USA > Tennessee > Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee > Part 87
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of the first-class. Think of the immensity of its possi- bilities, each teacher constituting another focal point, a new source of scientific, intellectual and moral light, diffusing an enlarged intelligence, a higher civilization and a purer Christianity among the common millions, thus blessing mankind and honoring God.
" Then, I would say to the distinguished chancellor, go on in your good work ; you handle a lever more pow- erful than that of Archimedes; its fulcrum is all time, and its sweep is eternity.
" We, however, propose to speak more particularly of the medical department. From its first annual an- nouncement, published in 1851, we learn that its faculty was composed of John M. Watson, professor of obstet- ries and diseases of women and children ; A. H. Buch- anan, professor of surgery; W. K. Bowling, professor of institutes and practice of medicine ; C. K. Winston, professor of materia medica and clinical medicine; Robert M. Porter, professor of anatomy and physiology ; J. Berrien Lindsley, professor of chemistry and phar- macy and dean of faculty; William T. Briggs, demonstra- tor of anatomy. In a second edition of that announce- ment appears the name of Paul F. Eve, professor of surgical anatomy and clinical surgery. From the same announcement, I also make the following extract :
"'The medical department of the University of Nashville was organized on the 11th day of October, 1850, at a full meeting of the board of trustees, by the unanimous appointment of the present faculty. By arrangement made with the trustees, the faculty are secured in the exclusive management of the department, a feature in its organization calculated to have the most beneficial effect upon the prosperity of the school.'."
" Thus, gentlemen, we have the organization of this department which has run such an unparalleled career of prosperity.
"And, in my humble judgment, the wisdom in its plan of organization which led to such brilliant achieve- ments, was developed in an address by my distinguished colleague, Prof. Bowling, to the trustees, urging upon them the founding of this department, and suggesting the basis upon which it should be established. From that address, I make the following extract :
". We have no hesitation in believing that the popular voice here is in favor of a medical school. Many at- tempts have heretofore been made in vain to meet the expectations of the public upon this subject. The great difficulty in the way of this enterprise, as is shown by its history, running through a period of fifteen years, has been, means to put it into successful operation. We propose to supply this desideratum from our private resources, and to chance the result for reimbursement. ". We ask of you, gentlemen, only a recognition, and the loan of your college buildings for the period of twenty years. We wish to have the sole management of the department ourselves.
"' First Because experience and the history of sim.
ilar institutions show that this power is safest with those most deeply interested ; and.
"'Second-Because this will be an enterprise in which we have invested no inconsiderable amount of money, and would, on that account, desire to be untram- melled in the management of it.'
" The wisdom of the suggestion 'to leave the sole management of the department to those most deeply interested,' and certainly under the circumstances, most competent to do so, was appreciated and adopted by the board of trustees, in most broad and liberal terms, granting the faculty all they asked in that direction. This feature in the management of the department reflects great credit upon the foresight and sagacity of the trustees, as time has most fully demonstrated, and is still retained.
" Thus we have the beginning of this brilliant and glorious success. "The faculty immediately provided all the paraphernalia of an elaborate and elegant museum, cabinets and ample chemical laboratory, etc. The col. lege buildings were enlarged, and so arranged as to adapt them to the purpose of medical teaching, there being, in addition to two large and well arranged lecture halls, each capable of accommodating five hundred stu- dents, an elegant and commodious amphitheater of equal capacity.
" All things being now ready, the next step in the development of a medical school was to command a class. The department, guided by the wisdom and im- pelled by the ardor and enthusiasm of its gifted found- ers, ' burst like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, at once into maturity, in full panoply, and rich in all the appointments of utility,' and commanded the largest first class that any institution of the kind had ever done in this country, and I doubt not, I may add, in the world.
" At the opening of her second course, in 1852, in discussing the advantages of Nashville as an educational point, Prof. Bowling said in the course of his remarks upon that subject :
" Medical instruction is consequently in the most perfect harmony with her taste and usage, as will here- after be that of law and divinity. Destiny has associ- ated her with all that is great in learning, and to insure that end has placed her beneath an Italian sky, where the northern breeze meets and tempers the hot breath of the sunny south, while each is chastened and purified by the commingling. She has given her for a throne the everlasting hills, whose marble bases are but sym- bolical of perpetuity, while the evergreen, which decor- ates their summits, is but another emblem of immor- tality. She has surrounded her with teeming hills and fertile valleys that luxuries unbidden might flow in spontaneously upon her, and crown her happy. Is it to be wondered at, that stern philosophy, exact and exact- ing science, the fitful but inspiring mises, and the kaleidoscope of letters should seek such a paradise for
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a perpetual jubilee? We need scarcely allude in this connection to the courtly elegance of her social circles, and her warm and generous hospitality, for these are indigenous to the soil.'
"Such, gentlemen, were the auspices under which she began her second course, which was equally successful and brilliant as its predecessor, and on she went in her triumphal march, until soon she was in the very front ranks of medical schools in America, as was predicted in the address already referred to, ' she would be in less than ten years.'
" So pleased were the trustees with the management and success of the department, that early in the period of the first lease to the faculty they added twenty years additional time to their right to occupy and control it, provided, they would still add to and amplify their museum and apparatus, which was agreed to, and done. She continued to add to her success and achievements, to the luster and brilliancy of her fame, until, in the language of the distinguished gentleman already quoted: ' When the war came, the eagle phunage of our medical school was already bathing in the sun, the cynosure of the republies of science throughout the world.'
" By the convulsions and vicissitudes of war, she was crippled but not crushed, Cato, when informed that his son had been slain in battle, answered something like this: 'T should have blushed had my house stood and prospered amid scenes like these.'
"Though wounded, and temporarily arrested in her progress, she still lives, and in the spirit of honorable and glorious rivalry, offers again the gauntlet to those of her competitors who were more fortunately situated in relation to the calamities of that struggle, with the assurance that she will not only deserve victory, but again wrest it from temporary defeat.
" In carrying out this determination, we are being nobly sustained by the trustees, who, less than two years ago, came forward and added thirteen years to our ex- isting lease, giving us an aggregate of thirty years of unexpired possession, conditioned that the lessees would build a hospital attached to the college buildings.
" Already, with all modern improvements; the beau- tiful, magnificent and imposing structure is there, and has been utilized during two sessions. Thus fully equipped with all the appointments of a first-class med- ical college, I say we again kindly and fraternally, yet boldly, offer the gauge in honorable rivalry to the most. flattered, proud and petted of fortune's favorites, and are willing to abide the arbitrament of time for the result.
" The faculty of this institution has furnished to the American Medical Association two presidents and five vice-presidents, an honor which, I believe, has been conferred upon no other college in America.
"I will not stop to panegyrize the great names of its founders, Their works are their proudest eulogists. They have erected for themselves a monument imper
ishable as the noble profession to the culture and eleva- tion of which they have contributed so much, and high upon whose roll of fame have inscribed their names in letters of living light, to cheer and animate its votaries who are to follow them to high resolves, lofty aspira- tions and noble achievements:
"So much for the medical department of the Univer- sity of Nashville, which has been adopted by Vander- bilt University. This medical department now repre- sents each one of these universities, distinct in their faculty organizations, yet joint in their teaching. We have their endorsement, with the power of conferring the degree of doctor of medicine in the name of each institution. We teach the classes jointly, each having all the facilities of the other.
" How honored we are, my colleagues, to enjoy the confidence and official recognition of two such universi- ties, and with what ceaseless diligence, assiduity and fidelity, should we labor to prove ourselves worthy of such confidence, and safe repositories of such trusts. Two great benefactors, alike herculean giants, combin- ing the strength, manhood and wisdom of age with the bloom, beauty, energy and activity of youth.
"To you, young gentlemen, students of two such in- stitutions, twin brothers, as you are, in science, let the only rivalry known among you be that spirit of noble emulation of who can best work and who best agree.
" We come now to consider Vanderbilt University :
" While yet in its infancy it rears its massive propor- tions in architectural beauty within our suburbs. Char- tered in 1872, as the central university of the Methodist Episcopal church, South, the impoverished condition of the country embarrassed its friends in the raising of funds for its organization, and threatened to disappoint the hopes of its wise and sagacious projectors, when, in 1873, Cornelius Vanderbilt gave the institution five hun- dred thousand dollars, thus insuring its establishment.
" He subsequently increased this amount to one mill- ion dollars, making it at once a rich institution, with ample means to guarantee success. The board of trust, upon his first donation (which large sum at once consti- tuted him its founder), without any intimation or ex- pressed desire upon his part, gave the institution his honored name, 'Vanderbit University.'
" Already, for over a year, has it been in full opera- tion in all its departments, of theology, law, philosophy, science, literature and medicine. We, of the medical department, had the honor of starting first, and are now celebrating our third commencement.
" It mumbered, in its various departments, over three hundred students in 1875 and 1876. It now has a library of over six thousand volumes, scientific apparatus which cost more than fifty thousand dollars, and exten- sive geological and mineralogical cabinets. Tuition is free to all in the theological department, and in the sei- entific and literary departments to all who are prepar- ing for the ministry.
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" Thus it will be seen that. by the munificence of its great founder, the university is placed upon a solid and substantial basis, which, under the wise and discreet management of those to whom his sagacity entrusted its care, insures not only its permanent, but, we trust, its brilliant success.
" He made but one condition to his bequest, and that was that its present honored head, Bishop MeTycire, should remain, during his life, president of the board of trust, thus giving, as we hope, permanency and wis- dom to the policy of its government. This furnishes another illustration of the intense foresight and im- mense powers of combination so characteristic of the man. To that board, with such a head, he might well confide the trust.
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"While we may congratulate ourselves upon the establishment in our favored city of such an institu- tion, while as citizens of Nashville and Tennessee and of the entire country, we have reason to be, and are, justly proud of it, and look forward with sanguine hopes and anticipations to the possibilities of its future. Yet this is an occasion not of unalloyed joy. The institu- tion is now in mourning for its founder. Cornelius Vanderbilt is no more. On the 4th of January last, that insatiate archer, which spares neither age, sex nor !
condition. that leveler of all Ionman distinctions, death. claimed him for its victim.
" It is a time-honored custom to commemorate the death of the great and good, and justly so. Nations mourn the death of the patriot statesman, whose wise counsels have blessed their nationality. The warrior, too, the track of whose triumphal car is all stained with human blood and strewed with weeping widows and helpless orphans, desolation, poverty and ruin, com- mands the homage of mankind in honors lavished in all the ' pomp and circumstance of glorious war.'
" We come not to-night to do honor to the statesman or orator who, by the terseness of his logie, the bril- lianey of his conceptions, with imagery instinct with life and sparkling with jewels, has enchained a senate, or taken captive an admiring world; nor of the warrior, whose glory is red with human gore, and whose hands are Breaking in the blood of those whose full was his success ; not one w hose unbridled ambition chose him through slaughter to a throne. No, but one whose laurels are gathered from the nobler spheres of life ; one who, with a smile for every difficulty, superior ge- nius, indefatigable energy, wonderful powers of com- bination and incorruptible integrity, carved his way upward from poverty and obscurity to the pinnacle of commercial and financial fame and success. While other men studied the laws of commerce and finance, he was their monarch, and, as their master, prescribed their laws, and they being proud of their sovereign, de- lighted in doing him honor by pouring their treasure in rich profusion at his feet. Thus be achieved a suc- cess greater in its plory and nobler in its influence than
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all the blood-bought victories of the world's proud con- querors.
"This is he whose name we propose to honor in mem- ory this evening. What has he done for us? When the clouds of adversity were lowering heavily over our southern land, everything dark as Erebus, our land all drenched in the blood of its best and most chivalrous ; crushed as we were, overthrown and oppressed, the world against us, nothing to hope for but destitution and distress; when our noble chieftain lay with his wasted limbs manacled behind the gloomy dungeon walls of Fortress Monroe, dragging ont an existence already made miserable by misfortune and disaster, Cornelius Vanderbilt came to his rescue, and with his golden pen wrote freedom to the prisoner and happi- ness to the hearts of the people he loved so well.
" Nor did he stop here. With a deep, earnest interest in the great social sphere of that metropolis in which he moved, and a heart beating with sympathy for the lonely stranger, flung out upon the temptations of a great city, he took liberally of his means, and dedicated a temple to the living God, and appropriated it to the 'strangers' of New York, and placed there to minister at its altars one whose great accomplishments, intel- lectual, social and religious, rendered him peculiarly fit to assume the charge of so grand and noble an enter-
"Nor did he stop here. He looked with a sad and sympathizing heart once more to our stricken and de- vastated southern land, and saw our youths with no inheritance but poverty, and nothing but their strong arms and stout hearts to carve their way to fortune and success. He saw genius crushed and talent hampered, and in the munificence of his mighty soul, again he stretched out his hand and spoke into being the grand institution which bears his name, to which our youths may come, as pilgrims to a ' Mecca,' from every portion of this impoverished land, and enjoy advantages and opportunities equal to any the world can offer.
". Let us contemplate for a moment what may be ac- complished by the immense field of this benefaction. It proposes to educate the youth of the country and prepare them for all the walls of life: to educate them in the honorable professions, to teach the jurist to rightfully adjust the balance in which controverted interests tremble, to enforce justice and protect the in- nocent and helpless; to instruct aright the doctor in his high calling, and enable him not ouly to carry hope and confidence into the stricken palace, whose loved ones in affluence are racked with pain and writhing in anguish, with power, under the blessings of Providence, to soothe, tranquilize and cure; but also to carry con- solation and relief to the poverty-stricken in destitution and distress in the lowly hovel, where affection may be equally as tender, heart sentiments as pure and exalted, sympathy as sincere, and grief as poignant as among the more favored of fortune.
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" Here, let me charge you, young gentlemen, never allow an unfortunate man, an afflicted woman, or a sick child to be too poor to command your services. Let this be without ostentation, however; let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth.
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" But this benefaction does not propose to stop here; it has still higher, more exalted and glorious purposes. It has a theological department, cramped by no narrow sectarian boundaries, in which is taught to theological students of all denominations the unsearchable riches of the Gospel, that they may go the ends of the earth proclaiming the glad tidings of great joy, and offering in the name of our blessed Saviour eternal salvation to all who will believe upon Him, without money and with- out price.
"Think of it! How vast is destined to be the influ- ence of these cultivated and pious young men, and many of them gifted, too, servants of the Master, com- missioned as so many ministers of mercy to carry con- solation, joy and hope, not only to the 'fertile regions of the earth, the hospitable homes of virtue, cultiva- tion and morality,' but to the fastnesses of the moun- tains, the aboites of wretchedness and want. to the far-off isles of the sea, and to the heathen, even, wherever ac- cessible.
" Nor does the munificence of this wonderful man stop here. . His sympathies have gone out to the poor, help- less and disabled railroad man, and he orders hall' a million to a home for the relief of that unfortunate class.
" While upon the subject of his liberality, it is proper to mention that, much as he has done for us, it was from the noble generosity of his soul. In the civil war his sympathies were with the Federal government. When the Merrimac had disabled some of her naval vessels he gave her his proud steamer, bearing his own name, in recognition of which Congress voted him a gold medal.
" We will tax your patience with the recital of but one more act characteristic of this noble, generous man. Cornelius Vanderbilt did not forget his doctor. He left him thirty thousand dollars; a noble example, worthy of commemoration at least, if not of imitation. He seems to have been particularly partial to our pro- fession. When, in about 1853, in one of his best steamships, he took his family and a select company of friends abroad, visiting England and France, and the principal ports of the Baltic and Mediterranean,' of' whom do you suppose that select company consisted ? Of a minister and his family, and his physician and his family. See his wis lom in taking a doctor along, to say nothing of his good taste. Some one might have been taken sick, and he was too smart to be caught without a doctor in that event.
" In every sphere of life, from the young boatman, protecting his passengers from the impertinent inso lence of an intermeddling military officer, to the ' king
of' commerce,' with his ships fretting every harbor and every sea, and to, perhaps, the heaviest and most suc- cessful operator in stocks the world has ever known, we find the same bold, comprehensive, successful ele- ments guiding this man of destiny.
" He not only knew how to accumulate, but he had the higher faculty of knowing how to dispense. He was no accident. God had a purpose in his creation. There was a divinity shaping his euds. The conception was divine, the honored instrument was Vanderbilt. The fidelity with which he carried out his trust will make his name iunnortal. When monuments of brass and marble shall have crumbled into dust, his name, embalmed in the gratitude and love of succeeding ages, will be praised and honored by generations yet unborn.
" This man was the founder of Vanderbilt University. This much, gentlemen, for the two universities, the medical department of each of which we have the honor to represent. Such are the institutions the honors of which you are to take to-night, and as the representa- tive of the faculties, it is my pleasing duty to pro- nounce you, alumni, worthy of such alme nutres, and welcome you into the profession of your choice, a pro- fession which has commanded the time and attention, and indeed absorbed the lives, of many of the bright- est, best and most gifted names which adorn the pages of history.
" Let us, who would presume to be the successors of such men, prepare ourselves for all the acquisitions within our reach, and by constant study and watchful- ness, be ever ready to maintain the dignity, integrity and efficiency of the healing art.
" What the future may be, depends upon us. It has been well said, 'the present is ours, the past is ours also, for medicine is not a science of yesterday, nor the dream of a wild schemer, but originating in antiquity, practiced by the Redeemer, handed down, enriched and improved, through centuries, to be perfected only in eternity. The greatest minds of the earth have given it the admiration of their youth; their manhood has im- proved, ornamented and simplified, and their old age has relied upon it. The vegetable and mineral kingdoms are closely allied to, and kindred sciences give it their strongest support. This is the lofty fabric, planned by the great Architect, founded upon a rock of adamant, which has resisted the stories of time, the floods of persecution and ridicule, the stormy gust of passion and envy, and remains not only unscathed, but whose fair proportions are daily more colossal and finished.' Its reputation is now to be entrusted to your keeping. I charge you, preserve untarnished its honor, Regard those of your profession, by whom you are surrounded, not as rivals, but as colleagues. Observe serupulously, in your intercourse with your professional brethren, the code of ethics of the American Medical Association. " I need not urge upon a class of such honorable and intelligent young gentlemen that you should resort to
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no unprofessional means to gain success. Shun the charlatan or mountebank with his disgraceful and mur- derous practices as you would a pestilence or plague, whose atmosphere is death. While the latter can only destroy your life, the former breathes a withering sirocco which will blast your reputation as well.
Do not underbid for patronage, thereby degrading your profession, stultifying yourselves and advertising your own consciousness of inferiority. It is weakness and imbecility that vacillates, always; conscious power never. Then, 'with hearts filled with enthusiasm for your profession, cultivate virtuous ambition with all its golden principles.' Let truth, honor, energy and fidelity be your motto, and success awaits you.
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" But, gentlemen, time moves on, and the hour has arrived when we must utter that sad, sad word, fare- well! No more is the light of your bright, happy faces to greet us with cordial welcome to the halls of science.
"Upon the occasion of the death of Daniel Webster, a plain, honest old neighbor of his, in one sentence, uttered the sublimest eulogy ever pronounced upon his great character, and it was this: Daniel Webster, the world will be lonesome without you.' Gentlemen, we shall be lonesome without you.
" Already does the restless locomotive, which is to 1 bear you to your homes, steam upon its rumbling track, impatient for its start, and we must not be selfish, but bid you go. Go to the welcome of those bright eyes, 1 which are to grow the brighter at your coming, make glad the fond hearts of your aged parents, your pure, beautiful, lovely and loving sisters, to say nothing 1
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