somewhat in politics, he abandoned his profession, only rendering service occasionally to his neighbors, and then gratis.

He represented Louisiana in the United States Senate, and was a man of great professional and personal popularity.

EPHRAIM MCDOWELL.

The one man who brought the greatest fame to Kentucky, by whose deed a greater number of years have been added to human life than by the work of any other surgeon, dead or living, was Ephraim McDowell.

The introduction of the religious teachings of Charles the First of England were so objectionable to Scotland that in 1638 that grand body of men known as Covenanters was organized, and from this stock came Dr. McDowell. His father, Samuel, was born in Virginia, October 29, 1735; married Mary McClung; distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War, and was appointed by General Washington the first Marshal of Kentucky. Dr. McDowell's family possessed elements of worth. His brother, John, was an officer in the War of the Independence as well as the War of 1812. His brother, William, was United States Judge for the District of Kentucky, and married Margaret Madison, sister of James Madison, ex-President of the United States. His brother, Joseph, was an officer in the War of 1812, and General Shelby's Adjutant-General at the battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, where Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee Chief, was killed. His sister, Martha, married Colonel Abram Buford, of Revolutionary fame; his sister, Mary, married Alexander Keith Marshall, brother of the late John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. James G. Birney, who was the abolitionist candidate for President in 1844, and whose nomination resulted in the defeat of Henry Clay, the candidate of the Whig party, married Agatha McDowell, a niece of Dr. McDowell.

Dr. McDowell possessed an excellent physical constitution, being a trifle less than six feet in height, had a striking face, black hair, ruddy, healthful complexion, elevated and rounded forehead, heavy arching eyebrows, rather large dark eyes, nose inclined to be heavy but well proportioned-a blending of the Grecian and Roman-a somewhat large, expressive mouth, and a broad, well-shaped under-jaw. Although being heavier than the average man, yet during his whole life he was brisk and active. He was a man of rare simplicity of character; one of

his most striking peculiarities being quite a modest estimation of his own worth, having no desire whatever for power or fame, and seeming to be content in performing, in the best possible manner, the duties of every-day life. Not only was he perfectly free from that stiff, unbending reserve so often met with in men of genius, but evidently lacked that air of dignity which should adorn one of his character and profession. He possessed a happy disposition, brilliant wit, polished manners, generous feelings; was a kind father, indulgent husband, and excellent citizen.

Dr. McDowell's advantages for acquiring even a common school education were not great, and from the style of his writings, as appeared in his only three contributions to medical literature, we infer that his early education must have been limited. He attended private schools in his own and neighboring counties, and the honorary degree given him by the University of Maryland in 1825 was the only degree it is positively known that he received.

He spent several years at Staunton, Va., as a student of Dr. Humphrey, who was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and went from there to Edinburgh himself in 1793, matriculating at the same university. There he became also a private pupil of the eloquent and earnest Mr. John Bell, and it is said that the latter gentleman inspired Dr. McDowell with the idea that the operation that afterward made him famous might be accomplished. After two years in Scotland he returned to his old home in Danville.

In 1802 he was married to Sarah, a daughter of Kentucky's first Governor, Isaac Shelby, an accomplished, amiable, and estimable lady, who was in every way fitted to make his home attractive. She was granted the privilege of administering to his happiness and comfort during the remainder of his life, surviving him about ten years.

I will not speak at length of the operation, the crowning achievement of his life, and that made Dr. McDowell's name familiar with the medical profession all over the world; suffice to say that in 1809 he successfully removed an ovarian tumor weighing 221⁄2 pounds. The patient was Mrs. Crawford, age forty-seven years, of Green County, this State, and she lived for thirty years afterward; and because of this procedure he has been justly known as the "Father of Ovariotomy," as he was the originator of abdominal surgery. (Mrs. Crawford's son afterward became Mayor of the city of Louisville.) The old house where Mrs. Crawford was operated upon still stands in Danville, and I

had the pleasure but a few days since of being shown the very room where the first ovariotomy was performed. The proof of Dr. McDowell's claim for priority in this procedure is so conclusive no fair-minded man can doubt it. The total number of such operations known to have been performed by him were thirteen, with eight recoveries.

Dr. McDowell did a large and select practice, much of it being general surgery, and was oftentimes called long distances from home. He operated a number of times for vesical calculi. One of his clients, then in 1812 a young man, James K. Polk, of Tennessee, afterward became President of the United States. He was elected an honorary member of several medical societies, owned a good library, and kept well abreast of the profession.

From an early day he possessed thorough Christian convictions, but did not become a member of a church until 1828, then joined the Episcopal Church. He was, from its organization, an earnest supporter of the Presbyterian College, " Center," in Danville.

Dr. McDowell was a native of Virginia, born in Rockbridge County, November 11, 1771; died at Danville, June 25, 1830, where his remains rest on a square of ground given by that city, and under a handsome monument erected by the women all over the country who have been blessed because of his work, and by others who love to revere the memory of the great and good.

In the whole history of medicine none can be found more deserving of our admiration and love than McDowell. We can look back and see no brighter star in all the medical galaxy than was he. It was the luminous glance of his genius, "like the splendor of the golden bough that bore the Trojan hero through the darksome regions of the nether realms," darting through the branches of the tree of medical knowledge gilt with a new light the sombre leaf of ovarian disease.

DR. CHARLES MCCREERY

Was of Scotch-Irish descent, his grandfather, John, coming to this country and locating in Maryland in 1720. His father, Robert, moved to Clark County, Ky., where the subject of this sketch, the seventh son and youngest of nine children, was born, June 13, 1785.

Dr. McCreery was an uncle of the late Senator Thomas C. McCreery, and great-uncle of ex-Gov. James B. McCreery. He married Ann Wayman Crow, of Maryland, and settled in Hartford, Ohio County, where he spent the remainder of his life. Dr. McCreery did a large

practice in Ohio and adjoining counties, making extended rides horseback, and yet found time to deliver lectures regularly in his home to his own students as well as students of others. His surgical instrųments were made under his own supervision by an expert silversmith in Hartford.

His chief operation, the one that makes his fame enduring, was extirpation of the entire collar-bone in 1811, the first of which record is made. This operation was done upon a young man, and though the bone was said to have been scrofulous, was a decided success, the patient making a perfect recovery with perfect use of the arm and living past middle life.

The case of Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York, performed in 1828, which Dr. Mott supposed was the first operation of the kind done in the United States, and about the wonders of which surgical writers at that time said so much, was not a complete removal, for about one inch of the acromonial end of the clavicle was left.

Dr. McCreery was a fine historian, a great reader, eloquent speaker, ready writer, and close student. The love of his patients for him bordered on idolatry, his name being to them a synonym of kindliest sympathy and readiest helpfulness. His home life was characterized by unusual sweetness and tenderness, and an intense appreciation of child nature. He was a finely-formed, handsome man with noble brow and fine dark eyes.

Dr. McCreery died of cardiac dropsy August 27, 1826, at West Point, on his return from Shelbyville, where he had gone to bring his two oldest daughters home from Science Hill Academy. I have had the pleasure of visiting his grave at Hartford, which is handsomely cared for by his grandchildren, and he need not to have uttered the prayer, "Lord, keep my memory green."

BENJAMIN WINSLOW DUDLEY,

of Lexington, known as the greatest lithotomist of the nineteenth century, the "Surgical Patriarch of the West," was one of the most distinguished surgeons of his day. He was one of the organizers of the Medical Department of Transylvania University, its master spirit, and its Professor of Anatomy and Surgery. He was also, in 1850, the founder of the Kentucky School of Medicine, having organized its faculty, of which he remained a member for several years, and remained

*Case reported in full by Dr. Johnson in January, 1850, number New Orleans Med. and Surg. Journal.

with it until he was sixty-five years of age (1857), when he moved to his farm to pass the evening of his life.

After graduating at the University of Pennsylvania in 1806, he spent several years abroad, most of the time in London and Paris, where he gave especial attention to surgery, as taught in the schools and hospitals of those medical centers. He returned to Lexington, which place was soon recognized as the seat of learning of the West, not only medical, but legal and clerical also; the home of Robertson, the Breckinridges, Clay, and others.

While Dudley did general surgery, treating especially and successfully traumatic epilepsy by trephining, his chief field of labor was with the bladder. He did two hundred and twenty-five lateral cystotomies for vesical calculi with the loss of but three patients, not having a death in his first one hundred cases. Judging from his method, one must believe that he had a clear perception of asepsis and antisepsis. His chief reliance was upon thorough cleanliness, the free use externally of warm, almost hot, water that had been boiled, and internally of what he supposed was pure cistern water. An Englishman, alluding to Dr. Dudley, is said to have remarked "that it had been reserved for a backwoodsman of America to teach how to prepare the patient for a capital operation. He justly claimed to have first cured a case—and it was a formidable one, too—of intracranial aneurism by due preparation and ligature of the carotid. No one ever did so much with the roller, relying upon it even in fractures, of which he was emphatically the master."

He contributed but little to medical journalism, was accurate in diagnosis, of fine mental equipoise, gentle and kind, yet resolute, and of a quiet temper. Dr. Dudley was born in Virginia in 1785, the same year that gave birth to Dr. McCreery, and died in Lexington, January 20, 1870, where rest his remains.

Aside from these, many other of the earlier members of our profession became eminent, but time and your patience will not allow me to tell you at length of Dr. Allen Goldsmith, who, in Lincoln County, in 1829, performed for the first time in the United States lithotripsy; of Dr. John M. Briggs, of Bowling Green, who in 1830 for the first time in this country did hysterectomy; or of Dr. Mosely, whom Dr. Ely McClellan, of Philadelphia, told me carried out the principle of “Esmarch's bloodless operation" about sixty years ago; or of Dr. Benjamin G. Bowman, of Harrodsburg, to whom may almost safely be given the