In the meanwhile this school, in 1850, had been changed from a winter to a summer school; Doctor Bush, with some of his colleagues and some physicians of Louisville, having thought proper to establish the Kentucky School of Medicine[85] in Louisville as a winter school. In this latter college Doctor Bush remained for three sessions—giving thus two full courses of lectures per annum—when he and his Lexington colleagues, resigning from the Louisville school, returned to that of Lexington, re-establishing a winter session.[86]
Doctor Bush was ever a most conscientious and ardent laborer in his profession, and, during the lifetime of his preceptor, Doctor Dudley, was his constant associate and assistant as well in the medical school as in his medical and surgical practice. On the retirement of that distinguished surgeon and professor, his mantle fell upon Doctor Bush. In the language of his friend, the late Doctor Lewis Rogers, in 1873: "When Doctor Dudley retired from teaching, Doctor Bush was appointed to the vacant chair. When Doctor Dudley retired from the field of his brilliant achievements as a surgeon Doctor Bush had the rare courage to take possession of it. No higher tribute can be paid to him than to say that he has since held possession without a successful rival."
DOCTOR JAMES M. BUSH.
From a Photograph by Mullen.
Most ably and successfully did he thus maintain himself as one fit to follow in the footsteps of our great surgeon. His sterling qualities as a man, his most kind and endearing manners as a physician, his great skill and experience in anatomy and surgery, which had been as well the pleasure as the devoted labor of his life; his remarkable accuracy of eye, the more acute because of congenital myopia, his delicacy of hand and unswerving nerve in the use of instruments in the most difficult operations, endeared him to his patients and won the respect and admiration of his medical brethren.
Doctor Bush was a lucid and impressive teacher of his peculiar branch of medical art and science, and always attached his pupils strongly to him as an honored preceptor and friend.
During his active lifetime, spent chiefly in acquiring and putting in practice the rare professional skill which distinguished him, he gave but little time to the use of his pen. Hence he left no large book as the record of his experience. His principal writings were published, in 1837, in the tenth volume of the Transylvania Journal of Medicine, and these were written for that journal on the solicitation of the present writer, who edited that volume. They consist of:
1. A short report of a case of epilepsy, produced in a negro girl by blows of the windlass of a well on the parietal bone, which was entirely and speedily cured under the preliminary treatment by Doctor Dudley of mercurial purgatives and low diet, preparatory to the use of the trephine, which, as is well known, had been used with great success by Doctor Dudley in such cases.
2. Report of a case of insidious inflammation of the pia mater, complicated with pleuritis—with the autopsy.