Doctor Caldwell was born, the youngest son of a large family, May 14, 1772, in Caswell County, North Carolina, and died in Louisville July 9, 1853, in his eighty-third year. His parents had emigrated from Ireland. His father--who was described by Doctor James Blythe, who knew him, as "very poor, and very, very pious"--destined Charles for the Presbyterian ministry. Accordingly he was measurably released from the labor of the farm on which the family lived and was allowed to pursue his studies in a solitary log hut which he had built for himself for the purpose--"his books his chief companions." He says he commenced to learn the ancient languages at twelve, and was already principal of a literary academy at eighteen. He says further of himself: "From an early period of my life I was actuated by a form of ambition and a love of disquisition and mental contest, which not only marked in me somewhat of a peculiarity of native mind and spirit, but tended also to strengthen them." In his subsequent life he delighted in debates, discussions, and mental contests. He acknowledges (Page 53) an early propensity to array himself in argument "on the wrong side of the question under consideration, in order the more certainly to produce discussion by my advocacy of a paradox, and to make a show of my ingenuity and ability in defense of error." But, as he acknowledged, "this kind of gladiatorship began to blunt his appreciation of truth as distinguished from error, and hence he endeavored to restrain this impulse"--not always successfully, perhaps. Although his taste and talents inclined him to the legal profession he was induced to study medicine, somewhat against his own judgment. His medical education was obtained in Philadelphia, in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, then the only medical college in America, which he entered in 1792, and from which he graduated. While there he industriously employed his time and faculties in study, debate, and discussion, and his pen in numerous publications, the principal of which was a translation of Blumenbach's _Elements of Physiology_--which he completed before graduation. He managed to antagonize, amongst many others, his medical preceptor, the celebrated Doctor Rush, much to his own detriment, as he in his autobiography acknowledges. In the following year, 1793, on the outbreak of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, he distinguished himself by his courage and self-sacrifice in voluntarily attending and nursing the sick. And again, by his pen and otherwise, in theoretical discussions on the origin of the pestilence.