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
public work the Civil War intervened, putting a stop to all such
beneficent pursuits. Doctor Peter unhesitatingly and warmly upheld his
adopted country against secession. Unable to take the field with his
friend, Ethelbert Dudley, he promptly fell into the ranks of Dudley's
Home Guards, shoulder to shoulder with Benjamin Gratz, Madison C.
Johnson, David A. Sayre, and other such fellow-citizens.[74] He was
appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon in charge of Military Hospitals at
Lexington, Kentucky, being most of the time senior surgeon in charge,
quickly bringing his hospitals to a high state of order and
efficiency. It was this gift of reducing to system, combined with
untiring energy and diligence, which in his long life tended to make
all his work both rapid and successful. Thus he carried on
simultaneously numbers of analyses with immense saving of time, while
other chemists went through each operation separately--making his
results almost beyond belief. When, after the war, the survey was
resumed under Professor N. S. Shaler, Doctor Peter prepared three
chemical reports of his analytical work, 1873-78. A total of four
hundred and seventy-seven pages, containing eight hundred and
seventy-one analyses.
In the survey continued under the late John R. Procter, he prepared
six reports, five of which were published, covering five hundred and
eighty-eight pages, describing nine hundred and seventy-seven
analyses--a total of one thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight
published analyses. The sixth report--the ninth of the new
survey--made to Procter, was not published for the lack of funds, and
the manuscript seems to have been lost. The analyses, of which there
are about four hundred, will be published, however, by the present
able director of the newly resumed Geological Survey, Professor C. J.
Norwood, in as nearly the original form as can be restored from the
records. Thus, with the one assistant, Doctor Peter made for the new
survey about two thousand, two hundred and fifty analyses. Besides
which, during his active life in Lexington, he had at all times
considerable practice as consulting and analytical chemist, making for
individuals many analyses not included in the above. As a toxicologist
he had a high reputation, and his expert testimony usually carried the
day in cases wherein he was called. At the time of the First Kentucky
Survey, under Doctor Owen, Doctor Peter had also contributed to the
second report of a Geological Reconnoissance of the Southern and
Middle Counties of Arkansas, made during the years 1859 and 1860, an
octavo volume of four hundred and thirty-three pages, in which he
gives the history of two hundred and seventy-one chemical analyses
made by himself of soils, subsoils, under-clays, nitre-earths, etc.,
of Arkansas, with remarks in one hundred and twenty-five pages of
report. At the same time he made chemical analyses of thirty-three
soils, subsoils, etc., of the State of Indiana for the survey of that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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