Daniel Drake, M. D.
DANIEL DRAKE, M. D.
Born at Plainfield, New Jersey, October 20, 1785, and brought to Mason County, Kentucky, in 1788, was, in 1800, the first medical student in Cincinnati. He began to practice in 1804, when he was only nineteen years old. He spent the winter of 1805–6 as a student in Philadelphia, and the succeeding year in practice at his old home in Mayslick, removing for life to Cincinnati in 1807.
He was made Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in Transylvania University in 1817, but returned to Cincinnati to found the Medical College of Ohio in 1818, from which, however, his connection was suddenly severed, after a bitter controversy, May, 1822. He resumed a professorship at Lexington 1823–27, being Dean of the Faculty, and declined a chair in the University of Virginia in 1830. He accepted one in the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, 1830–31, and again in the Medical College of Ohio in 1831–32. He founded a new school as a department of Cincinnati College and taught in it 1835–39; was professor in the Louisville Medical Institute 1839–49, and afterward accepted a chair in the Medical College again in 1849–50. In 1827 he was editor of the Western Medical and Physical Journal, etc., but his chief work is his Treatise on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of America, published in 1850—a wonderful tribute to American medical science. His contributions to scientific journals were numerous, and many of his medical lectures and scientific and historical addresses have been published.[34] He died at Cincinnati November 5, 1852, aged sixty-seven years.[35]
Doctor David W. Yandell says: "As a lecturer Doctor Drake had few equals. He was never dull. His was an alert and masculine mind. His words are full of vitality. His manner was earnest and impressive. His eloquence was fervid." Soon after Doctor Yandell had entered the practice of medicine Doctor Drake told him: "I have never seen a great and permanent practice the foundations of which were not laid in the hearts of the poor. Therefore cultivate the poor. If you need another though sordid reason, the poor of to-day are the rich of to-morrow in this country. The poor will be the most grateful of all your patients. Lend a willing ear to all their calls."
Such enthusiasm in the establishment of the Medical Department of Transylvania existed at this time (1819) that liberal citizens of Lexington freely subscribed money to the amount of more than three thousand dollars to guarantee to Professors Caldwell and Brown each an annual sum of a thousand dollars for three years, and this salary was paid to them accordingly. Professor Caldwell visiting the Legislature of Kentucky in 1820, induced that body to give five thousand dollars for the express purpose of the purchase of books and apparatus for the Medical College in Transylvania University, which, as declared in the Act, was to remain "the property of the State of Kentucky."
Moreover, the city of Lexington at the same time loaned to the college, for the same specified purpose, six thousand dollars, reserving a lien on the books. This loan subsequently became a donation. In addition many physicians of the South, of Kentucky, and of Lexington made further subscriptions, making altogether a gross sum of about thirteen thousand dollars, with which Professor Caldwell was enabled to purchase in Europe, in 1820, the foundation of the library, apparatus, and museum of the Medical Department.[36]
Again, in 1827, certain citizens of Lexington and medical professors, forming a joint-stock company, furnished the means to build the first Medical Hall for the special uses of this department, on which, until 1839, when a new Medical Hall was erected, the medical professors paid an annual interest of six per cent on the cost. This old hall stood, before it was destroyed by fire (in 1854, while being used as a City Hall, etc.), on the site of the Lexington City Library, corner of Market and Church streets. It is thus described in the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, Volume I, 1828: "This building, a vignette view of which is seen on the cover of this Journal, was erected by the private munificence of citizens of Lexington during the last season. The corner-stone was laid with Masonic ceremonies on the fifteenth day of April, and the edifice was complete and in readiness for the reception of the medical class at the commencement of the session the first of November.
"In an excavation made in the corner-stone was deposited a glass bottle enclosing a parchment roll on which were written the name of the President of the United States, those of the heads of departments, the Trustees of Transylvania University, the medical professors, trustees of the town, officers of the Grand Lodge who assisted at the ceremony, building committee, architect, etc. On a marble tablet over the front door of the house is the following inscription:
COLL. TRANSYL. MEDIC.
FUND. A. D. MDCCCXVII.
"Though plain and unostentatious, the style of its architecture is chaste and neat, its execution is solid and substantial, and its interior arrangements are of the most convenient, comfortable, and commodious kind.
"The basement story of the building is chiefly appropriated to the chemical professorship and contains a lecture-room forty-five by fifty feet in dimensions, in which the seats and lecturing stand are arranged in the best manner for perfect vision, a lobby, an anti-room, a chemical laboratory well supplied with all necessary apparatus, and a dormitory for a resident pupil who acts as librarian.
"These in connection with the very handsome and commodious anatomical amphitheater which was built during the preceding season, together with its preparing- and dissecting-rooms, present a suit of lecture-rooms, apartments, etc., not surpassed in point of excellence of light for demonstration, or in ease, comfort, and convenience to the pupil by any similar institution in America. The whole is situated in a pleasant and central part of the town, easily accessible from the chief boarding-houses in the worst weather."[37] [38]
From the time of the reorganization in 1819, the classes in the Medical College increased rapidly—from only twenty, with a single graduate in 1817–18, to two hundred students and fifty-six graduates in the session of 1823–24. A rapid increase in patronage almost unparalleled in the history of medical schools, owing, no doubt, largely to the great increasing demand for medical instruction in this fast improving country and to the temporary extreme difficulty of the journey to the great medical school of Philadelphia, but also to the eclat of the University under the administration of Doctor Holley,[39] to the just fame of Doctor Dudley as a surgeon and medical teacher, to the reputation of Doctor Samuel Brown as a popular and cultivated physician and professor, and to the brilliant and popular talents of Doctor Charles Caldwell.