Chapter 7

In consequence of the death of Professor John Eberle early in the session of 1837-38, Doctor Mitchell was required to fill both this and his own chair during the session, an arduous duty which he performed faithfully and to the satisfaction of all parties.[81]

With equal ability and success he performed a similar double duty to the full satisfaction of his classes in the winter of 1844-45, when, in consequence of the death of Professor William H. Richardson, the chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children became vacant. He was appointed to that chair. He was also Dean of the Faculty in the Transylvania School from 1839 to 1846.

Doctor Mitchell was born in Philadelphia in 1791, in which city for three generations his ancestors resided. He died in the same city May 13, 1865, in his seventy-fourth year, having heroically performed his duties as Professor almost up to the time of his death, although he was a constant sufferer from painful neuralgic disease of the stomach, at times almost unendurable. His early education was in Quaker schools, the best in those times in that city, and in the University of Pennsylvania. After a year spent in a drug store and chemical laboratory he became office pupil of the late Doctor Parrish, and, after attendance on three full courses of medical lectures in the Medical Department of the University, he graduated in medicine. His thesis "On Acidification and Combustion" was published in the Memoirs of the Columbian Medical Society. His mind and pen always in active operation, he published papers in _Coxe's Medical Museum_, _New York Medical Repository_, _Duane's Portfolio_, and other periodicals.

Early in 1812, he was appointed Professor of Vegetable and Animal Physiology in Saint John's Lutheran College, and, in the following year, as Lazaretto Physician, which office he held for three years. In 1819, he published a duodecimo volume on Medical Chemistry. From 1822 to 1831, he was actively engaged in medical practice at Frankford, near Philadelphia. In 1826, he founded a Total Abstinence Temperance Society, to the tenets of which he rigidly adhered during the whole of his life, deprecating the use of alcohol, even in the preparation of the tinctures of the apothecary. He was also a strict Presbyterian. In 1826, the honorary degree of A. M. was conferred on him by the Trustees of Princeton College, New Jersey.

In the winter of 1830-31, he was called to the chair of Chemistry in the Miami University, and in the following summer to the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, which was soon thereafter amalgamated with the Miami School, where he remained until called to the same chair in the Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1837. He was transferred, as before mentioned, in the following year to the chair of Materia Medica, Doctor Peter having been called to that of Chemistry, etc. Here Doctor Mitchell continued until the end of the session of 1848-49.

In the summer of 1847, the Philadelphia College of Medicine held its first session, and Doctor Mitchell filled in it the chair of Theory and Practice, Obstetrics, and Medical Jurisprudence. In March, 1849, resigning his chair in the Transylvania School, he joined himself with the Philadelphia College with a view to a permanent connection.

Declining tempting offers from medical schools in Missouri and Tennessee, he, in 1852, resigned his chair in Philadelphia and accepted that of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Kentucky School of Medicine at Louisville. He performed the duties of that professorship to the satisfaction of all parties until 1854, when he resigned on account of ill health and returned to his native city. Recovering, in a measure, his health, he was chosen, without any movement on his part, to fill the chair of Materia Medica and General Therapeutics in Jefferson Medical School of Philadelphia. This chair he occupied up to the year of his death.

Doctor Mitchell was an able and indefatigable writer and author. Without recurring to his earlier writings, he published in 1832 an octavo volume of five hundred and fifty-three pages, _On Chemical Philosophy_, on the basis of _The Elements of Chemistry_, by Doctor Reid, of Edinburgh. In the same year he produced his _Hints to Students_, and acted as co-editor of the _Western Medical Gazette_ with Professors Eberle and Staughton; contributed papers to the _New York Repository_, _Philadelphia Museum_, _Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery_, _Western Medical Recorder_, _Western Lancet_, _American Medical Recorder_, _American Review_, _North American Medical and Surgical Journal_, _Transylvania Medical Journal_,[82] _New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal_, _Esculapian Register_, etc.

In 1850, he published an octavo volume of seven hundred and fifty pages _On Materia Medica_, also an edition of _Eberle on the Diseases of Children_, to which he added notes and a sequel of some two hundred pages. He also wrote a volume of six hundred pages _On the Fevers of the United States_, which he did not publish.

Doctor Mitchell was a clear and impressive lecturer, a most industrious student even in his latter days, a learned, classical, and scientific scholar and a most rigidly upright and conscientious gentleman.[83]

JAMES MILLS BUSH, M. D.,

A native of Kentucky,[84] born in Frankfort May, 1808, graduated as A. B. in Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, and began the study of medicine and surgery in the office of the celebrated Doctor Alban Goldsmith, Louisville, Kentucky. He removed to Lexington in 1830-31, to attend the medical lectures in Transylvania University, and to become a private pupil of its renowned surgeon, Professor Benjamin W. Dudley. To Doctor Dudley he became personally attached by sentiments of affection and esteem, which were warmly returned by his eminent preceptor; so that, when young Bush received the honor of the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1833, Doctor Dudley immediately appointed him his demonstrator and prosector in Anatomy and Surgery, to which branches of medical science and art Doctor Bush was ardently devoted.

This responsible office he filled with eminent ability and success until 1837, when he was officially made Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to his distinguished colleague and friend, Doctor Dudley. He occupied this honorable position to the great satisfaction of all concerned until the year 1844, when he became the Professor of Anatomy, Doctor Dudley retaining the chair of Surgery. In the chair of Anatomy he continued until the dissolution of the Transylvania Medical School in 1857.

In the meanwhile this school, in 1850, had been changed from a winter to a summer school; Doctor Bush, with some of his colleagues and some physicians of Louisville, having thought proper to establish the Kentucky School of Medicine[85] in Louisville as a winter school. In this latter college Doctor Bush remained for three sessions--giving thus two full courses of lectures per annum--when he and his Lexington colleagues, resigning from the Louisville school, returned to that of Lexington, re-establishing a winter session.[86]

Doctor Bush was ever a most conscientious and ardent laborer in his profession, and, during the lifetime of his preceptor, Doctor Dudley, was his constant associate and assistant as well in the medical school as in his medical and surgical practice. On the retirement of that distinguished surgeon and professor, his mantle fell upon Doctor Bush. In the language of his friend, the late Doctor Lewis Rogers, in 1873: "When Doctor Dudley retired from teaching, Doctor Bush was appointed to the vacant chair. When Doctor Dudley retired from the field of his brilliant achievements as a surgeon Doctor Bush had the rare courage to take possession of it. No higher tribute can be paid to him than to say that he has since held possession without a successful rival."

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 skill and 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 the _Transylvania 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 use of 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 and _modus operandi_ are 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 the _thalami 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. The autopsy 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 unusual manifestations 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.

NATHAN RYNO SMITH, M. D.,

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 expedients and 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 the new 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 the four 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 the _Anatomy of the Arteries_, and, in his later days, his work on _Fractures 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 of honors. "He has left behind him a record of a great surgeon, a brave and true citizen and magnanimous gentleman."

ELISHA BARTLETT, M. D., ETC.

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. A _statesman_ and not a _politician_, 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 other places--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 the _Boston 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 recall his 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 fast as 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,' entitled _Simple Settings in Verse for Six Portraits from Mr. Dickens' Gallery_, Boston, 1855--his last present, as it was his last production."

DOCTOR LOTAN G. WATSON,

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.

LEONIDAS M. LAWSON, M. D.,

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.