pg 146] soon founded there the largest publishing house in the Mississippi Valley, the name of T. T. Skillman on the title page of a work being a guarantee of its excellence and fitness for the family circle. In 1823, an edition of several thousand copies of the entire Bible was published by Mr. Skillman from stereotype plates sent from New York by the American Bible Society. ”