Photograph of Doctor BushDOCTOR JAMES M. BUSH.From a Photograph by Mullen.
DOCTOR JAMES M. BUSH.From a Photograph by Mullen.
Most ably and successfully did he thus maintain himself as one fit to follow in the footsteps of our great surgeon. His sterling qualities as a man, his most kind and endearing manners as a physician, his great skilland experience in anatomy and surgery, which had been as well the pleasure as the devoted labor of his life; his remarkable accuracy of eye, the more acute because of congenital myopia, his delicacy of hand and unswerving nerve in the use of instruments in the most difficult operations, endeared him to his patients and won the respect and admiration of his medical brethren.
Doctor Bush was a lucid and impressive teacher of his peculiar branch of medical art and science, and always attached his pupils strongly to him as an honored preceptor and friend.
During his active lifetime, spent chiefly in acquiring and putting in practice the rare professional skill which distinguished him, he gave but little time to the use of his pen. Hence he left no large book as the record of his experience. His principal writings were published, in 1837, in the tenth volume of theTransylvania Journal of Medicine, and these were written for that journal on the solicitation of the present writer, who edited that volume. They consist of:
1. A short report of a case of epilepsy, produced in a negro girl by blows of the windlass of a well on the parietal bone, which was entirely and speedily cured under the preliminary treatment by Doctor Dudley of mercurial purgatives and low diet, preparatory to the useof the trephine, which, as is well known, had been used with great success by Doctor Dudley in such cases.
2. Report of a case of insidious inflammation of the pia mater, complicated with pleuritis—with the autopsy.
3. A more extended paper, entitled "Remarks on Mechanical Pressure Applied by Means of the Bandage; Illustrated by a Variety of Cases." In which the mode of application andmodus operandiare most clearly given, and illustrated by many interesting cases, mostly from the surgical practice of Doctor Dudley.
4. "Dissection of an Idiot's Brain." The subject—a female twenty-five years of age—had been born idiotic, blind, deaf, and dumb; the head was very small, and the brain on dissection was found to weigh only twenty ounces, and to have large serous cavities in the coronal portions of the cerebral hemispheres. The anatomy of the eyes was perfect, but there was no nervous connection between the optic nerve and thethalami nervorum opticorum.
5. A short notice of three operations of lithotomy, performed on May 31, 1837, by Doctor Dudley, with his assistance.
6. "Interesting Autopsy." On the body of a negro man who had been the subject of sudden falling fits, and was under treatment for disease of the chest. Theautopsy disclosed hypertrophy of the right side of the heart, and a most remarkable course and lengthening of the colon.
7. "Observations on the Operation of Lithotomy, Illustrated by Cases from the Practice of Professor B. W. Dudley." An extensive and lucid description of the method of operation and the remarkably successful experience of Doctor Dudley in this part of his practice, giving report of one hundred and fifty-two successful cases up to that time.
In addition, the Doctor contributed an occasional bibliographical review or notice. And these seem to be the whole of his published professional writings.
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.[87]
The death of Doctor Bush, which took place on February 14, 1875, was followed by general and unusualmanifestations of respect and regret, not only on the part of the members of the profession, but by the people of the city at large. Few citizens were more extensively known, loved, and honored in life or followed to the grave by a greater concourse of mourning friends.
Was called from his residence in Baltimore, Maryland, to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania in the year 1838. He resigned the chair and returned to that city in 1840, having delivered three annual courses of lectures here. He was succeeded in this chair by Doctor Elisha Bartlett.
Doctor Smith was born May 21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, where his father, Nathan Smith—afterward Professor of Physic and Surgery in Yale College—had been for ten years in the practice of his profession. In a brief sketch of his father, Doctor Smith unconsciously drew the outlines of his own character. "In the practice of surgery," he said, "Professor Smith displayed an original and inventive mind. His friends claim for him the establishment of scientific principles and the invention of resources in practice which will stand as lasting monuments of a mind fertile in expedientsand unshackled by the dogmas of the schools." The father, at the age of twenty-four, after an early life of industry and adventure in the then new country, had been so impressed and attracted by witnessing a surgical operation that he at once devoted himself to surgery and medicine, and with such ardor and success that for forty years succeeding he was a distinguished member and teacher in his profession. The son, with much the same natural bent of mind, after receiving his early education at Dartmouth and graduating at Yale in 1817—spending a year and a half in Virginia as a classical tutor—began the study of medicine in Yale, where his father was Professor of Physic and Surgery. He there received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in 1823. He began practice in Burlington, Vermont, in 1824. In 1825, he was appointed Professor of Surgery and Anatomy in the University of Vermont, the Medical Department of which was organized principally by his exertions, aided by his father.
In the winter of 1825–26, he attended the medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, with a view to improvement in his profession and in the art of teaching in it. While there he was invited by the late celebrated surgeon, George McClellan—to whom he had become favorably known—to take the chair of Anatomy in thenew Jefferson Medical College, which McClellan and other members of the profession were engaged in organizing. This situation he occupied with success for two years, leaving it then to accept the chair of Anatomy in the School of Medicine of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, which had been vacated by Professor Granville Sharpe Pattison, in 1827. In Baltimore he soon acquired an extensive medical and surgical practice. On the death of Professor John B. Davidge he was transferred to the chair of Surgery. In the language of his biographer and colleague, Samuel C. Chew, M. D.: "In Baltimore he found a congenial home and when, at the age of fourscore, he was laid to rest among us, his name had been for a whole lifetime a household word throughout our State."
When, in 1838, he accepted the inducement offered him by the Medical Faculty of Transylvania University to occupy the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in their college at Lexington, Kentucky,[88]during thefour months of the winter course of lectures, he did not abandon his residence in Baltimore, but at the close of each session returned to his professional work in that city. It was there especially, as a professor and practitioner of surgery, that his life-work was done.
Doctor Smith was a man of remarkable mental activity, "acuteness of perception and extraordinary power of adaptation to circumstances as they might arise, promptness of action and untiring industry.... And yet with his great gifts there was about him a remarkable simplicity of character and a transparent ingenuousness which was as incapable of affectation as of falsehood."
His forte was Surgery, yet his lectures here on the Theory and Practice of Medicine were exceedingly clear and instructive. One little peculiarity of his may be noticed. He never lectured without a small whalebone rod or pointer. Without this in his hand he seemed to fear the loss of continuity of his ideas. As remarked by his biographer, "his wand must always be at hand, for, like the magician's divining-rod, it seemed to have some mystic connection with the exercise of his powers."
Early in his professional life he published his work on theAnatomy of the Arteries, and, in his later days, his work onFractures of the Lower Extremities. He was engaged in the preparation of a work on surgery at the time of his death. His inventive genius, which was remarkable, was exhibited in several improvements of the instruments and apparatus of surgery, especially in his lithotome. In the practice of his son—Professor Alan P. Smith—in a series of fifty-two consecutive cases, without a single death, he used his father's lithotome in all but six cases. This great success he attributed mainly to the instrument. Another valuable improvement was his "anterior splint."
Doctor Smith died on the third of July, 1877, a few weeks after the completion of his eightieth year, full ofhonors. "He has left behind him a record of a great surgeon, a brave and true citizen and magnanimous gentleman."
Born in Smithfield, Rhode Island, October 6, 1804. His parents, Otis and Waite Bartlett, were highly respectable members of the "Society of Friends." Their son, whose early education was under the auspices of this Society, possessed all the unostentatious virtues which characterized that sect. At the "Friends' Institution" in New York, under the celebrated teacher, Jacob Willett, he obtained a highly finished classical education. He subsequently attended medical lectures in Boston and Providence and graduated as M. D. at Brown University, Providence, in 1826. Soon after graduation he spent a year pursuing medical studies under distinguished professors in Paris, France, and in classical Italy.
In 1836, he was elected as the first mayor of the town of Lowell; was re-elected at the end of his first term, and afterward, in 1840, was honored by election to the Legislature of Massachusetts. Astatesmanand not apolitician, he soon abandoned political life for the more congenial one of a medical teacher.
[89]"In 1828, he was offered the chair of Anatomy in the Medical School at Woodstock, Vermont, which honor he declined.
"In 1832, he was appointed to a Professorship in the Medical School at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which he held for several years. He also held a chair one year in the Medical Department of Dartmouth College, and for one year in Baltimore.
"In 1841, he was called to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Medical Department of Transylvania University, which he occupied for three years with ability and success."[90]
After a visit to Europe he again returned, in 1846,[91]to the Transylvania Medical College, teaching in the same chair for another three years.
"He subsequently delivered a course of medical lectures in the Medical School at Louisville, giving also summer lectures at Woodstock, Vermont, and otherplaces—his instruction being highly appreciated by his colleagues and most acceptable to his students.
"At length he was called to an important professorship in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. Here he continued for three years, when, compelled by failing health, he abandoned the position to retire to his paternal acres in Smithfield—to die, after a long and lingering illness, on July 19, 1855."
His disease—partial paralysis of the lower extremities, with torturing neuralgia and finally softening of the brain, the result of lead poisoning, caused—as he believed, and as he informed the writer—by the use of water which had passed for a considerable distance through leaden pipes.
The beautiful and sterling traits of the character of Doctor Bartlett are most happily portrayed by the distinguished medical professor and poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in theBoston Medical and Surgical Journal, August 16, 1855, from which we make a few extracts, viz:
"Hardly any American physician was more widely known to his countrymen, or more favorably considered abroad, where his writings had carried his name. His personal graces were known to a less extensive circle of admiring friends.... To them it is easy to recallhis ever-welcome and gracious presence. On his expanded forehead no one could fail to trace the impress of a large and calm intelligence.... 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.... Yet few suspected him of giving utterance in rhythmical shape to his thoughts or feelings. It was only when his failing limbs could bear him no longer, as conscious existence slowly retreated from the palsied nerves, that he revealed himself freely in truest and tenderest form of expression. We knew he was dying by slow degrees, and we heard from him from time to time, or saw him always serene and always hopeful while hope could have a place in his earthly future ... when to the friends he loved there came, as a farewell gift, ... a little book with a few songs in it—songs with his whole warm heart in them—they knew that his hour was come, and their tears fell fastas they read the loving thoughts that he had clothed in words of beauty and melody.
"Among the memorials of departed friendships we treasure the little book of 'songs,' entitledSimple Settings in Verse for Six Portraits from Mr. Dickens' Gallery, Boston, 1855—his last present, as it was his last production."
Of North Carolina, filled the chair of Theory and Practice in Transylvania in the sessions of 1844 and 1845 only. He came highly recommended as a physician of extensive practice of not less than twenty years. "A gentleman of undoubted talents. He has the reputation of bringing to his cases a great affluence of resource and fertility of expedient, regulated by a judgment discriminative and safe. He writes with facility and elegance, and converses with fluency, animation, and impressiveness. He thinks clearly and communicates his ideas with facility and a corresponding clearness." Extract from letter of Senator W. P. Mangum, of North Carolina.
Who filled the chair of General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical Department of Transylvania University from 1843 to 1846, inclusive, was born in Nicholas County, Kentucky, September 10, 1812. He had received his medical degree from this same department of Transylvania in 1837.
He was engaged in Cincinnati in private practice, giving clinical instruction in the hospital and editing his recently established medical periodical,The Western Lancet—of which he was sole originator and proprietor—when he was called to the newly established chair of General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology in the Transylvania Medical Department, in which he had graduated.
Here he taught with great success until called to the chair of Materia Medica and General Pathology in the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati in 1847. During the vacation months of 1845, he spent seven months in a visit to Europe, and especially in clinical studies in Guy's Hospital, London, with great advantage to himself.
Doctor Lawson continued to teach from this chair until the death of Professor J. P. Harrison, whom he succeeded in that of the Principles and Practice of Medicineand Clinical Medicine, in the same college in 1852. He was appointed Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville in 1854, but accepted a call to the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, Cincinnati, in 1857. He filled the chair of Clinical Medicine in the University of Louisiana, New Orleans, in 1860, but returned in consequence of the Civil War to the Medical College of Ohio the following year, in which college he remained until his death, January 21, 1864.
He founded theWestern Lancet, and was its sole editor and proprietor from 1842 up to the time of his decease. He also editedHope's Morbid Anatomy, 1844, and published a treatise on thePractical Treatment of Phthisis Pulmonalisin 1861.
Doctor Lawson was a lover of his profession and a most indefatigable worker and student. Remarkably lucid and impressive in his oral teachings, and methodical in his laborious professional and editorial occupations, he was a modest but self-possessed, undemonstrative gentleman of high probity and personal merit. The world at large did not fully appreciate his value, or that of his labors.
His daughter, Miss Louisa Lawson, studied sculpture as a profession, and as an artist is well known.
Nephew of the late distinguished surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley, was his private pupil for many years. He graduated in the Medical Department of Transylvania University with distinguished honor in 1842, after having attended three full courses of instruction in that department. His first course of medical lectures was in the winter of 1838–39. It was the first session in which the present writer occupied the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy, and well he remembers the assiduous attention of his pupil; his avidity in the acquisition of knowledge and his unusual ability to retain it. Distrusting yet his own attainments and desirous of more thorough training before taking upon himself the responsible and arduous offices of a practitioner, he, under the immediate charge of his uncle, then in active practice, attended two other full courses of medical lectures (sessions 1842–43 and 1843–44) as resident graduate. During this period he sometimes officiated as prosector to his distinguished kinsman.[92]
Photograph of Doctor DudleyDOCTOR ETHELBERT L. DUDLEY.From a Photograph.
DOCTOR ETHELBERT L. DUDLEY.From a Photograph.
Before the next following session, Doctor Ethelbert L. Dudley was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy in the place of Doctor James M. Bush, who had been promoted to the chair of Anatomy. This responsible office he filled until called to the chair of General and Pathological Anatomy in 1847–48.
From the origin of this medical school Professor Benjamin W. Dudley had taught in the combined chair of Anatomy and Surgery, blending the two in a manner most instructive and practical.[93]In 1837, he accepted Doctor James M. Bush as adjunct to the combined professorship, and in 1844, Doctor Bush having been appointed Professor of Anatomy, the elder Dudley restricted himself to the chair of the Principles of Surgery.
In the summer of 1846, Doctor Ethelbert L. Dudleywas appointed to deliver a course of lectures on Comparative Anatomy. This duty he performed to the highest satisfaction of all concerned; and when, almost at the beginning of the next regular session (1847–48), he was called to the chair of Anatomy and Physiology, he successfully encountered the great labor of preparing and delivering a new course of lectures on these subjects. At the same time he also discharged the arduous duties of Demonstrator of Anatomy—duties more onerous in this school, in our small inland city, than in most other medical colleges. No one in the whole school accomplished half the work which he mastered. No task seemed too great for his young and ardent energies.
In 1849, he originated and took upon himself the sole charge as editor of theTransylvania Medical Journal, a new series of the oldTransylvania Journal of Medicine. He published three volumes in three successive years, aided only occasionally by some of his colleagues. In the spring of 1850, he visited Europe for professional improvement, making many friends; amongst the distinguished medical men of England particularly. Immediately on his return from Europe, in the autumn of that year, the present writer announced to him, in the city of New York, his appointment to the chair of Descriptive Anatomy and Histology in the Kentucky School ofMedicine. This was a new school which some of the physicians of Louisville and professors of the Lexington school were about to establish in the former city, to which place students of medicine from the South and West were beginning to flock, to the neglect somewhat of the time-honored Transylvania school, in which it was proposed to continue medical instruction in summer sessions.
This appointment he accepted, joining in the preliminary October course of lectures and aiding greatly by his talents and energy in building up that institution. Transferred in the following year to the chair of Surgery in the Transylvania summer school, on the retirement of his uncle from active professional life, he continued to teach with distinguished ability in the position made illustrious by his predecessor, until the close of the school shortly before the outbreak of our Civil War.
In the second year of the Kentucky School of Medicine, he was transferred to the chair of Surgical Anatomy and Operative Surgery, and accordingly gave the surgical-clinical instruction in the Marine Hospital of Louisville to the combined classes of the two medical schools of that city during the session of 1851–52. A course which was a decided success for the young professor and surgeon, and which helped to place him at once on the elevated position as a professional man and a gentlemanwhich he maintained to the day of his death and to which few men, of his age especially, ever are fortunate enough to attain.[94]
After another successful session in this school he, with the other Transylvania professors, resigned and returned permanently to Lexington, resuming his practice there and his duties in the renewed winter sessions of the Transylvania Medical Department.
As a practitioner, especially of surgery, Doctor E. L. Dudley always commanded the highest respect and admiration of his colleagues as well as the confidence and affections of his patients. Singularly unselfish and always willing to devote himself fully to his profession, his patients and his friends, few men had the power so quickly and so firmly to bind others to him with the ties of affection.
With nerves as of steel, clear eye, quick judgment and answering hand, combined with the kind feelings of a woman and a fullness of professional knowledge rarely surpassed, his short career as a surgeon—all too brief!—was yet a brilliant one. Had his life been spared to him the name of Dudley had achieved a yet higher distinction in the annals of surgery.
At the outbreak of our Civil War, Doctor Dudley's loyal attachment to the nation and his love of country caused him to take an active part against the rebellion. While the fate of Kentucky hung yet in the balance of a professed neutrality, he was actively instrumental in organizing a battalion of "Home Guards," of which he was at once appointed Commandant—an organization which greatly helped to prevent the precipitation of our State into the war for secession.[95]
Obtaining authority to organize a regiment of volunteers for active service, of which he was Colonel, preferring this active position to the less belligerent one of Medical Director which was proffered him, he left Lexington with his command for the southern part of the State. There, exhausted by the continued labors andexposures of his combined offices of colonel, surgeon and physician to his men (which he would not commit to another), he fell a victim to typhoid fever on February 20, 1862, at the age of forty-four. His remains, brought to Lexington, were received with public honors and were followed to the cemetery by a long procession of sorrowing friends.
Was born at Philadelphia, Pa., in the year 1800—a descendant of Scotch ancestors. He graduated as M. D. at the Edinburgh University in 1820. His thesis, entitledDe Appoplexia Sanguinia, is in the library of the Medical and Surgical Faculty of Maryland. He was licentiate of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1822, being then ex-President of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh.
From 1827 to 1834, he ably occupied the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical Department of Washington University at Baltimore, Maryland. From 1838 to 1845, he was physician to the Baltimore Alms-house. In 1846, he was called to the chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children in the Medical Department of Transylvania University, a position which he occupied with great ability until, in 1849, he was transferredto the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the same institution, in which he gave general satisfaction until 1854, when he resigned that position.
During the years 1853–57, he was Superintendent to the Insane Asylum at Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He became surgeon to the Confederate States Army at the outbreak of our Civil War in 1861, maintaining that position until 1864. In 1866, he was surgeon to the steamship "Carroll" of the Liverpool line, from April to November. He died at Baltimore, January 19, 1868.
Doctor Annan was a person of great activity of mind and body, of high intelligence and probity of character. In the course of his active life and practice in his profession he found time to contribute many valuable articles to the medical journals, of which we quote the following, viz:
"Cases of Bronchotomy." Maryland Medical Recorder, Vol. VII, p. 42. 1823.
"On the Surgical Anatomy of Hernia." Ibid., Vol. III, p. 529. 1829.
"On Polypus Nasi." Ibid., No. 3, p. 655. 1830.
"On the Use of Wine in Fevers." Ibid., p. 279. 1831.
"Address to the Graduates of Washington University." 1834.
"New Views of Certain Dislocations." American Journal of Medical Science, Vol. XVIII, p. 376. 1836.
"On the Treatment of Prolapsus Ani." Ibid., p. 334. 1836.
"On Spinal Irritation and Inflammation." Ibid., Vol. XX, p. 85. 1837.
"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 378. 1838.
"On Wind Contusions." American Medical Journal, Vol. II, pp. 3, 133, and 213. 1838.
"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Journal of Medical Science, Vol. XXIV, p. 316; and Journal of Medical Science, Vol. XXV, p. 32. 1839.
"On Cases in the Baltimore Alms-house." Medical and Surgical Journal, pp. 322 and 338. 1840.
"Lecture at Opening of Kentucky School of Medicine." 1850.
"On Fracture of the Skull." American Medical Record, No. 3, Vol. II, p. 449.
"Case of Laceration of the Ileum from External Injury." American Journal of Medical Science, p. 287. 1838.
For most of the facts contained in this brief sketch of the active life of Doctor Annan we are indebted to the kindness of Doctor Oscar J. Coskery, of Baltimore.
Note.—In 1850, Doctor Annan accepted the chair of Pathology and Practice of Medicine in the new Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville, which position he occupied for two years with great ability, when he resigned to return to his native city.
In 1849, when Doctor Annan was transferred to the chair of Theory and Practice, the chair of Obstetrics was filled by Doctor William M. Boling, of Montgomery, Alabama, for one session. Doctor Boling had taught in the Memphis Medical School of Tennessee, and was "favorably known in the South as a good practitioner, an able medical writer, and an excellent teacher."
Occupied the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany with ability during the session of 1849–50, after which, with the aid of some of his Transylvania associates, he established the "Kentucky School of Medicine," which still maintains a prosperous condition.
"Doctor Bullitt commenced the study of medicine at seventeen years of age, in the office of Doctor Coleman Rogers, senior, of Louisville, entering the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania as a pupil, and graduating with high honor in 1838. Returning toLouisville, he began the practice of medicine in partnership with Doctor Joshua B. Flint, thus continuing for many years, their office being the headquarters of the prominent physicians of this city.
"Doctor Bullitt passed the year 1845 in Europe, where he took advantage of every opportunity of advancing in medical knowledge. He returned liberally equipped with the good fruits of his sojourn abroad. In 1846, he was elected a professor in the St. Louis Medical College and lectured there in 1846–47 and 1847–48. In 1849, he was elected to the chair of Materia Medica, etc., in Transylvania University.... In 1850, he was mainly instrumental in the establishment of the Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville, aided by 'prominent members of the Faculty of Transylvania.'
"In 1866, he was elected to the chair of Theory and Practice in the University of Louisville, and, in 1867, was transferred to that of Physiology. In 1868, he established the Louisville Medical College, with which he remained during the several years of his professional life, his increasing deafness greatly marring his social and professional enjoyments.
"Doctor Bullitt was an able writer on professional subjects.... He held, successively, chairs in five medical schools," in all with great ability.
"In 1866, he was elected Health Officer of the city of Louisville," which office he most ably filled.... "Doctor Bullitt was one of the ablest Health Officers the city ever possessed," and was author of many papers of "great merit in numerous medical journals. His great affliction, deafness, was all that prevented him from taking the foremost position among medical practitioners, teachers, and writers. But he bore the misfortune with singular equanimity and fortitude."
Doctor Bullitt died on the seventh of January, 1880, after a number of weeks' confinement to his bed with Bright's disease.
The greater part of this brief sketch of the life of Doctor Bullitt is copied from an able obituary notice published in theLouisville Journalat the time of his death.
Youngest child of Thomas T. and Elizabeth Farrar Skillman, born September 4, 1824, at Lexington, Kentucky, was educated in Transylvania University. He spent two or three years in the drug and apothecary business in Lexington, and commenced the study of medicine and surgery in 1844, graduating as Doctor of Medicine, etc.,in 1847. 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."[96]
Since the above was written, the gentle and busy life of this last surviving member of the Transylvania Medical Faculty came suddenly to a close at his home in Lexington, March 21, 1902, at a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon, apparently without warning. Only two hours previously, handsome and smiling and dignified as usual, he had visited a patient, and he expected in a few hours to resume his professional rounds when the last summons came.
Photograph of Doctor SkillmanDOCTOR HENRY MARTYN SKILLMAN.From a Photograph by Mullen.
DOCTOR HENRY MARTYN SKILLMAN.From a Photograph by Mullen.
It is hardly possible for a man to depart this life without leaving an enemy, but if Doctor Skillman, in his fifty-four years of active professional life, had made even afew enemies they hesitated to declare themselves. His own nature was to see good in others; their defects were not made prominent by him. As he spoke no evil, so nothing but good was said of him. But with his amiable, benevolent, compromising disposition there was no trace of weakness. Strict in professional etiquette, immovable in principle, he repelled with gentle but irresistible firmness every effort to shake his integrity. The loveliness of his character and personality is best portrayed in "Luke, the Beloved Physician," a tribute paid, on his death, editorially in theLexington Heraldby Kentucky's favorite orator and statesman, every word of which is as true as it is well-chosen and beautiful. Doctor Skillman held numerous offices of trust; was elected, in 1869, President of Kentucky State Medical Society and, in 1889, the first President of Lexington and Fayette County Medical Society, and was at the time of his death the oldest practicing physician in Lexington, having seen that city grow from eight thousand to thirty thousand inhabitants. It is claimed that he was the first physician to administer chloroform there. 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, andsoon 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. He founded theEvangelical Recorder and Western Review, afterward edited by Reverend John Breckinridge, the young and talented pastor of "the McChord Church"; also theWestern Luminary, in 1824, the first religious paper issued in the West.
Doctor Skillman married, October 30, 1851, Margaret, daughter of Matthew T. Scott, President of the Northern Bank of Kentucky. Of their children only one is living, Henry Martyn Skillman, of the Lexington Security Trust and Safety Vault Company.
Of a prominent Kentucky family, also a graduate of the Medical Department of Transylvania University who had won distinction in his profession in Lexington, was called to the chair of Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children in that school in 1851, and performedthe duties of that chair with ability and success until the close of the Medical College in Lexington in 1857. During the Civil War he was placed in charge of a United States General Hospital in Lexington, a position which he held for some time, giving great satisfaction. He died February 1, 1863, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Who was Superintendent of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum at Lexington,[97]Kentucky, and who first introduced there the moral treatment of the insane instead of forcible means, was appointed Professor of Materia Medica and Botany in 1851, and performed the duties of this chair with great ability until the end of the session of 1855, when he resigned that position.
Was born in Lexington, Kentucky, October 18, 1810, the only son of Reverend Stephen and Amelia Stout Chipley, the forefathers of both of whom were pioneers of Lexington. Doctor Chipley was graduated at Transylvaniain 1832, with marked honor. Not a great while after his graduation he took issue with Doctor Benjamin Dudley, the oldest and most renowned practitioner of the State—or indeed of the whole country. Doctor Dudley had published a treatise upon the treatment of a special disease. Doctor Chipley took an opposite view, expressing himself most boldly and brilliantly. His article was published in an advanced medical journal and copied widely. Chipley received widespread encomiums. Indeed, he came off with raised banner, and his colors have never since been furled.His success was progressive this article exemplifying his determination when convinced he was right. Later he went to Columbus, Georgia, feeling assured it was a fine opening for a young practitioner, and so it proved. He was soon launched into an almost phenomenal practice, extending across the Chattahoochee River into Alabama to the Indian nation, where his wonderful magnetism was felt to such a degree that he won the confidence—even friendship—of these savages. He would be detained days at a time ministering to them—a tribe, too, by no means regarded as friendly to the whites. In April, 1837, he married in Columbus, Georgia, Elizabeth Fanning, niece and adopted daughter of Colonel James Fanning, of Alamo fame. Doctor Chipley was at one time Mayorof Columbus, and made a brilliant reputation as an executive officer. At the entreaties of his mother and father, who were quite advanced in age, he turned a deaf ear to the opposition of his legion of friends in Columbus and returned to Lexington, Kentucky, where it seemed a flourishing practice did but await him. He was a very successful Professor of Transylvania in the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine, from 1854 to 1857, inclusive. As a lecturer he had a wonderful flow of language. The possessor of a perfect voice and delivery, he chained the attention of all listeners. Often have I heard his patients say his sunshiny presence, his gentle, sympathetic touch in the sick-room, dulled pain and was better than drugs. He was a brilliant and forceful writer, the author of many medical works and the writer of numerous articles published in medical journals of the highest note. One small book of his gave him much notoriety. Chief Justice George Robertson, of Lexington, regarded it of such high worth that he gave fifteen hundred dollars to have it published and placed as a healthful guide in certain schools for boys. It was in 1855 that he took charge of the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum at Lexington. This proved a wide field for the development of the most astonishing tact and management of individuals. The attendants greatly admired him and yielded withoutquestion to his dictation. Gentle as a woman, adamantine after a decision, never acting hastily, maturing a subject before deciding—these characteristics were shown on all occasions where it pertained to the comfort of the poor creatures under his care. During his fifteen or sixteen years of most successful management of this institution, he made many radical changes for the amelioration of the condition of these unfortunates. Winter after winter he haunted the legislative halls in behalf of the Asylum, spending his own personal means most lavishly to meet this end—presenting one bill after another, which sooner or later were always honored. His enthusiasm and faithfulness carried conviction with them. When he took charge of the Asylum he found it a conglomerate mass—many from other States there—incurables, epileptics, idiots—all huddled together. He went carefully over the records and proceeded to institute a thorough weeding. First he notified the governors of the respective States to send for their own insane, giving them a stated time of grace, and telling them that if the call was not honored he would send the patients to their doors by one of his own attendants, which he did in several instances. This systematizing was a great step forward. The next thing he did was to induce the State to erect an institution for idiots, believing there werefew born who were not capable of receiving some degree of cultivation. In time a home was built at Frankfort, the result proving his great wisdom. It was a matter of wonderment to see these poor creatures developing from a driveling state of nonentity into some capacity for the enjoyment of life, and even to a degree of usefulness. There were but few incapable of being taught some employment which rendered their life more than a mere existence, akin alone to the lower animals. To have succeeded in this was enough to mark any man's life. His philanthropy never slept. Then, through his direct intervention, the Asylum at Anchorage for incurables was erected; all these changes making room for those who stood a chance of being cured instead of their being turned, for the lack of room, from the sheltering care which might restore them. I think his influence was brought to bear upon the advisability of an institution for the deaf and dumb, which culminated in the home made for them in Danville. I think it was in or about the year 1857 he went to Europe, absolutely for the purpose of gaining an insight into better ways and means of the treatment of the insane and the construction of the buildings which were their homes. Though there was such an emptying of the old Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum building, it soon became altogetherinsufficient to meet the demands. Applications poured in, and soon, after a hard-fought battle, the legislature made an appropriation to add to the old building, and promptly there was under construction a building which, when finished, for comfort and in a sanitary way was unequaled. This, years after his death, was destroyed by fire, and when rebuilt, I understand, was modeled after the old plan. He was his own architect, his whole heart and being merged in a desire to have all as nearly perfect as possible, developing thus a new talent. He always had in view a private asylum of his own. This purpose was crystallized when it became apparent that politics would govern the State institutions, though in opposition to all that was humane. He resigned December, 1869. He purchased "Duncannon," the beautiful Duncan home near Lexington. The site selected, lumber on the place, all plans formulated, having gained such advanced ideas from his long and successful experience he hoped to have an ideal shelter for those who preferred private treatment. On December 9, 1871, at eleven o'clock at night, snow on the ground, standing with his family and several whom even then he had under his charge around him, after barely escaping with their lives, he saw the "Duncannon" mansion reduced to ashes. This disaster crippled his efforts to the degree that he was forced to forego that which if carried through wouldhave proven a monument to his memory of no small magnitude. He then rented a house in Lexington, where he had some patients under his charge, with a private attendant who had won many laurels in this capacity. Doctor Chipley was frequently called upon, even in other States, to decide in the courts as a specialist in insanity. He had a great number under his private treatment in their own homes, of whom the world never knew. He had innumerable offers of positions, but none seemed to appeal to him so much as one at College Hill, near Cincinnati, Ohio. He accepted this offer. His success here proved a very decided one, redeeming the institution from great financial stress and opening up astonishing possibilities. He had four sons—only one now living (1903)—and one daughter (the present writer). He left many friends in Lexington who were ever beckoning him back, and to the last he hoped to return where his heart was. But after only a few years of service at College Hill he contracted a cold from which he never recovered. He died February 11, 1880. Invitations had been issued for a reunion in honor of his aged mother, who was ninety-seven the day he died. A train was to be chartered and Lexington friends were to come. He has left a memory of his gathered laurels and honored name more precious than the gems of the universe.