It is probable Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia, was the first physician who ever visited Kentucky. In 1745 he came and negotiated treaties with the Indian tribes for the establishment of a colony, which was announced in Washington's journal (1754) as Walker's settlement on the Cumberland, accompanied by a map, dated 1750. Some time just before 1770, Dr. John Connolly, of Pittsburgh, visited the Falls of the Ohio, and three years later, in company with Captain Thomas Bullitt, patented the land on which Louisville now stands. But little is known of the professional performances of either Walker or Connolly, except the fact that they were both men of superior intelligence, and of far more than average cultivation. They were both known as enterprising business men rather than great practitioners of medicine. In a History of the Medical Literature of Kentucky, Dr. Lunsford P. Yandell (the elder) says: "The first surgical operation ever performed in Kentucky by a white man occurred in 1767." Colonel James Smith, in that year, accompanied by his black servant, Jamie, traveled from the mouth of the Tennessee river across the country to Carolina, now Tennessee. On their way, Colonel Smith stepped upon a projecting fragment of cane, which pierced his foot, and was broken off level with the skin. Swelling quickly came on, causing the flesh to rise above the end of the cane. Having no other instruments than a knife, a moccasin awl, and a pair of bullet-molds, the colonel directed his servant to seize the piece of cane with the bullet-molds, while he raised the skin with the awl and cut the flesh away from around the piece of cane, and, with the assistance of Jamie, the foreign body was drawn out. Colonel Smith then treated the wound with the bruised bark from the root of a lind tree, and subsequently by poultices made of the same material, using the mosses of the old logs in the forest, which he secured with strips of elm bark, as a dressing.
Dr. Frederick Ridgely, a favorite pupil of Dr. Rush, was sent from Philadelphia early in 1779, as a surgeon to a vessel sailing with letters of marque and reprisal off the coast of Virginia. This vessel was chased into the Chesapeake Bay by a British man-of-war. As the ship's colors were struck to the enemy, Dr. Ridgely leaped overboard, and narrowly escaped capture by swimming two miles to the shore. He was at once thereafter appointed an officer in the medical department of the Colonial army. A few months later, he resigned his commission, and settled, in 1790, at Lexington, where he speedily attained a leading position as a master of the healing art. From Lexington he was frequently called, in the capacity of surgeon, to accompany militia in their expeditions against the Indians. He was appointed surgeon-general to the army of "Mad Anthony Wayne," returning finally to Lexington, where he took part in the organization of the first medical college established in the West. Dr. Ridgely was a frequent contributor to the American Medical Repertory, published at Philadelphia. He was the intimate friend of Dr. Samuel Brown, also of Lexington. At the organization of the medical department of Transylvania University, in 1799, Brown and Ridgely were the first professors. Ridgely, in that year, delivered a course of lectures to a small class, and, as the organization of the faculty had not been completed, no further attempts at teaching were made. Dr. Samuel Brown, like his colleague, Ridgely, was a surgeon of great ability and large experience. These two gentlemen added greatly to the growth and popularity of Lexington by their renown as surgeons. They attracted patients from the remote settlements on the frontier, and were both frequent contributors to the medical literature of that time. The cases reported by these gentlemen were numerous, interesting, carefully observed, and ably reported. Dr. Brown was a student at the University of Edinburgh with Hosack, Davidge, Ephraim McDowell, and Brockenborough, of Virginia. Hosack became famous as a professor in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at New York; Davidge laid the foundation of the University of Maryland; Brown was one of the first professors in Transylvania University, at Lexington, while McDowell achieved immortal fame in surgery as the father of ovariotomy. Strong rivalry in the practice of medicine at Lexington, between Brown and Ridgely, and Fishback and Pindell, had much to do with the difficulties attending the efforts of the two former to establish the medical school. In 1798, Jenner made public his great discovery of the protective power of vaccination. Dr. Brown, of Lexington, was his first imitator on this continent. Within three years from the date of Jenner's first publication, and before the experiment had been tried elsewhere in this country, Brown had already vaccinated successfully more than five hundred people at Lexington.
[JOHN A. BROADUS]
John Albert Broadus, the most distinguished clergyman and writer Kentucky Baptists have produced, was born near Culpepper, Virginia, January 24, 1827. At the age of sixteen years Broadus united with the Baptist church; and he shortly afterwards decided to study for the ministry of his church. He taught school for a time before going to the University of Virginia, in 1846, and he was graduated four years later with the M.A. degree. While at the University Broadus was greatly impressed by Professors Gessner Harrison, Wm. H. McGuffey, and E. H. Courtenay. In 1851 Broadus declined a professorship in Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, in order to become assistant instructor of ancient languages in his alma mater and pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist church. In 1857 it was decided to establish the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Greenville, South Carolina, and Broadus, James P. Boyce, Basil Manly, Jr., William Williams, and E. T. Winkler, were the committee on establishment. Boyce and Manly urged the curriculum system, but Broadus advocated the elective system so earnestly that he completely won them over. "So, as Mr. Jefferson had drawn a new American university, Mr. Broadus drew a new American seminary." The Seminary opened in 1859 with the members of the committee, with the exception of Williams, as the professors. Boyce was elected president, and Broadus occupied the chair of New Testament Interpretation and Homiletics. Twenty-six students greeted the faculty; and all were soon hard at work. After a few years, however, the Civil War came and the Seminary shortly suspended. During the war Dr. Broadus was a chaplain in the Confederate armies. At the close of the war work in the Seminary was resumed with seven students enrolled, Dr. Broadus having but one student in homiletics, and he was blind! The lectures he prepared for this blind brother were the basis of the work that made him famous, The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (Philadelphia, 1870), which is at the present time the finest thing on the subject, a text-book in nearly every theological school in Christendom. Dr. Broadus declined chairs in Chicago and Brown universities, and the presidency of Vassar College, in order to remain with the Seminary, the darling of his dreams. In 1873 he read his notable paper in memory of Gessner Harrison at the University of Virginia; and the next year he joined Dr. Boyce in Kentucky in the effort that was then being made to remove the Seminary to Louisville. His lectures before the Newton Theological Seminary were published as The History of Preaching (New York, 1876). In 1877 the Seminary was removed to Louisville, Dr. Boyce remaining as president and Dr. Broadus as professor of homiletics. From the first the Seminary was a success, it now being the largest in the United States. In 1879 Dr. Broadus delivered his noted address upon Demosthenes before Richmond College, Virginia, which is regarded as one of the very finest efforts of his life. In Louisville he became the city's first citizen, honored and beloved by all classes. In 1886 Harvard conferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon him; and later in the same year one of the most important of his books appeared, Sermons and Addresses (Baltimore, 1886). This was followed by his famous Commentary on Matthew (Philadelphia, 1887), which was begun during the darkest days of the Civil War, and is now considered the best commentary in English on that Gospel. Dr. Boyce died at Pau, France, in 1888, and Dr. Broadus succeeded him as president of the Seminary. In January, 1889, he delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures on Preaching at Yale; and some months later his Translation of and Notes to Chrysostom's Homilies (New York, 1889) appeared. In the spring of 1890 Dr. Broadus delivered three lectures before Johns Hopkins University, which were published as Jesus of Nazareth (New York, 1890). He spent the summer of 1892 in Louisville preparing his Memoir of James P. Boyce (New York, 1893); and A Harmony of the Gospels (New York, 1893), his final works. Dr. Broadus died at Louisville, Kentucky, March 16, 1895.
Bibliography. Life and Letters of John Albert Broadus, by A. T. Robertson (Philadelphia, 1900); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1909, v. ii).
OXFORD UNIVERSITY[14]
[From Life and Letters of John A. Broadus, by A. T. Robertson (Philadelphia, 1901)]
We had four and a half hours at Oxford, and spent it with exceeding great pleasure, and most respectably heavy expense.
At University College we saw a memorial of Sir Wm. Jones, by Flaxman, which I am sure I shall never forget—worthy of Sir Wm. and worthy of Flaxman. At Magdalen College we saw the varied and beautiful grounds, with the Poet's Walk, where Addison loved to stroll. At New College we visited the famous and beautiful chapel. (New College is now five hundred years old.) These are the most remarkable of the nineteen colleges. You know they are entirely distinct establishments, as much as if a hundred miles apart, and that the University of Oxford is simply a general organization which gives degrees to the men prepared by the different colleges. Then we spent one and a half hours at the famous Bodleian Library, the most valuable (British Museum has the largest number of books) in the world. Oh, the books, the books—the early and rare editions, the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the autographs of famous persons, and the portraits, the portraits of hundreds of the earth's greatest ones. Happy students, fellows, professors, who have constant access to the Bodleian Library.