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
Was a son[98] of John Bruce, a Scottish gentleman associated with
Colonel James Morrison and Benjamin Gratz in the manufacture of hemp
at Lexington, Kentucky, and was born at that place in 1822. After
completing a collegiate education, he studied medicine with Doctor
Benjamin W. Dudley, taking the degree of M. D. in Transylvania in
1843. He then spent three years in France, studying in the principal
hospitals at Paris under the most eminent instructors. In 1846, he
returned to Lexington to begin the practice of his profession. He was
elected to the chair of Demonstrator of Anatomy in Transylvania
Medical Department in 1850, continuing therein until the cessation of
the school in 1857. Doctor Bruce's intrinsic merit was fully
appreciated by his colleagues, who had great affection for him, but
his excessively shrinking nature withheld him from taking the
prominent position with the public to which his ability and learning
entitled him. In truth, his chief characteristic was his modest,
amiable, and retiring disposition. His specialty in medicine was
eruptive disease. In the treatment of smallpox his professional
brethren conceded him the highest place. For many years he was
continuously elected City Physician, and holding this office he died,
January 31, 1881, the sudden ending of his useful and kindly life
being largely due to the exposure he so constantly and bravely
encountered in his visits to the suffering poor during an unusually
severe and trying winter. Says a fellow-physician,[99] "It was then
that the great and good qualities of our friend and co-laborer, Doctor
Bruce, shone pre-eminently. It was at a time when poverty and distress
appealed to him that his great-heartedness, his forgetfulness of self,
and his proficient medical skill forced itself before that public
attention from which at all other times it timidly shrunk." Doctor
Bruce married, in 1847, Miss Elizabeth Norton. Of his children Miss
Elizabeth Bruce and Mrs. Charlotte B. Davis, of Lexington, survive him.
DOCTOR ALEXANDER KEITH MARSHALL,
Born February 11, 1808, performed the duties of the chair of Materia
Medica in 1856. He had received a classical education from his father,
the celebrated Doctor Louis Marshall, of "Buck Pond"; studied medicine
with Doctor Ephraim McDowell, and completed his medical course at
Transylvania. He was a handsome man, a forcible speaker, a prominent
politician and Odd Fellow, and a member of Congress in 1855. He died
at the home of his son, Louis, near Lexington, April, 28, 1884.[100]
BENJAMIN P. DRAKE, M. D.,
A graduate of Transylvania Medical Department in 1830, occupied the
chair of Materia Medica in the last year of the school in 1857.
* * * * *
During the last two years of the Medical Department of Transylvania
University the Faculty were:
Ethelbert L. Dudley, Surgery.
James M. Bush, Anatomy.
William S. Chipley, Theory and Practice.
Samuel M. Letcher, Obstetrics, etc.
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