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
Doctor Bush was married, in 1835, to Miss Charlotte James, of
Chillicothe. Of their three children the eldest, Benjamin Dudley, was
a young man of remarkable promise as a surgeon and physician when he
was cut off, an event which cast a gloom over the remaining days of
the life of his father. Few young men of his age had ever attained
such proficiency or developed such sterling qualities.[87]
The death of Doctor Bush, which took place on February 14, 1875, was
followed by general and unusual manifestations of respect and regret,
not only on the part of the members of the profession, but by the
people of the city at large. Few citizens were more extensively known,
loved, and honored in life or followed to the grave by a greater
concourse of mourning friends.
NATHAN RYNO SMITH, M. D.,
Was called from his residence in Baltimore, Maryland, to the chair of
Theory and Practice of Medicine in Transylvania in the year 1838. He
resigned the chair and returned to that city in 1840, having delivered
three annual courses of lectures here. He was succeeded in this chair
by Doctor Elisha Bartlett.
Doctor Smith was born May 21, 1797, in the town of Cornish, New
Hampshire, where his father, Nathan Smith--afterward Professor of
Physic and Surgery in Yale College--had been for ten years in the
practice of his profession. In a brief sketch of his father, Doctor
Smith unconsciously drew the outlines of his own character. "In the
practice of surgery," he said, "Professor Smith displayed an original
and inventive mind. His friends claim for him the establishment of
scientific principles and the invention of resources in practice which
will stand as lasting monuments of a mind fertile in expedients and
unshackled by the dogmas of the schools." The father, at the age of
twenty-four, after an early life of industry and adventure in the then
new country, had been so impressed and attracted by witnessing a
surgical operation that he at once devoted himself to surgery and
medicine, and with such ardor and success that for forty years
succeeding he was a distinguished member and teacher in his
profession. The son, with much the same natural bent of mind, after
receiving his early education at Dartmouth and graduating at Yale in
1817--spending a year and a half in Virginia as a classical
tutor--began the study of medicine in Yale, where his father was
Professor of Physic and Surgery. He there received the degree of
Doctor of Medicine, in 1823. He began practice in Burlington, Vermont,
in 1824. In 1825, he was appointed Professor of Surgery and Anatomy in
the University of Vermont, the Medical Department of which was
organized principally by his exertions, aided by his father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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