The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University — John Shaqi
The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania UniversityPeter, Robert
History
The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University
Peter, Robert
Medicine -- Kentucky; Medicine -- Kentucky -- History; Transylvania University. Medical Department
"In an excavation made in the corner-stone was deposited a glass
bottle enclosing a parchment roll on which were written the name of
the President of the United States, those of the heads of departments,
the Trustees of Transylvania University, the medical professors,
trustees of the town, officers of the Grand Lodge who assisted at the
ceremony, building committee, architect, etc. On a marble tablet over
the front door of the house is the following inscription:
COLL. TRANSYL. MEDIC.
FUND. A. D. MDCCCXVII.
"Though plain and unostentatious, the style of its architecture is
chaste and neat, its execution is solid and substantial, and its
interior arrangements are of the most convenient, comfortable, and
commodious kind.
"The basement story of the building is chiefly appropriated to the
chemical professorship and contains a lecture-room forty-five by fifty
feet in dimensions, in which the seats and lecturing stand are
arranged in the best manner for perfect vision, a lobby, an anti-room,
a chemical laboratory well supplied with all necessary apparatus, and
a dormitory for a resident pupil who acts as librarian.
"These in connection with the very handsome and commodious anatomical
amphitheater which was built during the preceding season, together
with its preparing- and dissecting-rooms, present a suit of
lecture-rooms, apartments, etc., not surpassed in point of excellence
of light for demonstration, or in ease, comfort, and convenience to
the pupil by any similar institution in America. The whole is situated
in a pleasant and central part of the town, easily accessible from
the chief boarding-houses in the worst weather."[37][38]
From the time of the reorganization in 1819, the classes in the
Medical College increased rapidly--from only twenty, with a single
graduate in 1817-18, to two hundred students and fifty-six graduates
in the session of 1823-24. A rapid increase in patronage almost
unparalleled in the history of medical schools, owing, no doubt,
largely to the great increasing demand for medical instruction in this
fast improving country and to the temporary extreme difficulty of the
journey to the great medical school of Philadelphia, but also to the
_eclat_ of the University under the administration of Doctor
Holley,[39] to the just fame of Doctor Dudley as a surgeon and medical
teacher, to the reputation of Doctor Samuel Brown as a popular and
cultivated physician and professor, and to the brilliant and popular
talents of Doctor Charles Caldwell.
DOCTOR CHARLES CALDWELL.
The association of this distinguished professor with the fortunes of
the Medical Department of Transylvania, which extended from 1819 to
1837, marked the era of its most rapid development, and embraced a
large portion of the time of its greatest prosperity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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