Professor Thomas Duche Mitchell, M. D.,
Was appointed from the Medical College of Ohio to the chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the Medical Department of Transylvania in 1837. He was transferred to that of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in the following year, Doctor Peter having been called to the chair of Chemistry, etc.
In consequence of the death of Professor John Eberle early in the session of 1837–38, Doctor Mitchell was required to fill both this and his own chair during the session, an arduous duty which he performed faithfully and to the satisfaction of all parties.[81]
With equal ability and success he performed a similar double duty to the full satisfaction of his classes in the winter of 1844–45, when, in consequence of the death of Professor William H. Richardson, the chair of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children became vacant. He was appointed to that chair. He was also Dean of the Faculty in the Transylvania School from 1839 to 1846.
Doctor Mitchell was born in Philadelphia in 1791, in which city for three generations his ancestors resided. He died in the same city May 13, 1865, in his seventy-fourth year, having heroically performed his duties as Professor almost up to the time of his death, although he was a constant sufferer from painful neuralgic disease of the stomach, at times almost unendurable. His early education was in Quaker schools, the best in those times in that city, and in the University of Pennsylvania. After a year spent in a drug store and chemical laboratory he became office pupil of the late Doctor Parrish, and, after attendance on three full courses of medical lectures in the Medical Department of the University, he graduated in medicine. His thesis "On Acidification and Combustion" was published in the Memoirs of the Columbian Medical Society. His mind and pen always in active operation, he published papers in Coxe's Medical Museum, New York Medical Repository, Duane's Portfolio, and other periodicals.
Early in 1812, he was appointed Professor of Vegetable and Animal Physiology in Saint John's Lutheran College, and, in the following year, as Lazaretto Physician, which office he held for three years. In 1819, he published a duodecimo volume on Medical Chemistry. From 1822 to 1831, he was actively engaged in medical practice at Frankford, near Philadelphia. In 1826, he founded a Total Abstinence Temperance Society, to the tenets of which he rigidly adhered during the whole of his life, deprecating the use of alcohol, even in the preparation of the tinctures of the apothecary. He was also a strict Presbyterian. In 1826, the honorary degree of A. M. was conferred on him by the Trustees of Princeton College, New Jersey.
In the winter of 1830–31, he was called to the chair of Chemistry in the Miami University, and in the following summer to the same chair in the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, which was soon thereafter amalgamated with the Miami School, where he remained until called to the same chair in the Medical Department of Transylvania University in 1837. He was transferred, as before mentioned, in the following year to the chair of Materia Medica, Doctor Peter having been called to that of Chemistry, etc. Here Doctor Mitchell continued until the end of the session of 1848–49.
In the summer of 1847, the Philadelphia College of Medicine held its first session, and Doctor Mitchell filled in it the chair of Theory and Practice, Obstetrics, and Medical Jurisprudence. In March, 1849, resigning his chair in the Transylvania School, he joined himself with the Philadelphia College with a view to a permanent connection.
Declining tempting offers from medical schools in Missouri and Tennessee, he, in 1852, resigned his chair in Philadelphia and accepted that of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Kentucky School of Medicine at Louisville. He performed the duties of that professorship to the satisfaction of all parties until 1854, when he resigned on account of ill health and returned to his native city. Recovering, in a measure, his health, he was chosen, without any movement on his part, to fill the chair of Materia Medica and General Therapeutics in Jefferson Medical School of Philadelphia. This chair he occupied up to the year of his death.
Doctor Mitchell was an able and indefatigable writer and author. Without recurring to his earlier writings, he published in 1832 an octavo volume of five hundred and fifty-three pages, On Chemical Philosophy, on the basis of The Elements of Chemistry, by Doctor Reid, of Edinburgh. In the same year he produced his Hints to Students, and acted as co-editor of the Western Medical Gazette with Professors Eberle and Staughton; contributed papers to the New York Repository, Philadelphia Museum, Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Western Medical Recorder, Western Lancet, American Medical Recorder, American Review, North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Transylvania Medical Journal,[82] New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Esculapian Register, etc.
In 1850, he published an octavo volume of seven hundred and fifty pages On Materia Medica, also an edition of Eberle on the Diseases of Children, to which he added notes and a sequel of some two hundred pages. He also wrote a volume of six hundred pages On the Fevers of the United States, which he did not publish.
Doctor Mitchell was a clear and impressive lecturer, a most industrious student even in his latter days, a learned, classical, and scientific scholar and a most rigidly upright and conscientious gentleman.[83]