The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University Part 5

"Botanical Bibliography." 1835.

"A Brief Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Cholera Asphyxia." 1835.

"A Sketch of the Progress of Botany in Western America."

In 1845, he wrote "Observations of the Botany of Illinois," published in the _Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery_.

In the early volumes of the _Transylvania Journal_ also appeared his notices of two remarkable cases which occurred in Lexington. One, of supposed _spontaneous combustion of the human body_, and the other of _paralysis of the kidneys_.

At his death his vast collection of botanical specimens, in the formation of which he took such delight, and to which he had devoted so great a portion of his life, was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution at Was.h.i.+ngton, but there was no appropriate place there in which to display so large a collection. It is now in possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. During his life no less than five of the distinguished botanists of the age honored his name by attaching it to six new genera and species of plants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR CHARLES WILKINS SHORT.]

His lectures to the medical students on Materia Medica and Medical Botany he always read from his ma.n.u.script, which detracted somewhat from his impressiveness. He was too modest to trust himself to oral discourses.[56] Yet his pupils were always closely attentive and respectful, holding him and his teachings in high esteem.[57]

He was Dean of the Medical Faculty in Transylvania for about ten years.

For some years he was co-editor of the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_ with Doctor Cooke. This quarterly they founded in Lexington in 1828.

Doctor Short severed his connection with the Transylvania Medical School in 1838 to be allied with Doctors Caldwell, Cooke, and Yandell in the Medical Inst.i.tute of Louisville,[58] in which he remained until 1849, when his colleagues elected him Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica and Botany. He died at his beautiful country residence, "Hayfield," near Louisville, on March 7, 1863, aged sixty-nine years.

Doctor Short's father was Peyton Short, who came to Kentucky from Surry County, Virginia, and whose mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, Baronet. His mother was Mary, daughter of John Cleves Symmes, formerly of Long Island, who filled various offices of honor and trust in Cincinnati. His sister was the wife of Doctor Benjamin Winslow Dudley. His brother was the late Judge John Cleves Short, of North Bend, Ohio. He married Mary Henry Churchill, only daughter of Armistead and Jane Henry Churchill. Of his six children--one son and five daughters--all were prosperous in life.

The early education of Doctor Short was in the school of the celebrated Joshua Fry, and, in 1810, he graduated with honor in the Academical Department of Transylvania University, beginning soon afterward the study of medicine with his uncle, Professor Frederick Ridgely. He repaired to Philadelphia in 1813 and became a private pupil of Doctor Casper Wistar, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, in which university Doctor Short received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the spring of 1815, returning shortly after to Kentucky.

Doctor Short was a consistent member of the Presbyterian church.[59]

PROFESSOR LUNSFORD PITTS YANDELL, SENIOR, M. D.

Was called to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the Medical Department of Transylvania University, March 16, 1831.[60] He had attended the course of lectures in that school in 1822-23, having previously acquired a good general and cla.s.sical education in the Bradley Academy, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and having studied medicine some time with his father, Doctor Wilson Yandell, a physician of high standing.

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.

Although he had been a good and apt scholar in his preliminary education, he had never devoted especial attention to chemistry, which at that time, notwithstanding the neglect or opposition of the older medical teachers--notably the ridicule of Professor Caldwell and others--was beginning to be recognized as an essential element of a good medical education.

This want of special training and experience in this branch of science on his part naturally caused opposition to his appointment to this chair, which was allayed by making the late Hezekiah Hulbert Eaton, A.

M., professor adjunct to the Chemical chair, and giving him one third of the tuition fees.

Professor Eaton was a young man of fine attainments and thorough practical training in chemistry and natural science generally; a graduate of Rensselaer Inst.i.tute of Troy, New York, under the administration of his father, the celebrated Amos Eaton.[61]

Adjunct Professor Eaton died of consumption at the age of twenty-three, before the end of the first year; but during the short term of his service he had, by his industry and practical knowledge, greatly improved the means of instruction in the Chemical Department by a complete reorganization of the laboratory and the procurement of much new apparatus, etc.[62]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOCTOR LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, SENIOR.]

After the death of Professor Eaton, August 16, 1832, the present writer, then residing in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who had also been a student in the Rensselaer Inst.i.tute and consequently known to Professor Eaton, was persuaded by the late Reverend Benjamin Orr Peers to visit Lexington, Kentucky, to deliver a course of chemical lectures in the Eclectic Inst.i.tute, of which Mr. Peers was princ.i.p.al and of which young Professor Eaton had been a professor. During this course, in 1832, the writer was induced by Professor Yandell, by private arrangement, to a.s.sist him in his next course of lectures to the medical students of Transylvania and to commence the regular study of medicine with a view to graduation.

Under this arrangement, which continued until the disruption of the Medical Faculty in 1837, Doctor Yandell, in his usual able and brilliant manner, delivered the chemical lectures to the students, while to the writer was committed the preparation and performance of the demonstrative experimental part.

On his removal to Louisville in 1837, to join in the establishment of the rival school, the Louisville Medical Inst.i.tute, Doctor Yandell taught in the combined chairs of Chemistry and Materia Medica, never failing ably and impressively to perform this arduous duty. Not having any particular taste for so severe a study as practical chemistry, although no one was more impressed with the philosophical beauty and wide practical value of the science, he naturally sought a transfer to a chair more congenial with his tastes and the character of his mind than that of chemistry. This, circ.u.mstances prevented until, in 1849, the Trustees of the school--having come to the conclusion that Professor Caldwell had become superannuated--placed Doctor Yandell in the chair of Physiology, for which subject he had a decided taste. This change procured him the animosity of his whilom friend, Doctor Caldwell, who, in his rather unfortunate _Autobiography_ written in his last declining years, indulged in much bitter denunciation of his late colleague. It is much to the credit of Doctor Yandell that, although when this angry publication was fresh from the press he retaliated by showing in ample quotations from the _Autobiography_ some of the weak points in Doctor Caldwell's character, he was disposed in following years, as the writer knows, to extend over these weaknesses the mantle of kindness.

Doctor Yandell occupied this chair of Physiology with great credit until he resigned, in 1859, to accept a chair in the Medical School of Memphis, Tennessee. During the Civil War he devoted himself to hospital service. In 1862, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Memphis, and in 1864 was ordained pastor of the Dancyville Presbyterian church. He resigned his pastors.h.i.+p in 1867, and returned to Louisville to resume the practice of medicine, which he had never entirely abandoned during the whole of his professional life.

While resident in Lexington he was for some years sole editor of the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_, to which he contributed several able papers. 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 cla.s.sical and graceful essays. As a public speaker and lecturer he was ever impressive, graceful, and chaste. His social qualities made him always welcome and prominent in all public a.s.semblies of his medical brethren. In 1872, he was elected President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Louisville, and at the time of his death he was President of the Medical Society of Kentucky. His decease occurred February 4, 1878, in the seventy-third year of his age.

DOCTOR ROBERT PETER,

Though of foreign birth, came of that same cla.s.s of British ancestry which has given the United States her representative Americans, Virginia her great men, our own State her typical Kentuckians. Born at Launceston, Cornwall, January 21, 1805, he was a member of the Peter family of Devon and Ess.e.x, which produced in former times the remarkable Sir William Peter or Petre, to which has been ascribed the noted Hugh Peter or Peters, and from which collaterally are descended the present Lords Bathurst and Petre. Robert Peter came to America with his parents, Robert and Johanna Dawe Peter, and their six other children, when twelve years old, landing at Baltimore and later settling at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The father, it seems, succeeded in none of his money-making enterprises in the new country, and Robert had early to support himself and to contribute something to the maintenance of the family. He was placed in Charles Avery's wholesale drug store at Pittsburg and there received a first-rate business education, while diligently cultivating his decided taste for chemistry. In 1828, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. The same year, after attending one session (by especial request) at the Rensselaer Inst.i.tute Scientific School at Troy, New York, he acquired the t.i.tle of "Lecturer on the Natural Sciences,"[63]

and delivered a course of chemical lectures to a small cla.s.s in Pittsburg, was a member of the Hesperian Society and contributed to its organ, _The Hesperus_, numerous papers, scientific, literary, and poetical. In 1829, as member of the Pittsburg Philosophical Society, he gave a course of lectures on the Natural Sciences before that Society. In 1830-31, he lectured on Chemistry in the Western University of Pennsylvania. In 1832, he came to Lexington, Kentucky, somewhat reluctantly, at the urgent insistence of Reverend Benjamin O.

Peers, to be a.s.sociated with him in the proprietors.h.i.+p of his "Eclectic Inst.i.tute," at that place, and to deliver a course of lectures in the Inst.i.tute.[64]

While thus engaged, Professor Peter was induced by Doctor Yandell, Professor of Chemistry, to accept the duties of adjunct to the chair of Chemistry, a position made vacant by the death of Professor H. H.

Eaton, August 16, 1832.

On March 16, 1833, he was unanimously elected to the chair of Chemistry in Morrison College, Transylvania University, being installed on the occasion of the dedication of that college, November 4, 1833, when the oath of office was administered to Mr. Peers as Proctor of Morrison College and President _pro tem._ of the University. Professor Peter then studied medicine in Transylvania, receiving his diploma March 18, 1834. He was present during the terrible epidemic of cholera in Lexington in 1833, and with Doctor Yandell attended the first case--that of a Mr. Henry. Though a successful pract.i.tioner, Doctor Peter, like Doctor Short, had a distaste for the life of a physician, and soon retired to more congenial scientific labors. On October 6, 1835, he married Frances Paca, eldest daughter of Major William S. Dallam. In 1838,[65] he was elected to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in Transylvania Medical Department, and, until the close of the school in 1857, was honorably connected with it. From 1847 to the end, in 1857, he was chosen Dean of the Faculty, being Librarian as well. In 1839, with Doctor James M.

Bush, Doctor Peter spent most of the summer in London and Paris purchasing books, apparatus, and other means of instruction for the Medical Department.[66] After hearing numerous lectures by famous doctors, and after visiting the model hospitals, etc., of the day, he writes to his wife (Paris, June 27, 1839): "We can have as great men [in Lexington] as either of those cities [London and Paris], and neither of them contains a man as eminent in surgery as Doctor Dudley"; and from London, August 11, 1839: "We have bought a great many fine books and a great deal of excellent apparatus and anatomical and other models. Transylvania will s.h.i.+ne. No other inst.i.tution in our part of the world will be able to compare with her in the means of instruction. In fact, I have seen none in Europe that is more completely prepared to teach _modern_ medicine."[67]

Daguerre, in 1839, had just published the process of his wonderful art, and it const.i.tuted perhaps the greatest novelty in Paris at the time of the sojourn there of Doctor Bush and Doctor Peter; so along with the apparatus for Transylvania was brought to Lexington a daguerreotype outfit which surely must have been the first ever seen in that city, if not the first ever used in the West. This primitive camera and its accompaniments, which Doctor Peter showed to his cla.s.ses many years after, can still be found, it is supposed, among the old Transylvania possessions preserved at the Kentucky University.

On his return from Europe Doctor Peter engaged in much valuable chemical research for the benefit of medical science, notably his examinations of calculi, published in 1846.[68] He also, in 1846, experimented with the then newly discovered explosive, gun-cotton, and with pyroxyline made from paper and other materials. His chemical research and teachings all were now and invariably along practical lines. Leaving theory to others, his own endeavors were in antic.i.p.ation of useful results in practice. Quick to adopt new views when properly sustained by facts, he was highly appreciative of improved methods, a trait strikingly displayed when, in his old age, the most radical changes revolutionized the methods of chemical work.

Laying aside the long-familiar doctrines, practiced since his far-distant youth, he took up the new with an ease--even alacrity--hardly excelled by contemporary chemists of a younger generation. In his early days he experimented much with electricity--then little understood. He gave much attention to geology, mineralogy, zoology, and botany. a.s.sociated with Doctor Charles W. Short and Professor Henry A. Griswold, he made important botanical explorations.[69] His fine herbarium, including specimens exchanged for with leading European botanists, he gave in after years to the Kentucky State Agricultural and Mechanical College. Doctor Lewis Rogers, in his address as President to the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1878, says: "In the interesting departments of Botany and Chemistry, Doctor Charles Wilkins Short and Doctor Peter are known throughout the scientific world. As teachers, the modest, almost shrinking manner, the seemingly acerb dignity, and Addisonian style of the one and the lucid expositions and brilliant ill.u.s.trations of the other, must be remembered by all who ever listened to them." In 1850-53, Doctor Peter filled with distinction the chair of Chemistry in the newly founded Kentucky School of Medicine at Louisville, since so successful. On October 19, 1853, at the third meeting of the Kentucky Medical Society at Lexington, he proposed to memorialize the legislature in regard to the establishment of a Geological Survey of Kentucky. Accordingly, he prepared such a memorial (in connection with his "Report on the Relation of Forms of Disease to the Geological Formation of a Region"), accompanied by a geological map, colored by himself.[70] In consequence of this memorial, which was unanimously sanctioned by the several agricultural societies of the State, the first Geological Survey of Kentucky--which was also the first large State enterprise of the kind undertaken in the West--was begun in 1854, under the able and experienced direction of Doctor David Dale Owen. While chemist to this survey, Doctor Peter demonstrated what previously he had st.u.r.dily maintained and ably argued--that by soil a.n.a.lysis could be determined the elements necessary to increase and preserve the fertility of soils.[71] He was probably the first in America to apply quant.i.tative and qualitative a.n.a.lysis in this manner--certainly the first to apply it to any great extent. He proved by numerous a.n.a.lyses that chemical a.n.a.lysis as practiced by him was capable of showing the deterioration of soils by long cultivation. He did this by comparing the composition of the virgin soil with that of soil taken from a near-by old field.[72] The amount of chemical work accomplished by Doctor Peter in the Kentucky Survey seems wellnigh impossible when it is considered that at the same time he lectured daily six times a week in two colleges--never omitting to prepare experiments in ill.u.s.tration of his subject. Some Eastern chemists were actually disposed to dispute the facts. One of these a.s.serted that "no chemist could make more than one soil a.n.a.lysis in less than a month."

Doctor Owen says in this regard: "Without a knowledge of the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which the work was performed, the amount of Doctor Peter's chemical labor during the last six years, as chemical a.s.sistant to the Survey of Kentucky, might appear incredible, for he has, in fact, performed a greater number of _reliable_, _detailed_, _practically useful_ a.n.a.lyses of soils than any living chemist"[73]--which comes with authority, for Doctor Owen, a man not given to exaggeration, was in position to view the whole field, and as Director fully and faithfully informed himself as to what was going on all over the world in matters relating to his department. Doctor Owen said no chemists in this country had thought proper to turn their special attention to soil a.n.a.lysis, but that Doctor Peter, with the help of only one a.s.sistant to do the more mechanical part of the work, had in six years of the survey made one thousand, one hundred and twenty-six quant.i.tative a.n.a.lyses, three hundred and seventy-five of which were of soils in which, on an average, twelve different substances were determined. In addition to this and the preparation of his own chemical report, Doctor Peter personally supervised the publication of the four royal 8vo volumes of this Survey, reading and correcting all proof and adding an obituary biographical sketch of his friend Doctor Owen, whose death, November 13, 1860, had terminated the survey. Before arrangements could be made to continue this important public work the Civil War intervened, putting a stop to all such beneficent pursuits. Doctor Peter unhesitatingly and warmly upheld his adopted country against secession. Unable to take the field with his friend, Ethelbert Dudley, he promptly fell into the ranks of Dudley's Home Guards, shoulder to shoulder with Benjamin Gratz, Madison C.

Johnson, David A. Sayre, and other such fellow-citizens.[74] He was appointed Acting a.s.sistant Surgeon in charge of Military Hospitals at Lexington, Kentucky, being most of the time senior surgeon in charge, quickly bringing his hospitals to a high state of order and efficiency. It was this gift of reducing to system, combined with untiring energy and diligence, which in his long life tended to make all his work both rapid and successful. Thus he carried on simultaneously numbers of a.n.a.lyses with immense saving of time, while other chemists went through each operation separately--making his results almost beyond belief. When, after the war, the survey was resumed under Professor N. S. Shaler, Doctor Peter prepared three chemical reports of his a.n.a.lytical work, 1873-78. A total of four hundred and seventy-seven pages, containing eight hundred and seventy-one a.n.a.lyses.

In the survey continued under the late John R. Procter, he prepared six reports, five of which were published, covering five hundred and eighty-eight pages, describing nine hundred and seventy-seven a.n.a.lyses--a total of one thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight published a.n.a.lyses. The sixth report--the ninth of the new survey--made to Procter, was not published for the lack of funds, and the ma.n.u.script seems to have been lost. The a.n.a.lyses, of which there are about four hundred, will be published, however, by the present able director of the newly resumed Geological Survey, Professor C. J.

Norwood, in as nearly the original form as can be restored from the records. Thus, with the one a.s.sistant, Doctor Peter made for the new survey about two thousand, two hundred and fifty a.n.a.lyses. Besides which, during his active life in Lexington, he had at all times considerable practice as consulting and a.n.a.lytical chemist, making for individuals many a.n.a.lyses not included in the above. As a toxicologist he had a high reputation, and his expert testimony usually carried the day in cases wherein he was called. At the time of the First Kentucky Survey, under Doctor Owen, Doctor Peter had also contributed to the second report of a Geological Reconnoissance of the Southern and Middle Counties of Arkansas, made during the years 1859 and 1860, an octavo volume of four hundred and thirty-three pages, in which he gives the history of two hundred and seventy-one chemical a.n.a.lyses made by himself of soils, subsoils, under-clays, nitre-earths, etc., of Arkansas, with remarks in one hundred and twenty-five pages of report. At the same time he made chemical a.n.a.lyses of thirty-three soils, subsoils, etc., of the State of Indiana for the survey of that State begun by Doctor D. D. Owen and continued, on Doctor Owen's death, by his brother, Colonel Richard Owen. It will be seen by reference to the Kentucky Geological Reports that Doctor Peter was the first, or among the first, to point out the fact that the lower Silurian limestones always contain a notable quant.i.ty of phosphates, and that this circ.u.mstance in part accounts for the richness of our bluegra.s.s soils[75]--facts which he brought to the attention of the agricultural public as early as April, 1849, in the _Albany Cultivator_, of New York.

He was apparently the first to show that some of the upper layers of the Trenton limestone are remarkably rich in phosphates, as shown by his a.n.a.lyses published in the reports cited.

In 1865, when in accordance with Honorable John B. Bowman's lofty educational plans Kentucky University was removed to Lexington, was united with Transylvania, and included the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, Doctor Peter occupied the chair of Chemistry and Experimental Philosophy in the new University, lecturing daily in two colleges, having declined the Presidency of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, which was offered him by Regent Bowman. At this period he devoted his every energy of mind and body to a.s.sist in the upbuilding of what he fondly hoped would be the great educational inst.i.tution of the West and South; for the training especially of Kentucky's youth of every rank and creed, and for the benefit of all men of all nations who sought knowledge.[76] He accepted and accomplished, it was said at the time, the work of three average men.

On the separation of the State College from the Kentucky University, after a bitter sectarian controversy in which he manfully defended the Transylvania trusts--little understood by some of the controversialists--he remained with the State College at the head of the Chemical Department.[77]

In 1887, Doctor Peter was made Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the State College. It would be of interest to give a detailed account of Doctor Peter's writings, but this must of necessity be reserved for a more extended biography. He was an easy, practical, and prolific writer on a large range of subjects. Deeply interested in agriculture and horticulture, he prepared many able treatises for journals of these branches. He experimented for himself in the culture of fruits and flowers--notably in grape-culture and wine-making. In 1867-68, he a.s.sisted in editing the _Farmer's Home Journal_, a weekly published at Lexington, Kentucky, and until its discontinuance--well in the seventies--he contributed many articles. He was sole editor of the tenth volume of the _Transylvania Journal of Medicine_, and in the preceding and following volumes published a number of contributions on medical and scientific themes. He took an active part with his pen in the controversy which arose on the attempted removal to Louisville of the Transylvania Medical School by some of the Transylvania professors and the establishment at Louisville of the "Medical Inst.i.tute" as a rival school.[78] Like Doctor B. W. Dudley, Doctor Peter, under a misapprehension of the facts, was at first inclined to sanction the removal of the medical school to Louisville, for he says in a "Narrative" of the controversy published in the _Lexington Intelligencer_, July 7, 1837: "I was in favor of the removal of the Transylvania Medical School when I believed it was to be done with the consent of its legal guardians, and with the certainty of very liberal endowments, which would increase its means of instruction; but when the bubble burst--when it was found that the name of Transylvania, the oath of office--_principle_, in fact, were all to be sacrificed to the splendid scheme--I drew back." And from listening to Doctor Caldwell's flattering offers of emoluments in Louisville--even to the promise that Doctor Peter should have the superintendence of the erection of the chemical laboratory--he joined Dudley in maintaining the Transylvania School at Lexington, vigorously defending Dudley, and himself also, against the attacks of the Caldwell faction. In the midst of the general hostility, Doctor Peter became antagonistic to his former friend, Doctor Yandell--indeed, bitter was the strife on all hands. But in after years, when the better part of half a century had rolled between, Doctor Peter, on the friendly advance of Doctor Yandell, forgot the vindictive feeling of the past and a correspondence both pleasant and profitable sprung up between the two old men, which was maintained until the death of Doctor Yandell.

Doctor Yandell confessed that in the heat of contention he had said much which afterward he fain would recall. And it is readily to be credited that others felt the same when time was given for calm and dispa.s.sionate reflection.

Doctor Peter at all times wrote much on education, much on politics and the questions of the day. Beside lectures to his cla.s.ses, he gave by request many public lectures on various topics. Possessing no especial gift of voice or enunciation, he was not an orator, though as a lecturer uniformly popular; never dry, though full of information; sometimes humorous, but ever dignified. He never neglected, where appropriate, to ill.u.s.trate his subject with experiments, frequently new and always skillfully performed. His rapidity and sureness of manipulation were nearly that of the prestidigitator, and were the boast and admiration of his pupils. But with this complete mastery of science there was no corresponding lack of business ability. More than once he was offered civic honors--vainly, however. Once he agreed to act as City Councilman, but summarily resigned because the Council unjustly denied to respectable colored citizens the right to establish a public school for negroes in Lexington--a refusal we can not understand to-day. He was ever ready to give time, labor, and money to public education and improvement; ready instantly to take up his pen on all questions affecting the welfare of the community in which he lived, regardless of applause, yet valuing the approval of the wise and good. His modesty was inherent. He utterly abhorred ostentation.

Yet no citizen was better known, or could more surely rely upon the love and respect of his fellows--respect secured by thorough truthfulness and honesty of purpose--the "courage of his convictions"

which never left him. He retained his activity of mind and body, his youthful appearance, his cheerfulness of spirit, up to a very short time before his death, which took place at "Winton," eight miles from Lexington, in the eighty-ninth year of his age, April 26, 1894. He had, as he had often wished, "worn out rather than rusted out."

Perhaps the words of his colleague of more than twenty years make the best summary of his life and character: "Intense devotion to physical science and work of the laboratory, purity of speech and modesty of manner, fidelity to all duties, domestic, professional, and civic, fidelity to settled convictions and principles; above all, his long and ill.u.s.trious career in educating so many thousands of the young, and in setting before them a model so worthy of their imitation and remembrance; these were the traits, this was the service that crowned his busy life of nearly ninety years with honor, admiration, and renown."

PROFESSOR JAMES CONQUEST CROSS, M. D.

Born in the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, was early distinguished for superior natural energy and mental ability. He was a graduate of Transylvania and most ambitious to take place as member of its Faculty. Appointed to the chair of Inst.i.tutes of Medicine in 1837, having been called from the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, where he held a professors.h.i.+p, he occupied the position in Lexington until 1843-44, and died a few years thereafter. He was Dean of the Medical Faculty in 1838.

Doctor Cross contributed several papers to the medical journals, but wrote no large work. He was distinguished for readiness and brilliancy rather than for solidity. His strong ambition and self-confidence, with his considerable abilities and extensive reading, gave promise of a most distinguished career, which unhappily a certain want of mental ballast measurably prevented.[79]