USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 36
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721
MINERAL RESOURCES.
soils that nearly, if not quite, equal the bluegrass soils of the lower Silurian. While not producing bluegrass like those soils, they yield larger crops of to- bacco, maize, the smaller grains, and fruits,
"The quaternary is an ancient alluvium transported from the place of origin and deposited as a sediment when the water retired. No distinctive traits mark it. It is comparatively infertile.
"Recent soils are those formed in situ from the country bed-rock, as we have said, or are late alluvial deposits. The latter may be derived from di- verse rocks, and may in themselves possess all the virtues and all the foibles of their ancestry. Wonderfully productive for a few seasons after their de- posit, they soon wear out and yield but moderate harvests under good cul- tivation,"1
Mineral Resources .- The rich and abundant deposits of coal and iron , are the most important of the economic mineral resources of Kentucky. The eastern coal area, a part of the great Appalachian system, comprising bituminous, cannel, and splint coals, the latter admirably adapted to iron and steel-making, covers about ten thousand square miles. The western coal-measures, an extension of the Illinois field, comprise nearly four thou- sand square miles. The iron-ore deposits are of good quality and widely distributed; it may be safely assumed that the iron districts cover twenty thousand square miles, occurring profusely in the subcarboniferous and carboniferous limestones, often the strata of ore being in juxtaposition with beds of coal, which can be employed in their reduction.
Galena has been found in strata of the lower silurian and subcarbonif- erous limestones in veins of limited extent, but has not yet been successfully worked.
Good building stones are procured from sandstones and öolitic limestones of the subcarboniferous formation, and from the silurian limestones. Sul- phate of baryta, fluor-spar, saltpeter, gypsum, and selenite, fire and pottery `clays, occur in more or less abundance. Springs impregnated with salt here and there exist, and salt brine is obtained from wells in the eastern coal district, and in the subcarboniferous rocks in the western part of the State. Petroleum has been obtained by boring wherever the upper devonian shales are overlaid by thick strata of subcarboniferous sand-rocks, and "natural gas" may be procured by boring in similar areas.
Vegetation. -- The distribution of the forests especially illustrates the pecu- liarity of the soils of Kentucky. The lower silurian soils produce the sugar maple, the tulip tree, blue ash, black walnut, hickory, elm, and honey locust. Extensive forests of beech, oak. water maple, and yellow poplar, characterize the upper silurian and devonian belt, and wild cherry and black walnut occur sparsely. The rich. well-drained upper lands of the subcar- boniferous limestones sustain magnificent forests of blue ash and black walnut. On the upper sandstone soils of the subcarboniferous formation
1 Major William J. Davis, in Farmers' Almanac, 1883.
46
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722
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
are six or seven species of oak, while in the valleys the tulip tree and the sweet gum grow; limited areas of pine are found in the more mountainous regions. Almost the entire carboniferous district of Eastern Kentucky is covered with primeval forests of walnut, oak, ash, hickory, wild cherry, and other timbers of great commercial value. In the swamps and bottom lands of the quaternary formation, the most common forest tree is the cypress; on- the banks of streams the cottonwood flourishes; elsewhere the pecan and catalpa abound. Kentucky, in area of woodland. is exceeded by only three States. The native forests yet cover fifteen million acres of hill and lowland.
1 " When the State was first settled by the whites, there was a tract of about seven thousand square miles, lying chiefly between the eighty-fifth and eighty-seventh meridians, embracing the subcarboniferous formation. which was open prairie, covered with rank grass five or six feet high, and having no trees, except along the streams. When the land was occupied, this region sprang up in timber, and is now densely wooded wherever it is not under cultivation. The name of 'The Barrens,' given to it by the first settlers, still attaches to this portion of Kentucky. The former absence of trees over this tract has been attributed to destructive wildfires which used to sweep over the whole country, and which, it was supposed, were set by Indians every fall to destroy animals and noxious serpents; but it is more probable that the absence of timber was due to the luxuriant growth of grass which took exclusive possession of the soil.".
Despite the fact that Kentucky has resources of coal and iron that ex- ceed those of Great Britain, or of Pennsylvania, it is susceptible of a greater variety of production than any other State. It produces nearly one-half of all the tobacco raised in the United States, and more than half of all the hemp; in the production of cereals, it ranks among the highest. With only about eight million acres in cultivation, in the value of agricultural products it ranks eighth among the States of the Union.
The famous bluegrass flourishes in the wooded pasture lands of the lower silurian limestones. Hemp, tobacco, and grains of highly-nutritive quality, are largely grown also; it is in this well-watered region, and nowhere else, except in a limited similar territory of Tennessee, that the celebrated hand-made. sour-mash, copper-distilled Bourbon whisky is made. Timothy, clover, and other hay-making grasses, tobacco, wheat, maize, potatoes, oats, rye, barley, leguminous and other vegetables are produced largely all over the State. The common wild fruits are the nuts of the hickory, walnut, beech, and hazel, plums, grapes, blackberries, strawber- ries, and pawpaws. Along the rivers and lines of railroad, fruits are largely cultivated, such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, and currants. Cultivated grapes, owing to the humidity of the climate, thrive only in few places : but in the sandy soils of a portion of
I Geography of Kentucky, by William J. Davis, ante cit.
723
ANIMALS AND ARCHAEOLOGY.
the subcarboniferous hills wild grapevines entangle the forests of oak, and it is more than likely that improved varieties of grapes engrafted on these hardy native stocks would yield a grateful return to the husbandman's care.
Animals .- All the rock strata of Kentucky are fossiliferous; the remains of marine protozoa, radiates, mollusks, arthropods, and anarthropods, that lived in ancient silurian seas ; those of their descendants, of varying forms, together with ganoids and other primeval fish, that habited devonian oceans; the exuvia of their multiplied progeny, many of them with changed organs and added functions, surviving myriads of years afterward in the depths of seas, upon whose shores, among gigantic ferns and towering reeds and cling- ing mosses disported archetypal reptiles, are found entombed in the solid limestones, or imbedded in the clays derived from argillaceous rocks, some of them as perfect in all structural details as they were on the day they first lay dead in the ooze on the sea-floor.
In the swampy salt licks an immense number of bones have been found. Year after year, for many thousand years, herbivorous animals visited these licks to procure the salt they needed. Buried here in the "recent" soils, are the remains of deer and bison; and below these, in the older quaternary, lie fossil skeletons of the mastodon and mammoth elephants, the elk, and a species of musk-ox.
There is no evidence that man occupied this territory contemporaneously with the elephant ; but before his advancing footsteps have retired to remoter fastnesses and fields the musk-ox, the elk, and the bison, while other wild animals, such as the bear, the wolf, the panther, the deer, the wildcat, com- mon enough one hundred years ago, are now rarely seen.
Birds and reptiles, such as are common to the eastern slope of the Mis- sissippi valley, abound. Insects injurious to vegetation, are happily few. Fish are not found plentifully enough in our rivers, and the success of a commission to stock the streams with food fish has been hoped for until now, the work having just been discontinued by the Legislature sitting in Frank- fort. The translucent eyeless fish and crawfish of Kentucky caves, are peculiar to this region.
Kentucky is pre-eminently a stock and cattle-producing State. The thoroughbred horses, beef, and milch-cattle raised here, are exported to all parts of the United States and to Europe. Its mules supply the Southern markets. Hogs and sheep are raised to a considerable extent, but the latter industry is seriously interfered with, if not rendered generally unprofitable, because of the vast number of sheep annually killed by the nine hundred thousand untaxed curs. and other dogs of low degree, that infest the State, a larger species of very costly vermin.
Archeology .- In many parts of Kentucky are found vestiges of a former people, in the form of embankments and mounds made of earth or stones. or a combination of these two. Of the history of these people nothing is actually known, but much romantic conjecture has been indulged concern-
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724
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
ing them. They are called "mound-builders," from their relics, and are spoken of as "mysterious," "wonderful," "remarkable," "highly civil- ized," " an agricultural people," "a warlike people," " progressive in art," " sun-worshipers," etc.
A list of "the ancient monuments hitherto discovered in this State" is appended, which has a certain value now, although all traces of many of the "monuments" have been obliterated.
1RAFINESQUE'S CATALOGUE OF ANCIENT MONUMENTS IN KENTUCKY.
COUNTIES, ETC., i. e. Counties as in 1826.) No. of No. of Sites. Mons.
In Adair, on the Cumberland river I 3
Bath, on the waters of Licking river .
I
3
Boone, on the Ohio, a town near Burlington, etc
4 3 Bourbon, a circus of one thousand four hundred and fifty feet, on Licking
river, a town, polygon, of four thousand six hundred and seventy-five feet, on Stoner's creek, etc . 5 46 Bracken, great battle-ground, etc, near Augusta, iron rings and a copper medal with unknown letters, etc . 4
Caldwell, a stone fort on Tradewater river I
I
Calloway, a mound fifteen feet high, on Blood river I I
Campbell, near Covington, and at Big Bone Lick 2
4
Christian, near Hopkinsville .
5
Clarke, near Winchester, Boonesboro
5
18
Clay, near Manchester ..
6 6
Fayette, on North Elkhorn, a beautiful circus, a dromus, etc .; on South
Elkhorn, near Lexington, a polygon town, L. several squares, mounds, graves, etc .; nine East Indian shells found in the ground, etc . 15 36
Gallatin, at the mouth of the Kentucky river . I I
Garrard, principally mounds and small circus on Paint creek, Sugar creek, etc.
3 12
Greenup, fine remains opposite the mouth of the Scioto I
3
Harlan, on the Cumberland river, near its source . 2
7
5 Hart, mounds near Green river, etc., mummies in caves 2 Harrison, a circus near Cynthiana, many mounds, round, elliptical, or ditched. sixteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty feet high 5 16.
Hickman, a fine teocalli on the Mississippi river, below the iron-banks, four hundred and fifty feet long, ten high, only thirty wide . I
Jefferson, on the Ohio, near Louisville . 4 I
Jessamine, mounds, graves, embankments 4 IO
Knox, on the Cumberland river, and near Barboursville 3
7
Lewis, on the Ohio .
I I
Lincoln, on Dick's river, and near Wilmington 2
Livingston, an octagon, of two thousand eight hundred and fifty-two feet.
on Hurricane creek, etc., mouth of the Cumberland . 3 11
Logan, towns and mounds on Muddy river, etc .: a silver medal found in a
IO
42
Madison, near the Kentucky. etc., mounds . 3 T
mound
I In introduction to Marshall's History of Kentucky. 1826.
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7 25
MEDICAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.
CATALOGUE OF ANCIENT MONUMENTS. (Continued.) No. of No. of Sites. Mons.
Mason, near Washington, a small teocalli . 2 2
McCracken, on the Ohio, a fine square teocalli, of twelve hundred feet, and fourteen feet high, on the Mississippi, five rows of mounds, etc . 3 35 Mercer, a fort on Dick's river ; several remains on Salt river, etc . 6 I2 Montgomery, squares, hexagons, polygons, etc., on Somerset and Buck creek,
many high, round, elliptical, or ditched mounds ; a fine circus or circu- lar temple, etc . 10
48
Pendleton, at the fork of Licking river I
Perry, a long dromus, near Hazard . I
I
Pulaski, stone mounds, on Pitman and Buck creeks . 2
7
Rockcastle, a stone grave two hundred feet long, five wide, three high, near Mount Vernon
I Scott, a ditched town near Georgetown, on the South Elkhorn, a square on Dry run, etc .
5 12
Shelby, near Shelbyville, and south of it
2 2
Trigg, a walled town, seven thousand five hundred feet in circumference, at Canton, on the Cumberland, inclosing several large mounds and square teocalli, one hundred and fifty feet long, ninety wide, twenty-two high.
Many mounds on Cumberland, Little river, Cadiz, etc . .
5 24
Warren, a ditched town, near Bowling Green, inclosing five houses, two teocallis, mounds, etc .
3 16
Whitley, a town on the Cumberland, above Williamsburg, with twenty houses, and a teocalli three hundred and sixty feet long, one hundred and fifty wide, twelve high. Remains of towns, with houses, on the waters of Laurel river and Watts' creek .
5 66
Woodford, a fine octagon teocalli of twelve hundred feet, and eight high.
A town of twenty-seven hundred feet, on South Elkhorn, a square on Clear creek, etc 6 12
Total . 148 505
Progress of Medical Science and Literature .- 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 estab- lishment 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, ex- cept the fact that they were both men of superior intelligence, and of far more than average cultivation. They were both noted as enterprising busi- ness men rather than great practitioners of medicine. In a " History of the Medical Literature of Kentucky," 1 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
I Transactions of the Kentucky State Medical Society, 1874.
I
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726
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
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 on a level with the skin. Swelling quickly came on, causing the flesh to rise above the end of the cane. Having no other in- struments 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 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 Lex- ington, 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 fre- quent contributor to the American Medical Repertory, published at Phila- delphia. He was the intimate friend of Dr. Samuel Brown, also of Lex- ington. 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 smail class, and, as the or- ganization 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 sur- geons. 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 Brocken- borough, 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 Tran-
727
EPHRAIM M'DOWELL, M. D.
sylvania University, at Lexington, while McDowell achieved immortal fame in sur- gery as the father of ovariotomy. Strong rivalry in the practice of medicine at Lex- ington, 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 dis- covery of the protective powers of vaccin- ation. 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. DR. EPHRAIM M'DOWELL. In 1817, Transylvania University being formally organized, with such men as Daniel Drake, Benjamin W. Dudley, Joseph Buchanan, Overton, and Blythe, a full course of lectures were delivered to a class of twenty, one of whom, John Lawson Mccullough, having passed a satisfactory examination, was, at the end of the term, formally admitted to the degree of doctor of medicine. During the winter of 1817-18, bitter jealousies existing in the profession at Lexington. the faculty was dissolved, Drake returning to Cin- cinnati, and Overton settling at Nashville. About the close of the year 1818, the Rev. Horace Holley having been chosen president of the univer- sity, both the academical and medical departments acquired new life. In the year 1819, a medical faculty, embracing the gifted scholar, Charles Caldwell. Samuel Brown, Dudley, Richardson, and Blythe, was organized. In the fall of that year began the brilliant career of Transylvania University as an educational institution. Lexington was then a more important city than Cincinnati. It had better schools; it was more popular and more widely known. The very best people of every section gathered at Lexing- ton to learn the arts and sciences, and with them came the afflicted. At this time, Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley, having just returned from Europe, began to astonish the people of the West. and finally the world, by the brilliant results of his operations, especially in lithotomy.
In 1795, fresh from the University of Edinburgh, came a young physi- cian, named Ephraim McDowell, who settled at Danville, an aristocratic little colony not far from Lexington. Here he displayed such remarkable talents as a physician and surgeon that he soon divided honors with the great men at Lexington : and while at the latter point the enterprising found- ers of what was soon to be the first great medical school of the West were busying themselves with schemes for the permanent establishment of Tran-
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728
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
sylvania University, McDowell, at Danville, laid the foundation for a great revolution in the ars chirurgica. A Mrs. Crawford residing on Green river, sixty-five miles south of Danville, had an enormous tumor of the abdomen, which, continuing to grow, greatly alarmed her. She sent for Dr. McDow- ell, who visited her bedside, and, after careful examination, he promised to perform the experiment of attempting to extirpate the tumor, should she be willing to visit his home at Danville. She did so, with the full understand- ing that the experiment might end in the sudden termination of her life. In December, 1809, the operation was performed; and, to her infinite de- light, as well as the joy and renown of the experimenter, recovery followed. She enjoyed comfortable health for a period of thirty-two years after this operation, and died, at length, in the seventy-ninth year of her age. Being encouraged by the result of this first operation, similar cases were subjected to extirpation, and in 1817, in the Philadelphia Eclectic Repertory and Ana- lytical Review, in an article of less than three octavo pages, entitled "Three Cases of Extirpation of Diseased Ovaria," the first publication of ovarioto- my was made to the world. In 1827, Dr. Johnson, editor of the London Medico-Chirurgical Review, after announcing the results of five cases, four of whom had recovered, says : "There were circumstances in the narrative of some of the first cases that raised misgivings in our minds, for which uncharitableness we ask pardon of God and of Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville."
McDowell was a man of fine personal presence, and, although bold to the extent of originality in surgery, he was modest even to timidity. It is not known how many times he performed ovariotomy, yet it is certain he repeated it so often as to thoroughly establish it. not only as a legitimate operation in surgery, but placed it high in the list of the great triumphs of science over disease. This great ovariotomist had become so widely known that people flocked to him at Danville from every part of the country. In the autumn of 1812, he performed lithotomy on a youth of seventeen years, from Maury county, Tennessee.' This youth was James K. Polk. afterward president of the United States. So happy was he, that he carried the cal- culus, which McDowell had taken from him, to his home in Tennessee, and exhibited it to his friends. This same calculus was exhibited by Professor Samuel D. Gross to the Kentucky State Medical Society, at Louisville. on Wednesday, October 31, 1852. In 1852, lithotomy had been done by Dr. B. W. Dudley two hundred and seven times : Ephraim McDowell. thirty- two times; A. G. Smith (afterward known as A. Goldsmith). fifty times : W. Gardner, fourteen times : J. M. Bush, six times : John Shackelford, four times ; Henry Miller, twice; John Hardin, five times ; S. B. Richardson. twice; John C. Richardson. once ; John Craige, twice: W. H. Donne, once : Walter Brashear, unknown; E. L. Dudley, once : D. W. Yandell, four times : L. P. Yandell, four times ; S. D. Gross, thirty times. It was known that Dr Brashear, of Bardstown, had performed the operation of lithotomy a consid-
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729
PROGRESS OF SURGERY.
erable number of times, yet at the time of Dr. Gross' historical sketch in 1852, it was impossible to obtain any detailed account of the cases.
Perhaps the most remarkable man who ever adorned the medical profes- sion of Kentucky was Benjamin Winslow Dudley, the impress of whose personal methods is still strongly marked in the daily practice of his pupils, scores of whom still live to adorn the higher walks of the profession all over the country. While Dudley was chiefly known for his great success in lithotomy, he was at the same time a pioneer in the application of the trephine in the relief of injuries to the walls of the cranium. He intro- duced the common roller bandage in the treatment of wounds of the limbs. In 1825, he relieved an enormous aneurism of the axilla by ligature of the subclavian artery. In 1841, he success- fully tied the common carotid artery for
. the relief of an aneurism which pressed into the orbit, and occupied a consider- able space in the cranial cavity. He treated successfully traumatic aneurism of the brachial artery by systematic compression as early as the autumn of 1814. Dr. Dudley introduced a simple method of treatment of fracture of the clavicle by the application of two large handkerchiefs to the arm in such a way as to force the upper end of the humerus upward, backward, and outward, in this way making extension in the longitudi- nal axis of the broken bone, which pre- vented overlapping of the fragments.
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