The history of the Medical Department of Transylvania University--its rise, its success, its decline, its disappearance from the list of medical colleges--would practically cover Dr. 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 Dr. 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 by his side. A friend and once a colleague described his manner while lecturing as singularly imposing and impressive. "He was magisterial, oracular, conveying the idea always that the mind of the speaker was troubled with no doubt. His deportment before his classes was such as further to enhance his standing. He was always, in the presence of his students, not the model teacher only, but the dignified, urbane gentleman; conciliating regard by his gentleness, but repelling any approach to familiarity; and never for the sake of raising a laugh or eliciting a little momentary applause descending to coarseness in expression or thought. So that to his pupils he was always and everywhere great. As an operator they thought he had distanced competition. As a teacher they thought he gave them not what was in the books, but what the writers of the books had never understood. They were persuaded that there was much they must learn from his lips or learn not at all." His hold upon the public was as great as that upon his classes. "Patients came to him from afar because it was believed that he did better what others could do than any one else, and that he did much which no one else in reach could do."