In 1818 Dr. Drake organized the Western Museum Society, of which he said: "I have drawn up the constitution in such a manner as to make the institution a complete school for natural history, and hope to see concentrated in this place, the choicest natural and artificial curiosities in the Western Country." The first meeting of the Society was held in the summer of 1819, not long before Audubon was engaged to work for it. The membership fee was $50, a considerable sum for that period, but the enterprise was well patronized. It was in charge of a board of whom Dr. Drake was the moving spirit; another member, as we have seen, was Rev. Mr. Slack, who became the first president of the Cincinnati College, which was organized in 1818-19. The collections of the Museum were placed in one of the buildings of the College in order better to serve the students and public, which would account for some of the confusion noted above. Dr. Drake's hands at this time were more than full; in October, 1819, he wrote to a friend: "The ties which bind me to the world at large seem every day to increase in strength and numbers. The crowd of mankind with whom I have some direct or indirect concern, thickens around me, and I see little prospect of more leisure, nor any of retirement and seclusion." At this juncture also, when Audubon and Best were working for his Museum, Dr. Drake was experiencing the first disastrous check in his energetic career. In January, 1820, in spite of the opposition and intrigue of professional rivals, he succeeded in organizing the Medical College of Ohio, and Robert Best became the assistant in chemistry and the curator of the Western Museum. Opposition did not abate, but instead of strangling the College which he had founded, the marplots succeeded in expelling the Doctor from its staff. At last, feeling obliged to leave the city, Dr. Drake accepted in 1823 a position in the rival medical school of Transylvania University, and thus became a colleague of Constantine Rafinesque. It will be seen that Audubon's engagement at Cincinnati fell in a troubled era, and the annoyance which he may have felt at lack of pay was probably no fault of the harassed doctor.