USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 93
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
merous, and are to be found in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, the American Practitioner, and other medical periodicals. A recent paper published in the Medical News and Abstract, of Philadelphia, has elicited much complimentary notice, and has been widely copied. Dr. McMurtry is of Scotch parentage, his ancestors having come over to Virginia in the early settlement of that State. He has de- voted much time and study to the literature of medicine, as well as to its essentially practical details.
LOCAL STATISTICS.
The last list of physicians published in Louis- ville, in the spring of 1882, showed 196 regular, Io homeopathic, I botanic, and I "vitapathic" physicians.
HOMEOPATHY
in Louisville dates from 1839, when it was in- troduced by Dr. J. G. Rosenstein, who had been an allopathic physician, but was converted to the new faith. The next year he published a little book entitled The Theory of the Practice of Homeopathy, the first part of which com- prised the treatise proper, with didactic rules, the rest conveying a controversial correspondence between himself and Drs. William A. McDowell, W. N. Merriwether, and Sanford Bell, prominent allopaths of the city. The volume attracted much attention to the author and his subject, and aided to give him high professional and scientific standing. He removed South in 1842, and was followed the same year by Dr. Logue, who went to New Orleans three years after, leaving a successor in his partner, Dr. Angell, an ex-Methodist minister. He also was short- lived here, leaving, in 1848, for Alabama. Mean- while, two years before, had come Dr. Edward Caspari, who remained to uphold the homœo- pathic banner in Louisville for nearly a quarter of a century, or until his death in March, 1870. Says one, writing of his advent in 1846: "Homœ- opathy now received an impetus which elevated it to the dignity of a profession, and new converts were added rapidly to its already large circle of
friends." In 1848 another valuable immigrant arrived, in the person of Dr. H. W. Kohler, "a man of fine education, a fine surgeon, a man devoted to his profession." Then rapidly came others-Drs. Armstrong, in 1850; C. Ehrmann and Campbell, in 1857; Clark (left the city
in 1860), and Van Buren in 1858; Keufner and Louis Ehrmann (removed to St. Louis in 1870), in 1858; Swift, in 1862; Bernard and Charles W. Breyfogle, in 1867 (the latter forming a part- nership with Caspari); W. L. Breyfogle in 1869 (who took the remaining interests of Caspari the same year); R. W. Pearce (from the ranks of the old school), in 1871; and Klein, Poole, and Pirtle, in 1873. To these may now be added several more recent comers.
. The profession did not rotate its members here so rapidly as in its struggling years, and Drs. Armstrong, Campbell, Keufner, and Poole, as well as Dr. Caspari, remained long enough to die at their posts.
Unfortunately we have no materials for bio- graphical sketches of these physicians, except of a single one of the Breyfogles, which will be found above. Dr. W. L. Breyfogle, in an historical account of homoeopathy in Kentucky, read to the American Institute of Homoeopathy in Philadelphia in 1876, says of the local status at that time:
There has been a steady and healthy growth in home- opathy in Louisville, notwithstanding the fact of its being the "hot-bed of allopathy." We now claim a fair proportion of the wealth and intelligence of the community, and the prac- tice has a foothold, and occupies a position that is rapidly in- creasing our list of converts.
In 1872 the State Homoeopathic Society was. organized in Louisville, with Dr. W. L. Breyfogle as President.
THE MEDICAL INSTITUTE.
An act of incorporation was obtained on the 7th of February, 1833, for the Medical Insti- tute of Louisville, a project which had been originated by three enterprising medical gentle- men of the city-Drs. Coleman Rogers, Harri- son Powell, and A. G. Smith. An organization was not attempted until the next year, when a Faculty was formed, in which Dr. Rogers became Professor of Anatomy. The Institute did not get fairly upon its feet, however, until four years afterwards, when Dr. Charles Caldwell came from Lexington to give the infant institution the benefit of his learning and experience. A mass- meeting of citizens was held at his suggestion, which was eloquently addressed by him in an address of two hours' length. Resolutions were unanimously voted that the Mayor and City Council should endow the Institute with a site and buildings and a gift or loan of $20,000. The
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
measures proposed were approved by the Coun- cil, with but one negative vote. The Medical Department of Transylvania University had just broken up; and Caldwell, who had been the leading member of its Faculty, was able to secure the aid of three others for it-Drs. Yandell, Short, and Cook. Several other famous physi- cians were subsequently connected with the school-as Drs. Daniel Drake and Cobb, of Cin- cinnati, and Flint, of Boston. It was while re- siding here that Dr. Drake wrote that entertain- ing series of reminiscential letters to his children, which have been collected under the title of Pioneer Life in Kentucky, and published, with a memoir by his son, ex-Senator Drake, of St. Louis, in a volume of the Ohio Valley Historical Series. The Institute opened its lectures with an attendance of eighty pupils, which was stead- ily increased every year, with one exception, until 1847, when the classes numbered four hun- dred and six, by far the largest number ever gathered in a medical school in the Mississippi Valley. By this time Dr. Caldwell, who was nearing his eightieth year and was feeling seri- ously the weight of age, desired to retire, and in 1849 his chair was vacated, the Board of Trus- tees at the same time tendering him the position of honorary and emeritus professor, which he declined.
The subject of the transference of the Med- ical Department of Transylvania University from Lexington to Louisville had been in agitation for some years, and had been attended with consid- erable ill-feeling between the two cities. The Legislature decided in 1837 that the removal should not be made; but the interested parties in Louisville decided to go forward upon the old charter of 1833 and 1835 for the Medical Insti- tute, which had not proved a success, and organ- ize a new School of Medicine here. The City Council appropriated $20,000 and four acres of ground for the necessary building, of which the corner-stone was laid in February following. A law school and a high school were afterwards es- tablished on the same lot of ground. Dr. Flint went abroad with a liberal sum of money at his command, and bought an excellent beginning of a library and apparatus for the Institute. Dr. Caldwell had been mainly influential in promot- ing the project; but many other eminent practi- tioners, as Drs. Flint, Yandell, Miller, Gross,
Cobb, Short, and Sullivan, et al., were then or subsequently connected with it.
The Institute was re-organized in 1837 suffi- ciently to resume sessions upon the new founda- tion, and reopened in the fall, occupying tempo- rary quarters in the upper rooms of the City Workhouse. It was successful from the first, soon attaining a high degree of popularity. Eighty students attended the first session, one hundred and twenty the second, two hundred and five the third, two hundred and sixty-two the fifth; and frequently since that time the attend- ance has reached four hundred. When Mr. Casseday wrote in 1852, he said: "It has at- tained the rank of the first school of medicine in the West, and is second to few in the country." It was ultimately thought expedient, however, to merge the Institute in the University of Louis- ville, which was chartered in 1846, and make it a department of that institution.
A NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL
was organized in Louisville nearly forty years ago -the Medical Department of the Masonic Uni- versity of Kentucky. The following-named gentle- men were Professors : Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley, of Anatomy and Surgery (emeritus); Dr. Robert Peter, of Chemistry and Toxicology; Dr. Thomas D. Mitchell, of Theory and Practice of Medicine; Dr. Joshua B. Flint, of Principles and Practice of Surgery; Dr. James M. Brush and Ethelbert L. Dudley, of Special and Surgical Anatomy and Operative Surgery; Dr. Henry M. Bullitt, of Physiology and Pathology ; Llewellyn Powell, of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children; Dr. Erasmus D. Foree, of Ma- teria Medica and Clinical Medicine; Dr. David Cummins, Demonstrator of Anatomy.
The school had thus a strong Faculty, and opened under very favorable auspices, with one hundred and three students the first year, and one hundred and ten the second. Mr. Casseday said in 1852: "Its claims seem al- ready to be recognized throughout the West." It was not destined, however, to become a per- manent institution in Louisville, and long since passed out of existence.
In 1838 the Louisville College of Physicians and Surgeons-a society, rather than a formally organized school-was constituted, under a legis- lative charter. It existed for many years, but
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
was broken up early in 1875, it is said through medical polities and strifes.
THE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL.
In April, 1837, four years after the Medical Institute of Louisville had been chartered, at a meeting of citizens in the Radical Methodist Episcopal Church, it was resolved that a college, with medical and law departments, should be founded in the city, and that the square belong- ing to the city, and bounded by Eighth and Ninth, Chestnut and Magazine streets, should be given by the city for the foundation of such a college; . and that the Medical Department should go into immediate operation, with buildings erected and library and apparatus provided for it as soon as possible. The City Council took action accord- ingly, and the grant of the square was made No- vember 21, 1837, to the Medical Institute. Suit- able buildings were also erected by the city, and apparatus and a library provided, within the next two years, at a cost to the city of about $30,000. February 7, 1846, the President and Trustees of the University of Louisville were chartered, and on the 24th of April, of the same year, in pursu- ance of a request from the Mayor and Council, the President and Managers of the Medical In- stitute transferred all its property to the Univer- sity, of which it forms the foundation. Upon this was founded the Medical Department of the University, which has since been highly success- ful, and with which have been connected some of the foremost physicians in the city.
A society of Alumni of the Department was formed in the city in the early part of 1882.
THE KENTUCKY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.
This institution is located on Green, between Third and Fourth streets. The first course of lectures in it was delivered in 1850. Some of the most eminent physicians in the city, as Drs. Coleman and Lewis Rogers, Ewing, Talbot, Powell, Winlock, Bell, Flint, Hewitt, Thornber- ry, Thayer, and Morton, were among the peti- tioners for its charter, and a number of leading citizens were its incorporators. Some very em- inent names, as Drs. Benjamin W. Dudley, Joshua B. Flint, Bush, Lawson, Bayless, and others, have been on its staff of instructors. Many years ago its building was burned, and all its apparatus and museum destroyed ; but the structure was promptly rebuilt, and it has since been highly prosperous.
THE LOUISVILLE MEDICAL COLLEGE
was established in September, 1869, and grew so rapidly in popularity and success that during the session of 1875-76 it was said to have had a larger class than was then in any other medical school west or south of Philadelphia. It has re- cently removed to a much larger and better building than was before occupied.
THE JEFFERSON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
is a very recent creation, its first session having opened February 15, 1882. Its faculty is mostly identical with that of the Louisville Medical College, but it is intended that its sessions shall be chiefly held at a different time, and during the warmer months.
LOUISVILLE COLLEGE OF PHARMACY.
This institution was organized on the 16th day of August, 1870. The following is the list of officers and Board of Trustees then elected: C. Lewis Diehl, president ; George A. New- man, first vice-president; B. F. Scribner, sec- ond vice-president; Frederick C. Miller, record- ing secretary; Louis Eichrodt, corresponding secretary ; George H. Cary, treasurer ; J. A. McAlfee, curator, who, together with the following, constituted the Board of Trustees : Drs. Thomas E. Jenkins, S. F. Dawes, Daniel B. Grable, Frederick J. Pfingst, and John Col- gan. This organization meeting was convened upon a call issued by a primary meeting held in July, 1870, at the office of Messrs, Wilder & Co., at which the following were present : Gra- ham Wilder, C. Lewis Diehl, J. M. Krim, Wil- liam Strassel, and Frederick C. Miller. Mr. C. Lewis Diehl was called to the chair and Mr. Frederick C. Miller appointed secretary. The College was incorporated by the Jefferson County Court the following year and began a course of lectures in November of the same year, with the following Faculty : Dr. Thomas E. Jenkins, Professor of Materia Medica; Dr. L. D. Kas- tenbine, Professor of Chemistry ; C. Lewis Diehl, Ph. G., Professor of Pharmacy.
The lectures were delivered in Mrs. Mary P. Pope's building on 'Third street, between Walnut and Guthrie, to a class of twenty-six students.
In 1873 the college obtained a charter from the State Legislature.
The lectures were for several years delivered in the Rudd block on Jefferson, near Second.
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
They were afterwards delivered in the German- English Academy on Second and Gray streets. All along the college had been making efforts to obtain a permanent home, which finally met with success.
In 1878 the college purchased its present building, located on Green, between First and Second streets. Last year the building was sub- jected to a thorough renovation, making, in its present condition, one of the best adapted for the purpose of pharmaceutical education in the country.
The college is now completing its eleventh an- nual session, the course being ended by March Ist. During the ten sessions fifty young men have become graduates of the School of Phar- macy. The present class numbers forty-five.
MEDICAL JOURNALISM.
The Louisville Journal of Medicine and Sur- gery had already been published here for some time when, in 1839, upon the removal of Dr. Daniel Drake to this city, he brought his West- ern Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences with him, and merged it into the other publica- tion, of which he became an editor.
The American Practitioner, a monthly journal of medicine and surgery, was started in January, 1870, and is now in its twenty-fifth volume. It is edited by Drs. David W. Yandell and The- ophilus Parvin, the latter of the Medical College of Indiana.
THE MEDICAL NEWS.
This is a weekly journal of medicine and surgery. Its first number appeared on Satur- day, January 1, 1876. Its founder was the late R. O. Cowling, A. M., M. D., professor of the principles and practices of surgery in the Uni- versity of Louisville Medical Department, who associated in the editorial work W. H. Galt, M. D., of Louisville. Dr. Galt retired from the editorship January Ist, 1878, and L. P. Yandell, M. D., professor of clinical medicine and diseases of children, University of Louisville Medical Department, was called to fill the vacancy. January 1, 1881, Dr. Yandell retired, and Dr. Cowling, associating with Dr. H. A. Cottell as managing editor, continued to con- tinued to conduct the journal till his death, which took place on April 2, 1881. Upon the the death of Dr. Cowling the News passed under
the editorial management of Dr. Holland, who, with Dr. Cottell, now conducts it. It is the only medical weekly published south of the Ohio River. It contains twelve quarto pages of read- ing devoted to editorials, original articles upon medicine and surgery, translations from foreign and home journals, and to miscellaneous items of medical news. The journal has secured a liberal patronage from the medical profession, and has won for itself a high place in our national medical literature. For the first three years of its life it devoted much space to the question of reform in medical teaching, and through its influence several glaring abuses of this department of education were discontinued in this and neighboring cities. It was the first journal to advocate those measures of reform which led to the establishment, in 1876, of the American Medical College Association.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE BENCH AND BAR.
Introductory-Biographical Sketches of Hon. James Speed, Hon. James Guthrie, Judge W. F. Bullock, Judge John W. Barr, Judge Henry J. Stites, Judge Henry W. Bruce, John and James Harrison, Worden Pope, Esq., Hon, Alex- ander Scott Bullitt, William C. Bullitt, Esq., and Joseph B. Kinkead, Esq .- Notices of Fortunatus Cosby, Father and Son, R. C. Anderson, Jr., John Rowan, S. S. Nich- olas, Patrick H. Pope, Joshma F. Bullitt, Andrew J. Bal- lard, Addison W. Gazlay, Bland Ballard, William Preston, John J. Marshall, H. C. Pindell, William J. Graves, Henry C. Woods, Pierce Butler, George W. John- ston, Philip Lee, Franklin Goring, William B. Hoke, Benjamin H. Helm, Joseph B. Read, Charles S. Morehead, Thomas A. Marshall, Edward Y. Parsons, John M. Har- lan, Eugene Underwood, John W. Kearny, B. H. Bristow, T. L. Burnett, John E. Newman, Samuel McKee, T. E. Bramlette, and R. H. Collins-The Law School-The Law Library-Bar Association.
The introduction to our Medical Chapter might well serve also for this. As in the former case, many notices of early practitioners have been included in the annals of Louisville ; the following are simply intended to include a few representative men in each epoch of the profes- sional history of the place-arranged, after the longer sketches, in the order of beginning in this city, and the hopeless attempt has not been made to deal in detail with each of many hundreds in the local profession, past and present.
61
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
HON. JAMES SPEED.
This distinguished gentleman is a representa- tive of one of the oldest families in the State and of Jefferson county. For many years he has held a position of the highest distinction at the bar, and in State and National public affairs. He was born in Jefferson county, near Louisville, March 11, 1812. He was the oldest son of a large family of children. His father was Judge John Speed, who came to Kentucky from Vir- ginia in 1783 with Captain James Speed, his father. Judge John Speed's wife, the mother of the present James Speed, was Lucy G. Fry, daughter of Joshua Fry. She also came from Virginia about 1793.
The progenitor of the Speed family in this country was James Speed, a descendant of the old chronicler of England, John Speed. He came to Virginia from England in 1695. His grandson, Captain James Speed, served in the Revolutionary war. He came to Kentucky, as above stated, in 1783. His son, Judge John Speed, settled in Jefferson county about the be- ginning of the present century. His son James, the subject of the present sketch, received the rudiments of his education in the county schools, and afterwards at St. Joseph's College, Bards- town, Kentucky, where he was graduated at the age of sixteen. He passed the next two years of his life writing in the office of the cleik of the Jefferson county court. He then attended lec- tures at the Law School of Transylvania Univer- sity at Lexington, Kentucky. He opened an office for practice in Louisville in 1833, now nearly half a century ago. He is, with the ex- ception of Judge William F. Bullock, the practi- tioner of the longest standing at the Louisville bar. He soon acquired a large business, and has been continuously successful. His life has been spent in the practice of law almost exclu- sively, his public life having only added to his reputation without diverting him from his pro- ession.
In 1847 he was elected to the lower house of the State Legislature. In 1849 he was candi- date of the Emancipation party for delegate to the State convention to frame a new State con- stitution. His opponent, Hon. James Guthrie, stood for the pro-slavery party and was elected. From 1856 to 1858 he was Professor in the Law Department in the University of Louisville, at
the same time sustaining the burdens of a full law practice.
When the civil war came on his action was prompt and decided in behalf of the Union. Among other conspicuous services at that time he was made mustering officer for the troops re- cruited in Kentucky for the Union army under President Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand men. In the first year of the war he was elected to the State Senate, and served for two years in that body. In 1864 he was called to the Cabi- .net of President Lincoln as Attorney-General. The office being in the condition it had existed . since the formation of the Government required reorganization. During his term various changes and reforms were made which remain to this day. Upon him fell the decision of a vast number of new and perplexing questions pertaining to war legislation and to the guidance of the Depart- ments. All this required great labor and re- search, and the exercise of a prompt, vigorous, and energetic mind. His services at this time were of great value to the country and gave him a wide and honorable reputation.
He remained in the discharge of the duties of this high office until the death of Mr. Lincoln, and afterwards under his successor, Andrew Johnson, until July, 1866, when his views of the policy of President Johnson made it impossible for him to remain in the Cabinet. He then re- signed, and at once resumed his practice. The same year he was the presiding officer of the Southern Unionist Convention, which assembled in Philadelphia, to protest against the policy of Andrew Johnson in dealing with Southern ques- tions.
In 1868 he was delegate from Kentucky in the National Convention which nominated Gen- eral Grant for the Presidency. The vote of the Kentucky delegation in that convention was given to Mr. Speed for the Vice-Presidency. He was also delegate to the conventions of 1872 and 1876, and in each served on the Committee on Resolutions.
In the year 1875 he was again made Professor in the Law Department of the University of Louisville, a position he continued to fill until 1879. He has maintained the practice of his profession, and, though seventy years of age, his physical and mental forces remain in unabated vigor.
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
Mr. Speed was married, in 1840, to Miss Jane Cochran, a daughter of John Cochran, a Scotch gentleman who came to Louisville in 1833 from Philadelphia and became a celebrated liquor merchant. Mrs. Speed is now living. They have had seven sons, six of whom still survive. The oldest, John, entered the Union service at the age of eighteen and served through the war on the general staff of the army with rank of Captain. He is now a practicing lawyer in Louisville, in connection with his father and Thomas Speed, Esq., a relative.
Mr. Speed possesses many striking character- istics. He is a lawyer of great learning, and a most skillful and successful practitioner. He is noted for his practical wisdom. His mind is quick, and his conclusions sound. He never fails to understand the real points at issue in a controversy. His speeches are remarkable for force, brevity, and comprehensiveness, and he never fails to impress the court and jury. He enjoys the perfect and entire confidence of all who know him. His frankness and purity of character are universally recognized. So conspic- uous is his sense of justice, fairness, candor, and impartiality, that he is constantly appealed to settle differences. The high esteem and respect in which he is held enable him to exert a great influence over both individuals and assemblies.
In politics Mr. Speed is a Republican. He is attached to no church as a member, but attends the Unitarian church in Louisville, which he has materially aided to sustain.
He has cultivated literary tastes, and has a large collection of miscellaneous literature. His favorite authors are Milton (prose writings), Plutaich (Morals), Cervantes, Montaigne, Gib- bon, Shakespeare, and the Bible.
He has always shown a great regard for young men. A large number have studied law in his office. This feeling led him to occupy the posi- tion of Law Professor in the University of Louis- ville for so many years. His students never failed to give him their love and confidence, and after entering the practice they always regard him as a personal friend.
Mr. Speed is a warm advocate of equal rights to all, and his influence in shaping the legislation of the country to this end was sensibly felt in the troublesome times immediately following the war. The following extract from one of his
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