DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN.
From Jouett's Portrait at Frankfort.
His name appears among those of the contributors to the American Philosophical Transactions, and to the medical and scientific periodicals of the day, both in this country and in Europe. In those Transactions and in Bruce's Journal of Mineralogy, etc., he described a remarkably large nitre cavern on Crooked Creek in Madison County (now Rockcastle County), Kentucky. In this and in a subsequent communication in Volume I of Silliman's Journal he described the process of nitre manufacture in caves, and gave the best theory of its formation, according to the science of the day. In various other journals he described several interesting cases which occurred in his own practice, and in the renowned Medical Logic, by the distinguished Gilbert Blane, of London, Doctor Samuel Brown, of Lexington, is quoted as authority for a certain scientific fact. "To him we are indebted for the first introduction in the West of the prophylactic use of the cow-pox. As early as 1802 he had vaccinated upwards of five hundred persons, when in New York and Philadelphia physicians were only just making their first experimental attempts. The virus he used was taken from its original source, the teats of the cow, and used in Lexington even before Jenner could gain the confidence of the people of his own country."[9]
A curious anecdote, illustrating progress, was told of Doctor Samuel Brown by his nephew, the late Orlando Brown, Esquire, of Frankfort, in a letter to the present writer:
"I remember once when talking of calomel, he said he never would forget the first dose of it he gave a patient. It was looked upon as 'the Hercules,' and he used it accordingly. The case was desperate and he resolved to venture upon calomel and give a strong dose. He accordingly weighed out with scrupulous accuracy four grains—gave it to his patient, and sat up all night to watch its effects. The man got well and the Doctor afterwards used calomel more freely."
What would he have thought of the heaping tablespoonful doses—quickly repeated pro re nata—or the pound of calomel taken in a day—and survived—which characterized the cholera treatment of one of the later Professors of Transylvania Medical School?
Doctor Frederick Ridgely,
Of a well-known family in Maryland,[10] and one of the most celebrated of the early physicians of the West, studied medicine in Delaware, and attended medical lectures in Philadelphia.