Doctor Blythe died in 1842, aged seventy-seven, having devoted his life mainly to religion; having been one of the pioneers of the Presbyterian church in Kentucky. He made no distinguished reputation as a chemical professor in the Medical School, for chemistry in those days had few advocates, but he did good service in the University as a teacher of what was called "Natural Philosophy" in early times. _The Medical College of Transylvania University_ seems not to have attracted many students in this early period of its history, nor were its means of instruction or its organization complete. In 1805, Doctor James Fishback, D. D., was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in this department.[11] He was characterized as an eloquent, learned, though erratic divine; an able writer; a physician in good practice; an influential lawyer, and an upright man. He was the son of Jacob Fishback,[12] who came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1783. He resigned this chair in 1806, having given lectures to such small medical classes as were present. In 1808, he was elected Representative to the General Assembly of Kentucky. In 1813, he published _The Philosophy of the Mind in Respect to Religion_, and, in 1834, _Essays and Dialogues on the Powers and Susceptibilities of the Human Mind to Religion_. He was also preceptor in medicine, and for a time partner in the practice, of the celebrated surgeon, Benjamin W. Dudley. He died at an advanced age in 1854. An effort was again made to organize a full Faculty and establish a medical school in Transylvania University in the year 1809, when Doctor Benjamin W. Dudley was appointed to the chair of Anatomy and Physiology, Doctor Elisha Warfield to Surgery and Obstetrics, Joseph Buchanan, A. M., to the Institutes of Medicine, and Doctor James Overton to Materia Medica and Botany.[13] But Doctor Warfield resigned in the same year, and Doctor Buchanan in 1810. The late Lewis Rogers, M. D., of Louisville, thus mentioned Doctor Buchanan in his inaugural address as President of the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1873: "He died in Louisville in 1829: and I call up from the memories of my boyhood with great distinctness his slender form, massive head, and thoughtful, intellectual face. He was a man of great and varied powers of mind. He was a mechanical, medical, and political philosopher. His 'spiral' steam-boiler--the prototype of the exploding and exploded tubular boiler--and his steam land-carriage were among the wonders of the day. As a physician his papers attracted distinguished notice from the medical _savants_ of Philadelphia, then the center of medical science." As a political writer he ably discussed the most weighty problems of the times, he being editor of the _Louisville Focus_. Want of concentration of his wonderful mind prevented him from becoming eminent in medicine as in other pursuits which divided his mental powers.[14]