While the medical school was closed in 1857, the Academical Department of Transylvania University continued to be conducted at the Morrison College as a State Normal School,[105] under the Presidency of the distinguished Doctor Lewis W. Green, D. D., but was soon to be disorganized, after only two years of usefulness, on account of a supposed unconstitutionality. Thus Transylvania was again humbled to a low estate in educational distinction. Lexington herself was suffering an era of banishment, as we may say, for without proper railroad connections she was excluded from progress and rendered inaccessible to both labor and capital. The financial prosperity of her citizens was not such as to warrant the lavish hospitality formerly shown to strangers within her gates, and especially to the students in Transylvania. The enterprising individuals who remained to her were not sufficient in numbers to dispel by their most strenuous exertions the lethargy which had fallen upon the place. Such was the state of affairs immediately preceding the Civil War. The immense Medical Hall had reverted to the city and was deserted, save the laboratory in which was still being busily conducted the chemical work of the first Geological Survey of Kentucky; and save perhaps one of the smaller rooms, rented to a lodger. The survey had just received a sudden check in the death of the lamented Doctor Owen when the war still further darkened the prospect, during which, as a matter of course, the resumption of the survey was out of the question. The Morrison College was almost immediately appropriated by the United States Government for a general hospital, and, some time after, the Medical Hall, which as before mentioned was utterly destroyed by fire[106] during its occupation by the sick soldiers. The conflagration originated, it appeared, from a defective flue of a temporary frame kitchen, built adjoining.[107] The corner-stone of this Medical Hall had been laid July 4, 1839; Robert Wickliffe, junior, the well-beloved, making the address. It was dedicated November 2, 1840. Of Grecian architecture, massive and without ornamentation, it contained three great lecture rooms, with ample provision for light and ventilation. The amphitheatre was immediately below the cupola, being by this means lighted from above. There were three other large apartments--for the library, the anatomical museum, and for other medical teaching. Smaller rooms accommodated the laboratory, Faculty room, janitor's room, etc. Besides which were long halls or galleries utilized for natural history collections, museums of zoology, ornithology, geology, etc., as also for apparatus of divers sorts. The costly and complete chemical apparatus was well displayed and conveniently arranged in the immense lecture room for that department. [Illustration: ABSOLOM DRIVER. For many years Janitor at the Medical Hall of Transylvania University.]