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]
James Mills Bush, M. D.,
A native of Kentucky,[84] born in Frankfort May, 1808, graduated as A. B. in Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, and began the study of medicine and surgery in the office of the celebrated Doctor Alban Goldsmith, Louisville, Kentucky. He removed to Lexington in 1830–31, to attend the medical lectures in Transylvania University, and to become a private pupil of its renowned surgeon, Professor Benjamin W. Dudley. To Doctor Dudley he became personally attached by sentiments of affection and esteem, which were warmly returned by his eminent preceptor; so that, when young Bush received the honor of the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1833, Doctor Dudley immediately appointed him his demonstrator and prosector in Anatomy and Surgery, to which branches of medical science and art Doctor Bush was ardently devoted.
This responsible office he filled with eminent ability and success until 1837, when he was officially made Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to his distinguished colleague and friend, Doctor Dudley. He occupied this honorable position to the great satisfaction of all concerned until the year 1844, when he became the Professor of Anatomy, Doctor Dudley retaining the chair of Surgery. In the chair of Anatomy he continued until the dissolution of the Transylvania Medical School in 1857.