Emily Chipley Jones.
Was a son[98]of John Bruce, a Scottish gentleman associated with Colonel James Morrison and Benjamin Gratz in the manufacture of hemp at Lexington, Kentucky, and was born at that place in 1822. After completing a collegiate education, he studied medicine with Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley, taking the degree of M. D. in Transylvania in 1843. He then spent three years in France, studying in the principal hospitals at Paris under the most eminent instructors. In 1846, he returned to Lexington to begin the practice of his profession. He was elected to the chair of Demonstrator of Anatomy in Transylvania Medical Department in 1850, continuing therein until the cessation of the school in 1857. Doctor Bruce's intrinsic merit was fully appreciated by his colleagues, who had great affection for him, but his excessively shrinking nature withheld him from taking the prominent position with the public to which his ability and learning entitled him. In truth, his chief characteristic was his modest, amiable, and retiring disposition. His specialty in medicine was eruptive disease. In the treatment of smallpox his professional brethren concededhim the highest place. For many years he was continuously elected City Physician, and holding this office he died, January 31, 1881, the sudden ending of his useful and kindly life being largely due to the exposure he so constantly and bravely encountered in his visits to the suffering poor during an unusually severe and trying winter. Says a fellow-physician,[99]"It was then that the great and good qualities of our friend and co-laborer, Doctor Bruce, shone pre-eminently. It was at a time when poverty and distress appealed to him that his great-heartedness, his forgetfulness of self, and his proficient medical skill forced itself before that public attention from which at all other times it timidly shrunk." Doctor Bruce married, in 1847, Miss Elizabeth Norton. Of his children Miss Elizabeth Bruce and Mrs. Charlotte B. Davis, of Lexington, survive him.
Born February 11, 1808, performed the duties of the chair of Materia Medica in 1856. He had received a classical education from his father, the celebrated Doctor Louis Marshall, of "Buck Pond"; studied medicine with Doctor Ephraim McDowell, and completed his medicalcourse at Transylvania. He was a handsome man, a forcible speaker, a prominent politician and Odd Fellow, and a member of Congress in 1855. He died at the home of his son, Louis, near Lexington, April, 28, 1884.[100]
A graduate of Transylvania Medical Department in 1830, occupied the chair of Materia Medica in the last year of the school in 1857.
During the last two years of the Medical Department of Transylvania University the Faculty were:
Ethelbert L. Dudley, Surgery.
James M. Bush, Anatomy.
William S. Chipley, Theory and Practice.
Samuel M. Letcher, Obstetrics, etc.
Henry M. Skillman, Physiology and Institutes of Medicine.
Alexander K. Marshall, Materia Medica and Botany, 1856.
Benjamin P. Drake, Materia Medica and Botany, 1857.
Robert Peter, Chemistry and Pharmacy; Dean.
The Medical HallTRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY—MEDICAL HALL.Built in 1839—Burned in 1863.
TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY—MEDICAL HALL.Built in 1839—Burned in 1863.
From 1850 until the end in 1857, the existence of the school seems to have been an heroic struggle against fate. In spite of the fine Medical Hall, alluded to on the day of its dedication (November 2, 1840) by President Robert Davidson,[101]as "colossal in size and surpassing in architectural beauty," in spite of liberal endowments and "costly and complete apparatus, superior to any in the valley of the Mississippi, and not surpassed, if equaled, by any on the continent,"[102]the school languished. Notwithstanding the efforts of zealous Trustees and generous citizens, notwithstanding the diligence of an able Faculty, the classes steadily decreased from year to year until, in 1857, with only nine graduates, the Faculty in despair disbanded, and the time-honored Medical Department of Transylvania University was no more.
Two factors more than all else (except as before mentioned, the impossibility of securing sufficient material for clinical instruction) had contributed to its demise—the retirement of Doctor Dudley in 1850, and the difficulty that existed in establishing the needed railroads throughout the State. The latter cause had been operating unfavorably and with increasing effect almost ever since the introduction of steam transportation.
Enlightened thinkers had early recognized and urged the vital importance of railroads for Kentucky, and especially for Lexington and Transylvania, and had bravely advanced to conquer the difficulties of the situation, but with only discouragement and pecuniary loss for many years. The peculiar topography of the State, the constant alternation of hill and valley, the numerous streams, the hardness of the rock to be penetrated, made the building of railways very expensive, and capital was wanting. The wealth of Central Kentucky was in the soil, not in the purse, and without communication with the markets of the world this wealth was unavailable. In this manner enterprise was checked and Lexington sank into an apathetic state. It is true she had secured the distinction of having the first railroad in the West and the second in the United States,[103]but for years it only led to Frankfort, an interior town but twenty-eight miles distant. It was not until 1851 that it connected with Louisville.
Of Doctor Dudley's influence upon the medical school Doctor David W. Yandell truly says:[104]"The history of the Medical Department of Transylvania University—its rise, its success, its decline, its disappearance fromthe list of medical colleges—would practically cover Doctor Dudley's career, and would form a most interesting chapter in the development of medical teaching in the Southwest. But it must suffice me here to say that Doctor Dudley created the medical department of the institution and directed its policy. Its students regarded him from the beginning as the foremost man in the Faculty. That he had colleagues whose mental endowments were superior to his he himself at all times freely admitted. He is said to have laid no claim to either oratorical power or professional erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers, in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who at various periods taught at his side."
But although these two would appear to be the more obvious reasons for the decline of the Medical Department of Transylvania, we can by no means ignore the injurious effect of rival medical colleges growing up at points more accessible and more progressive than Lexington could possibly be without rapid transit of some sort to make her own peculiar advantages available.Nor can we overlook the evil consequences of the opposition systematically shown to the Transylvania Medical School by the faction originating in the attempt to disorganize the institution in 1837.
However, in reviewing all these influences, the prosperity of Lexington to-day (1904), her rapid growth, her increasing enterprise, her vigorous trade, the flourishing condition of her colleges and seminaries—all of which has come to her since the completion of the railroads centering in her—abundantly prove that this communication, above everything else, was her indispensable requirement.
While the medical school was closed in 1857, the Academical Department of Transylvania University continued to be conducted at the Morrison College as a State Normal School,[105]under the Presidency of the distinguished Doctor Lewis W. Green, D. D., but was soon to be disorganized, after only two years of usefulness, on account of a supposed unconstitutionality. Thus Transylvania was again humbled to a low estate in educational distinction. Lexington herself was suffering an era of banishment, as we may say, for without proper railroadconnections 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.
Such was the state of affairs immediately preceding the Civil War. The immense Medical Hall had reverted to the city and was deserted, save the laboratory in which was still being busily conducted the chemical work of the first Geological Survey of Kentucky; and save perhaps one of the smaller rooms, rented to a lodger. The survey had just received a sudden check in the death of the lamented Doctor Owen when the war still further darkened the prospect, during which, as a matter of course, the resumption of the survey was out of the question. The Morrison College was almost immediately appropriated by the United States Government for a general hospital, and, some time after, the Medical Hall, which as before mentioned was utterly destroyed by fire[106]during its occupation by the sick soldiers. Theconflagration originated, it appeared, from a defective flue of a temporary frame kitchen, built adjoining.[107]
The corner-stone of this Medical Hall had been laid July 4, 1839; Robert Wickliffe, junior, the well-beloved, making the address. It was dedicated November 2, 1840. Of Grecian architecture, massive and without ornamentation, it contained three great lecture rooms, with ample provision for light and ventilation. The amphitheatre was immediately below the cupola, being by this means lighted from above. 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.
Medical Hall's JanitorABSOLOM DRIVER.For many years Janitor at the Medical Hall of Transylvania University.
ABSOLOM DRIVER.For many years Janitor at the Medical Hall of Transylvania University.
In the spacious lecture-room in the front of the building many fashionable and distinguished audiences hadassembled on various occasions, not only to hear the gifted incumbent professors in due discourse of introductory or valedictory, but to be charmed with concerts by Ole Bull, Strakosch, Adelina Patti—who sang there on her first tour in this country—and other celebrities of the period. 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. For many years the keeper of the Medical Hall, his zeal and vigilance were unimpeachable, his dignified solemnity on state occasions unsurpassed. Contemptuous of letters—except for doctors—and with unshakable prejudice against "book learnin' for niggers," he was faithful in trusts with the matchless fidelity of the dog. "Bad boys"—the problem of philosophers and ordinary folk in all ages—was one of easy solution by "Uncle Absolom" with a bent nail at the end of a long pole. Charged upon withelanwith this unprecedented weapon, accompanied by an ominous war-cry, no truant could withstand, eventhough the artfully strewn broken bottles on the high back fence had been successfully outflanked. "Robbers" had their everlasting antidote at hand in the peculiarly uncanny, long, "one-barreled shotgun" with curious lock, which stood in the corner of the Faculty room. Nobody ever heard it "go off," but the mystery of it was what appalled one. Happily "Uncle Absolom's" death was nearly coeval with the closing of the medical school. To have witnessed the burning of his sacred temple, the Medical Hall, after all his "keer," would have broken his heart indeed.
And now, bidding adieu to the shades of the grand old Transylvania Medical Department, conjured from the past by one now numbered with them, may the earnest wish be permitted with hope of realization, that some other hand with cunning in such craft will unveil to us the portraits of that bygone throng of brilliant men which constituted and which were the exponents of the honored Transylvania Law School.
Succession of the Medical Professors in the Medical Departmentof Transylvania University, from 1799 to 1857, Inclusive.Theory andInstitutes,Materia Medica,ChemistryDemonstratorYear.Surgery.Anatomy.Practice ofPhysiology,Obstretics, etc.Botany,andofMedicine.etc.etc.Pharmacy.Anatomy.1799Samuel BrownSamuel BrownFred'ck RidgelyFred'ck RidgelySamuel Brown1805James Fishback1809B. W. DudleyB. W. DudleyJames OvertonJ. Buchanan1815"""W.H. RichardsonJames Blythe1817""""Daniel Drake"1818"""""1819""Saumel BrownChas. Caldwell"Chas. Caldwell"1820"""""""1821"""""""1822"""""""1823"""""Daniel Drake[B]"1824""""""[B]"1825""Daniel Drake""[B]"1826"""""C. W. Short1827""J. E. Cooke"""1828""""""1829""""""1830""""""1831""""""[C]L. P. Yandell1832""""""[D]"1833""""""[D]"1834""""""[D]"1835""""""[D]"1836""""""[D]"1837""John EberleJ. C. Cross""T. D. Mitchell1838[A]""N. R. Smith""T. D. MitchellRobert Peter1839[A]"""""""1840[A]"""""""1841[A]"Elisha Bartlett"""""1842[A]"""""""1843[A]"""L. M. Lawson"""1844"J. M. BushL. Watson""""1845""""T. D. Mitchell""1846""Elisha Bartlett"Samuel Annan""1847"""E. L. Dudley"""1848"""""""1849""Samuel Annan"W. M. BolingH. M. Bullitt"1850No winter session of the Medical College.1851E. L. DudleyJ. M. BushSamuel AnnanH. M. SkillmanS. M. LetcherJ. R. AllenRobert PeterJ. M. Bruce1852""""""""1853""""""""1854""W. S. Chipley"""""1855""""""""1856"""""A. K. Marshall""1857"""""B. P. Drake""
[A]J. M. Bush, adjunct.[B]R. Best, adjunct.[C]H. H. Eaton, adjunct.[D]R. Peter, assistant.
[A]J. M. Bush, adjunct.
[B]R. Best, adjunct.
[C]H. H. Eaton, adjunct.
[D]R. Peter, assistant.
of the Medical Department of Transylvania Universityfor Thirty-nine Years.Year.Pupils.Graduates.1817–182011819–203771820–2193141821–22138371822–23171511823–24200461824–25234561825–26281651826–27190531827–28152531828–29206401829–30199721830–31210541831–32215741832–33222691833–34262661834–35259831835–36262751836–37242781837–38227841838–39211511839–40257621840–41254641841–42271571842–43204601843–44214591844–45156381845–46171641846–47205681847–48169531848–49120491849–5092351850–[E]515021[F]1851–525023[F]18535119[F]18545331[G]18553829[H]1855–563811[H]1856–57329Totals6,4561,881
[E]Doctor Dudley resigned at the end of this session.[F]Spring and summer session.[G]Summer and winter session.[H]Winter session.
[E]Doctor Dudley resigned at the end of this session.
[F]Spring and summer session.
[G]Summer and winter session.
[H]Winter session.
Thus the records show that in thirty-nine years of the existence of the Medical Department of Transylvania University it taught six thousand four hundred and fifty-six pupils and conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine on one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one of that number. The late Professor Thomas D. Mitchell, in speaking of its record, made the following remark: "That for its vigorous prosperity and the rapid increase of its classes, the medical school of Transylvania is without a parallel. Certainly in the United States there is nothing comparable to it. This is the highest eulogy the institution can receive. The most eloquent and forcible language in praise of it would be spiritless and feeble contrasted with the power of the foregoing figures."
of the Medical Department of Transylvania Universityfor Thirty-nine Years.Date ofConditions Under Which theyDonationDonors.Character of Donations or Grants.were Given.or Grant.1780State of Virginia8,000 acres escheated lands in Kentucky,value unknownFor the purposes of a "Public School" orseminary of learning in Kentucky.1783State of Virginia12,000 acres escheated lands in Kentucky,value unknownFor the purposes of a "Public School" orseminary of learning in Kentucky.1783IndividualsBooks, etc., value not knownFor the purposes of a "Public School" orseminary of learning in Kentucky.1784Reverend John ToddSmall library and apparatus"As an encouragement to science."1787State of VirginiaOne sixth surveyors' fees in KentuckyFor the public school, etc.1791State of VirginiaA lottery grant to raise moneyTo establish the school.1792–3Transylvania Land Co.Lot in Lexington (5 acres)For the permanent site of the Seminary.1795–8State of Kentucky12,000 acres of land, 6,000 acres to KentuckyAcademy and 6,000 acres to theSeminary1794–5Individuals in various partsand States$14,000 in money and books and apparatusPromotion of science, learning, and virtue.1804State of KentuckyA lottery grantTo build a Medical College.1819State of KentuckyBonus of F. & M. Bank, $3,000To aid the University.1820State of Kentucky$5,000 in paperTo Medical College for library, etc.1820City of Lexington$6,000 in paperTo Medical College for library, etc.1820State of KentuckyHalf profits of Commercial Bank, $20,000in paper, 2 per cent on auction salesto law libraryTo aid the University.1822Citizens of Lexington$4,832To aid the Medical Department.1823Colonel James Morrison$20,000 in moneyTo found a "Morrison" professorship orlibrary.1823Colonel James Morrison$50,000 residuary estateTo erect a "Morrison College."1823State of KentuckyA lottery grantTo build a medical college at Lexington.1827 to 1829Citizens and city of Lexington$3,000 per annum, the city giving $500To pay salaries of President and professorsof the University.1827 to 1829Citizens and city of LexingtonInsurance policy for $10,000 on the burnedUniversity edifice1830W. C. C. Claiborne$50To help build the above.1839City of Lexington$70,000 to build new medical college,enlarge library, etc.On condition to elect Trustees and send freescholarships.1839Transylvania InstituteAbout $35,000To endow Morrison College, etc.1839Citizens of Lexington$3,000To purchase a lot for the site of the MedicalCollege.1839 to 1850Medical professorsResiduary debt on new Medical College inlieu of rent1855–6State of Kentucky$12,000 per annum for two yearsSupport of Normal College in TransylvaniaUniversity.1834His Britannic majestyNumerous old legal record books
Many other persons, as Honorable Edward Everett, Mr. Swan, of France, etc., have at various times made valuable contributions to the Library.