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ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
FOUNDED 1836
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, LAST DATE
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? ••✓<*»-          DISCOURSE
OK THE
LIFE,  CHARACTER, AND SERVICES
DANIEL  DRAKE,  M.  D.
DELIVERED, Bt BEQUEST,
BEFORE THE FACULTY AND MEDICAL STUDENTS OFJTHE
    UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, JANUARY 27, 1853.


            ^>(   Aj
      BY  S.  D.  GROSS,  M.  D.
X-''f
            LOUISVILLE:
PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE LOUISVILLE JOURNAL.
     *            1853. 
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DISCOURSE.
   On the 5th of November, 1852, a telegraphic dispatch,
 dated at Cincinnati at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and re-
 ceived in this city three hours  afterwards, announced to
 us that our profession and our country were about to be de-
 prived of a great and good man.  It was short but unmis-
 takable,  full of significance and foreboding.   "Dr. Drake
 is supposed to  be dying."   Another message, received
 the next morning at 10 o'clock, only served to confirm the
 sad  and melancholy  intelligence of the preceding even-
 ing.   News, so entirely unexpected, fell with stunning ef-
 fect  upon the heart and intellect  of the friends of the de-
 parted physician in this community, so long the theatre of
 his acth e and useful  labors.  It is true, it had been ru-
 mored that he was unwell,  somewhat  indisposed,  but no
 one had thought him seriously ill, much less despaired of
 his life.    Henee, when the intelligence of  his  demise
 reached us, it took every one by surprise.   His intimate
 friends  and acquaintances,  those  who knew and  loved
 him kesty had never permitted themselves to think of him
in such  a connexion ; they had hoped and prayed that he
might have length of days,  and that he might be spared,
 
4
long enough at least, to complete the great work which
had so long and so intensely occupied his mind, and which
now only waited, as it were, to receive the last finishing
touches of his pen.   They had hoped that God would
vouchsafe him health and life that he might achieve the
great and now only remaining object of his ambition, and
that he might thus be permitted to hand to his professional
brethren, for their benefit, and the  benefit of his race, the
record of his acts, and the bond of his devotion to the great
and -noble pursuit which had so long occupied his thoughts
and affections, and engaged the best energies of his mind
and body.
  Only a fortnight before they had seen him in their very
midst, the " observed of all observers, " almost the "gay-
est of the gay. "  At the meeting in  this city, on the 21st
of October, of the  Kentucky State Medical  Society,
whose honored guest he was, he looked so well that every
one was struck with  the  circumstance;  and at the anni-
versary supper, two evenings afterwards, he responded,
in terms of glowing eloquence, to  a complimentary toast.
On  the following morning, with  steps that were never
more light, and spirits that were never more buoyant, he
called upon a number of his friends, as  well as upon his
former colleagues in this University, prior to the depart-
ure of the  Cincinnati packet,  which was to convey him,
as it proved, for the last time, upon the bosom of the Ohio.
Little did we think, as we shook hands,  that we had met
together for the last time,  and that the separation which
was about to take place was to be forever.  How little
does man know the future,  how incompetent is he to lift
the  veil which  screens him from his destiny!  It was onlv
a few hours before his departure that he paid his respects
to one of his  former colleagues, who still lingers among
us, bowed down by the frosts and labors of more  than
eighty winters. While sitting with him, and rapidly talk- 
a
ing over the topics of the day, he was painfully impressed
with the  changes which  time and disease had wrought
upon him since their last interview, and on returning, soon
after, to his lodgings, he could not refrain from mentioning
the circumstance to a female friend, and expressing his con-
viction that he should never again behold him.   Strange
prophecv !  The one still lives, clinging like an ancient and
venerable ivy to the tree of time, while the other,  many
 years his junior, lies cold and silent in the winding-sheet
of death.
   The wanderer is not long in performing his journey.
A few hours are sufficient to restore him to his home and
to the bosom of his children and grand-children, who,  as
thev see his  familiar face, eluster around  him, welcom-
ing-  him  with their smiles and their affection.  He has
finished  his  last  journey on  earth ; he  has  gazed for
the  last time  upon the beautiful  scenery  of his  beloved
 Ohio, enhanced  a thousand fold by the Great Portrait
 Painter and Chemist of Nature.   Never did the foliage of
 the  forest, adorned and diversified by the endless and ever-
 changin? tints of autumn, present itself in so attractive
 and resplendent a form.  As he looked upon it, his mind
 involuntarily recurred to the  period of  his  childhood,
 when, surrounded by  his parents, his brothers and sisters,
 he  dwelt  in the  wilds of Kentucky,  with nothing but
 trees, and birds,   and squirrels, and wild-flowers, for  his
 playmates and companions.  The scene revived in him  the
 recollection of his early struggles, his hopes, and aspira-
 tions, and, perhaps, admonished him, as he silently con-
 nected the present with the past, that the " sear and yel-
 low leaf of autumn " is a fit emblem of  man's mortality,
 and of the evanescent, transitory character of his earthly
 existence.
   The tolling of  the bell, that  solemn messenger of God,
 awakens the great physician from the revery into which 
6
he has lapsed, now that the first greetings of the happy
family group are over, and with a light heart he goes forth
to offer up, for the last time, his orisons at the altar of his
Savior.   His last Sabbath,  but one, upon the earth  is
passed, and the week, thus auspiciously begun, is spent, at
least in  part, in the midst of his pupils, at the bed-side of
the sick poor  at the Hospital,  and in his private study,
distilling from the alembic of his brain thoughts  and
words of mighty import  to  his  professional  brethren.
His fellow citizens are assembled to do honor to the mem-
ory of America's " Great Secretary;" and, inspired by the
occasion, at once solemn and impressive, he makes his
last public speech, calling the attention of the young men
around  him to Daniel  Webster's dying declaration of the
inestimable value of the christian religion, and of man's
utter  dependance upon Divine Mercy.  " Who, " he re-
marked " shall say that the  simple utterance  of the
departed statesman—'Thy rod, Thy rod—Thy staff, Thy
staff,  they comfort me'—do not constitute the greatest
act of that life of great acts?"
  His couch thatjnight knows no repose; the hand of disease
is laid heavily upon his brow,  and to-morrow's sun finds
him weary and unrefreshed.  Thus a few days are passed,
the enemy now  receding, and  now  advancing, until, at
length, it is but too evident to both patient and friends]that
the hour of convalescence, if it  is ever to come, is far off.
Gradually but steadily the destroyer progresses in his work,
making  sure and fearful inroads upon the system; great
debility  ensues; the brain is no longer  capable of shed-
ding its wonted light; thought flows sluggishly and re-
luctantly; speech  has lost  its  facility of utterance;  and
the sufferer is  oppressed by a sense of annihilation, inde-
scribable and overwhelming, and attended with the most
terrible  despondency.   He still sees and talks, but is hard-
ly able to think or feel!  Rousing himself from his leth- 
7
argy, he beckons to one near and dear to him, and speaks
to him concerning the unfinished condition of his great
work,  saying that his  only  ambition  was to complete it,
and expressing a hope that God might spare him for that
end.  Again he relapses into a state of torpor ; his agony
is so intense that he prays to be released ; he has  no lon-
ger any desire to live ;  all schemes of ambition, even the
wish to finish his work, have passed from his mind; his
soul is chastened and purified; God  has taught him the
folly of all earthly  hopes, and the vanity of  all human ex-
pectations.   While the mind and body are thus oppressed
and palsied, unstrung and tortured, the soul is buoyed up
with hope and joy, and clings with pertinacious tenacity
to its Savior. "Every nerve is strung with the most in-
tense desire to hold Him fast. "
  All of a sudden the sufferer expresses himself better; he
experiences "temporary relief;" an anodyne draught is ad-
ministered,  and presently he falls into a sleep so sweet and
natural that the watchers think  of approaching convales-
cence.  Vain and delusive hope!  The sleep so "sweet and
natural" is the sleep of death; life is flickering in its socket,
and just before it is extinguished the  eyes once more open
and  beam with an unearthly radiance, as the sun some-
times after a cloudy day suddenlybursts through the mist,
and  illumines for  an instant the horizon before he finally
sinks into the dark shades of night.  The spirit had fled so
gently and so softly that the precise moment of its depar-
ture was hardly perceptible.  The silver cord was loosed,
the  golden bowl was broken,  the duty  of the watchers
and the physicians was over, and the mourners went about
the streets.
   The news  of the  melancholy  event spread with  the
lio-htnino-'s speed.   Every where in the profession, as well
as in the  nation at large, it excited the most lively emo-
tions of sorrow.  The  Medical Schools of Cincinnati and
the  University  of Louisville  "ispended  their lectures, 
8
and passed resolutions,  expressive of their regret and of
their great loss, as well asol their sympathy with the fam-
ily of the deceased.   Numerous medical societies in the
South-west  also  held meetings, and gave vent to their
feelings in appropriate  resolutions.  The whole profes-
sion, in fact, felt that it had lost one of its best and great-
est men.
  The disease which deprived him of his life, and which
struck from the firmament of our  profession one  of its
brightest ornaments, was congestion of the brain, or, per-
haps, as lam inclined to think from  the character of the
symptoms, arachnitis. He had long dreaded the effects of
this malady, the first seizure of which he experienced while
a professor at Lexington  in 1825, and which came very
nigh proving fatal to him.  Nearly six weeks elapsed before
his health was sufficiently re-established to enable him to
resume his duties in the University.  He was ever after-
wards  subject to occasional attacks of  the disease,  but
they were generally mild, and usually passed off  in a few
days under the influence  of simple remedies.
  The immediate cause of his last illness was over exer-
tion of the brain, produced by the labors and excitement
consequent upon the opening of the session of the Medical
College of Ohio.  His toils, always excessive, were un-
ceasing; his vigilance never slumbered; aware that much
of the prosperity of the school would  necessarily depend
upon  his personal exertion, he spared no  effort to insure
its success, to advance  its dignity,  and to  promote its
interests.  He knew that the eyes of the profession of the
whole South-west were upon him, and that his character
as the re-builder of the Medical College of Ohio, of which
he had been the founder more than thirty years a°-o,
was at stake.  His  nervous  system  was  strung to the
utmost, and it was while thus occupied that he was seized
with the malady  which was destined to destroy him.
  His  illness was of short  duration;  death called him 
hence before disease  had worn out his frame, or age
dimmed  his intellectual  powers.   The  week before his
final seizure he lectured  and wrote with his accustomed
energy and ability.  Like a green leaf in autumn, loosened
by the frost, and shaken by the wind, he fell prematurely
from the tree of life, which he might, according to man's
feeble  judgment, have yet adorned for many years.  At
the time of his death he  had just  completed his sixty-
seventh year.
  His  funeral, delayed by the unexpected and unavoida-
ble detention of his only son,  Charles D. Drake, Esq., of
St. Louis,  took place on Wednesday afternoon, November
JOth, and was attended by his  late  colleagues and pupils,
by the Faculties and pupils of the other Cincinnati schools
of medicine, and  by an  immense concourse of citizens.
The procession was long and solemn, and the grief which
was depicted upon  every countenance afforded a striking
demonstration  of the esteem and affection of the people
among whom he had lived upwards of half a century, and
who knew so well how  to appreciate his many virtues.
The profession felt that they had lost their brightest orna-
ment,  and the citizens of  Cincinnati  that  they  had been
deprived of one  of their  conscript fathers.  The  body
was placed in a  vault in the  Episcopal burying-ground.
Next day, attended only by his family and a few very inti-
mate friends, it was removed to Spring  Grove Cemetery,
and deposited, in fulfilment  of his own wishes, by the side
of the remains of her, who, for eighteen  years,  had been
the worthy sharer of his joys and his sorrows, and whose
memory he romantically cherished during a period of up-
wards of a quarter of a century.
   Dr. Drake was born  at Plainfield, a small  village in
Essex county,  New Jersey,  October 20th, 1785.   Here
he spent the first two years  and a half of his life.  At the
expiration of this time, his father emigrated to Kentucky,
then only  nine  years older than his son, and  settled at
                           2 
10
Mays Lick, twelve miles  south-west  of Maysville,  and
fifty three miles from Lexington.  Mays Lick'was a colony
of East-Jersey people, with a few stragglers from Virginia
and Maryland ; and consisted, at the period referred to, of
fifty-two persons, all poor, and illiterate.   Their occupa-
tion was clearing  the forest and cultivating the soil.
  The log-cabin of that day,  the residence of the Drake
family, constituted an interesting feature of the landscape.
As  the name implies,  it was built  of  logs, generally un-
hewn,  with a puncheon  floor below,  and a  clap-board
floor above, a  small square window without glass, a chim-
ney of " cats and clay, "   and a  coarse roof.    It con-
sisted generally of one apartment, which served as a sit-
ting-room, dormitory and  kitchen.
  The ancestors of Dr. Drake were poor, illiterate, and
unknown to fame; but they possessed the great merit of
being  industrious,  honest, temperate  and pious.   To
spring from such ancestors, is, as he justly observes, high
descent  in the sight of Heaven, if not in the estimation of
man.  Both  his  grand-fathers lived in the very midst of
the battle-scenes of the revolution ; one of them, Shotwell,
was a  member of the Society of Friends,  and was, of
course,  a  non-combatant, while the other,  who  had no
such scruples,  was frequently engaged in the partizan
warfare of his native  State. *  The father of Dr. Drake
died at  Cincinnati in 1832, and the mother in 1831 ; both
at an advanced age.
  It was at Mays Lick, amidst the people  whom I have
briefly described, that young Drake spent the first fifteen
years of his life, performing such  labors as the exigencies
of  his family demanded.   In the winter months, generally
from November until March, he was sent to  school,  dis-
tant, usually about two miles from his father's cabin, while

  * Dr. Drake's Reminiscential Letters to his Children.   These Let-
ters, a copy of which was kindly put into  my hands by the family of the
deceased, will be particularly referred to hereafter. 
11
daring the remainder of the year he worked upon the farm,
attending  to the cattle, tilling  the  soil,  and clearing the
forest, an occupation in which he always took great de-
light.
  This kind of life, rude as it was, and uncongenial as it
must have been  to his taste was not without its advan-
tages.  It eminentlv fitted him for the observation  of
nature, so necessary  to a physician.   Nothing escaped
his eye.   Nature was spread out before him in all her diver-
sified forms, and he loved to contemplate her in the majes-
tic forest, in the mighty stream, now placid and now foaming
with anger, in the green  fields, in the flowers which adorn
the  valley and  the hill, in the clouds, in the lightning and
thunder,  in the snow and the frost, in the tempest and the
hurricane.
   It had  another effect.  While it  had the disadvantage
of preventing  him from  pursuing a steady course of liter-
ary culture,  and fitting  him for the early practice of med-
icine,  it excited in him habits of industry and attention to
business, teaching him patience and self-reliance, and giv-
ing him an insight into many matters,  to which the city-
 trained youth  is a stranger.
   Finally, the physical  labor  which he  underwent there
 served to impart health and vigor to his constitution, and
 thereby contributed to produce that power of endurance
 which he possessed in a degree  superior to that of almost
 every other man I have  ever known.
   But the settlement of Mays Lick was not  without  its
 charms and enjoyments.  To the young and imaginative
 mind  of  Drake every little spot in the landscape  was  in-
 vested with peculiar beauty and interest.  What to an or-
 dinary observer was barren and unattractive was to him
 a source of never-failing gratification.   In the spring and
 summer the surface of the earth was carpeted with the rich-
 est verdure, and embellished with myriads of wild-flowers,
 which, while they rendered the air redolent with fragrance,
 delisted the eye by their innumerable variety.  The trees, 
12
 those mighty denizens of the forest, were  clothed in their
 most majestic garb, adding beauty and  grandeur to the
 scene, enlivened by the music of birds, which thronged the
 woods, and constituted, along  with the merry and frolic-
 some squirrel, the familiar companions of the early settler.
 " Their  notes  made symphony with the winds,  as they
 played upon  the green leaves, and awakened melody as
 when the rays of the sun fell upon the harp of Memnon,
 but more real, and better for the young heart. " *
  The scholastic advantages of young Drake,  during his
 residence at Mays Lick, were,  as I have  already  hinted,
 very  limited.    The  teachers  of the  place were  itin-
 erants, of the most ordinary description,  whose function
 was to teach spelling, reading,  writing, and cyphering, as
 far  as the rule of three, beyond which few of them were
 able to go.  The fashion in  those days was for the whole
 school  to  learn and say their lessons aloud; a practice
 commended by Dr. Drake in after-life, as a good exercise
 of the voice, and as a means of improving the lungs, and
 disciplining the mind  for study in the midst of noise and
 confusion.
  His  first teacher was  a man from  the  " Eastern
 Shore" of Maryland,  an  ample  exponent of the state
 of society  in  that benighted region.   The school house
 in which  he  was  educated was  fifteen  by twenty feet
 in its dimension?, and  one story high, with  a wooden
 chimney, a puncheon floor, and a door with a latch  and
 string.   In the winter, light was admitted through oiled
 paper,  by long openings between  the  logs.  Glass was
 not to be obtained.   The ordinary fee for  tuition was fif-
 teen shillings a quarter.
  As to the classics, he knew nothing of them until after
he began to  study medicine;  for the reason, first, that
there were no teachers in his neighborhood competent to

  *Reminiscential Letters. 
13
impart instruction in them, and, secondly, that he was too
poor to go from home.   His father  stipulated  with his
professional preceptor that he should  be sent  to school
for six months to learn Latin ; but by some great absurd-
ity, as he observes, this was not done until he had studied
for eighteen months that which, for the want of Latin, he
could  not comprehend.  He never, I believe, studied the
Greek language.  In after  life he  acquired some know-
ledge of the French.
   His father's library was not, as might be supposed, either
large or diversified. It was, more properly speaking, select.
It  consisted of  a family Bible, Rippon's Hymns, Watts'
Hymns for children, the Pilgrim'sProgress, an old romance
of the days ot Knight Errantry, primers, with a plate rep-
resenting John Rogers  at  the stake, spelling books, an
arithmetic, and an almanac for the new year.  As he grew
up he met with Guthrie's Grammar of Geography, Entick's
Dictionary, Scott's  Lessons, ;Esops Fables, the Life of
Franklin, and  Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, the
latter of which, especially, he greatly prized.   A  news-
paper at that day was a rarity.   The first one ever pub-
lished in Kentucky was issued at Lexington in  1787, the
year before the emigration of the Drake family.  It was
 called  the  Kentucky Gazette,  and was  edited by John
 Bradford.  Nearly ten years afterwards another, the Pal-
 ladium, was established at Washington, four miles off, and
 of this  a number  fell  occasionally  into the boy's hands,
 always  affording him much gratification.
   Works of fiction he seldom read, even in after life; first,
 because he had not the time, and, secondly, because they
 always raised in him emotions so powerful  that  he was
 obliged, in  a great degree,  to avoid them.
   During his  sojourn under his father's roof, he was a
 close observer of the people around him, residents as well
 as emigrants,  the latter  of whom were in the habit of
 passing&in great numbers  through the  settlement. He 
14
studied their manners and habits,  observed their preju-
dices, noticed and compared their opinions,  and thus ac-
quired important knowledge of human nature.  Books
and book-learning alone do not serve to make up a man's
education ; he must mingle with the world,  and endeavor
to derive  from its  intercourse those lessons of wisdom
and practical tact which are  to regulate his conduct and
beautify his life.
  Thus, it will be seen that his alma mater was the for-
est: his teacher, nature ; his class-mates, birds, and squir-
rels, and  wild flowers.  Until the  commencement  of his
sixteenth year, when he left home to study  medicine,
he had never been beyond the confines of the settlement
at Mays Lick,  and it was not until his twentieth  year,
when he went  to Philadelphia to attend lectures,  that he
saw a large city.   The " Queen of the West, " as Cin-
cinnati has been since styled,  was then a  mere hamlet,
with hardly  a few thousand inhabitants.   Kentucky,  at
that early  day, had  but  one  University,  and  although
it was scarcely fifty  miles  distant  from  his doors, his
father was too poor to send him thither.
  It was to this spot, after the lapse of nearly half a cen-
tury, that the boy, now in the evening of his full and per-
fect manhood,  turns his  longing eye, anxious once more
to behold the home  of his early childhood.   He stands
before the lone and primitive cabin of his father, in which
used to dwell  all  that were near and dear  to him ; the
latch-string is  off the door; the hearth no  longer emits
its accustomed light and  heat; weeds  and  briers  grow
around and obstruct the entrance;  no familiar voices are
heard to greet and welcome the stranger;  all is still and
silent as the grave in the God's acre close by.  The  birds
no longer salute him with their merry music ; the squirrel,
whose gambols he was wont to watch with such  peculiar
fondness when a boy, is no  longer there ;  even the tall
and  weather-beaten  elm  no longer greets him with his 
15
presence.   All around is silence and desolation.   Upon
the "door cheeks" of the cabin he discovers the initials of
his own name, which he had inscribed therewith his rude
pen-knife fifty years before, silent witnesses of the  past,
reluctant to be effaced by time.  As he looked  around, and
surveyed the changes which half a century had wrought in
the landscape before him, a feeling of awe and melancholy,
unutterable and indescribable, seized his soul, and the sage
of three score years, the medical philosopher, and the ac-
knowledged head of his profession in the Great Valley of the
Mississippi, was instantly transmuted into the boy of fifteen.
Every feeling was unmanned, and tears, warm and burning,
gushed from the fountains of his soul.  The whole scene of
his childhood was vividly before him; the manly form of his
father, the meek and gentle features of his mother, the light
 and sportive figures of his brothers  and sisters, stood forth
 in bold relief, and painfully reminded him of the vanity and
 instability of all earthly things. Of the whole family group,
 ei°-ht in  number, which  was wont to assemble around
 the bright and burning  hearth,  only one, beside  himself,
 remained  to visit that tenantless  and desolate  friend of
 his childhood.
   Young  Drake was  early destined for the medical pro-
 fession." His father and  Dr. Goforth,  who afterwards be-
 came his preceptor, emigrated together from New Jersey
 to the West, and formed a great intimacy on their voyage
 down  the  Ohio.   Although his father thought him on
 many points a very weak man, yet  he believed him to be a
 great physician, and  already, when Daniel was only five
 years old, he had promised him as a student.  It was in
 consequence of this early pledge,  that the son often went
 by the soubriquet of  "Dr. Drake," long before he dream-
 ed of what medicine was.  Subsequently, however, it was
 determined that Daniel should remain at  home, and study
 medicine  with his cousin, Dr. John Drake,  a young man
 of extraordinary promise, superior genius, and great moral 
16
purity.   Just, however,  as the period  was approaching
for the consummation of his plans, young Drake died, to
the great disappointment of Daniel, who always regarded
the event as a real misfortune, inasmuch as it deprived him
not only of a  good  preceptor, but of the advantage of
studying at home,  and thus saving the expense of a resi-
dence at Cincinnati.   His father,  however, courageously
persevered in his cherished purpose, although he himself
would have preferred to  learn the trade of a saddler,  for
which, in fact,  he  had already  selected  a master at Lex-
ington,  whither some of his cornfield companions had
preceded him.
   In the autumn of 1800, and at the close of his fifteenth
year,  he was sent  to Cincinnati, and entered the office of
Dr. Goforth, of that city, as  a private pupil. The arrange-
ment was that he should live in his preceptor's family, and
that he should remain with him four years, at the end of
which he was to be transmuted into a doctor.   It was also
agreed between  the  parties that he  should  be  sent to
school two quarters, that he might learn  the Latin lan-
guage, which, up to that time, he had, as  already stated,
wholly neglected.  For his services and board, the pre-
ceptor was to receive $400; a tolerably large sum, consid-
ering the limited resources of his father.
   During his  pupilage,  young Drake  performed, with
alacrity and fidelity, all the various  duties which, at that
early  period of the West,  usually  devolved  on medical
students.  His business was not only to study his precep-
tor's books, but to  compound his prescriptions, to attend
to the shop or office,  and, as he advanced in knowledge,
to assist in practice.   The first task assigned him was to
read Quincy's Dispensatory  and grind quicksilver into
mercurial ointment; the latter of which, as  he quaintly re-
marks,* he found, from previous practice on a Kentucky
  * Dr. Drake's Discourses before the Cincinnati Medical LibranTX-
sociation, p. 56, 1852. 
17
hand-mill,  much the easier of the two.   Subsequently,
and by degrees,  he studied  Cheselden  on the Bones and
Innes on the Muscles, Boerhaave and Van Swieten's Com-
mentaries,  Chaptal's Chemistry, Cullen's Materia Medica,
and  Haller's Physiology.  These  works constituted,  at
that time,  the text-books of medical students,  and the
custom with many was to commit to memory the greater
portion of  their  contents.
  The term of his pupilage having expired, young Drake
underwent the ordeal of an examination,  and this being
found satisfactory, his  preceptor  honored him  with  an
autograph  diploma,  setting forth his  attainments in the
various branches of  the profession, and subscribing it as
Surgeon-General of the First  Division of Ohio Militia.
Under  the sanction of  this diploma, which he always
greatly valued as a memorial of the olden time, and which
was the first document of the  kind ever granted in  the
interior valley of North America, Dr. Drake  practised
medicine for the next eleven years, when it was corrobo-
rated by another from the University of Pennsylvania.
  In the spring of 1804, he formed a partnership with  his
preceptor, and in the autumn of 1805 he went  to Phila-
delphia to attend his first course of  lectures  under  the
celebrated teachers, Rush, Wistar, Barton, Physick, and
Woodhouse.  At the close of the session he returned to
the  West.   A journey,  at that  period, from Cincinnati to
Philadelphia, usually occupied many days, often from
twenty-five to  thirty, and  was generally performed  on
horse-back.  As the roads  were exceedingly rough,  and
the country was without bridges,  it was always attended
with great fatigue,  and, sometimes, even  with danger.
 Now the journey may  be  performed in  a few  days,  the
 traveler lounging the  while  upon velvet cushions, and
 sleeping nearly as well as in his own bed.
    Of his  first  preceptor, Dr. Drake always retained a
 lively  and grateful recollection.   In his "Discourses," 
18
delivered, in 1852, before the Cincinnati Medical Library
Association, he gives a short but graphic account of him,
from which it appears that he was a native of New York,
that he emigrated early in life to Kentucky, and that he
afterwards settled at Cincinnati,  where he died  in the
spring of 1817, in the fifty-first year of his age.  He was
a man of the most winning and fascinating manners, was
very kind and  courteous to the  poor, possessed fine con-
versational powers,  with  an  inexhaustible fund of anec-
dote,  was a warm politician, and was the first to praclise
vaccination in  the West.  Such a preceptor was worthy
of such a pupil, and such a pupil of such a preceptor.
  After his return from Philadelphia  young Drake lived
a year in Mason county, Kentucky, practising  medicine,
when  he went to Cincinnati.  Here he opened an office
and gradually acquired business, but to what extent I am
unable to say.   While thus engaged,  he married, in De-
cember, 1807,  Miss Harriet Sisson, a grand-daughter of
Col. Jared 31ansfield, Surveyor-General of the Northwest-
ern Territory,  and afterwards a distinguished  Professor
in the Military Academy at West Point.  This  lady pos-
sessed elegant manners, unusual personal beauty, and a
vigorous understanding.  The union  was a most conge-
nial and appreciative one; their attachment, founded upon
mutual esteem and good deeds, ripened with their years,
and by degrees assumed almost a romantic character.  In
her counsel and sympathy, Dr. Drake found support and
consolation in his pecuniary embarrassments, and in many
of the other trials of his varied and checkered life.  The
issue  of this union  was  three children, a son  and two
daughters; all  of whom survive to inherit their parent's
good name, and to transmit it unimpaired to their children.
Mrs. Drake died in September, 1825.
  He  attended his second course of lectures in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, in 1815, and was graduated  at the
end of the session, with the compliment from a member 
19
of the faculty of being a young man of great professonal
promise !   It will be seen hereafter that he was then al-
ready an author, having published, the preceding autumn,
his celebrated "Picture of Cincinnati."
  A little over a year after he received his medical degree,
Dr. Drake was  appointed to the Professorship of Materia
Medica in the Medical Department of Transylvania  Uni-
versity at Lexington, and in the following autumn entered
upon  the  discharge of the duties of  his Chair.  His col-
leagues were Dr. Benjamin W.  Dudley, afterwards  so
distinguished as a teacher and  a surgeon, Dr. William  H.
Richardson,  Dr. James Blythe, and  Dr. James Overton,
now of Nashville, Tenn.   The  number of students  in
attendance was twenty, of whom one, at the end of the
session, received the honors of the doctorate.  Dr. Drake,
having completed his course, returned to Cincinnati to  re-
sume his practice, and the school was soon after suspended.
   In  1819, Dr.  Drake founded, at Cincinnati, the Medical
College of Ohio, and immediately afterwards organized a
Faculty,  he  himself taking the  Chair of  Medicine.  A
course of lectures was delivered  to  a small class of stu-
dents, but misunderstandings soon  sprung up,  and Dr.
Drake was expelled from the school by two  of his col-
leagues,  he  himself  being the  presiding officer on  the
occasion
  Foiled in his attempt to build up a Medical Institution
at home, he was induced, in the autumn of 1823, to re-
enter Transylvania University,  as  an  incumbent of the
Chair which  he had vacated six years before.   He dis-
charged  the duties of this department with rare ability
for two years; when, upon the resignation of Dr. Brown,
he was   transferred to  the  Professorship  of  Medicine,
which he occupied until 1827, when he finally  retired to
Cincinnati; the number of pupils, in the  meantime, hav-
ing declined from 282 to 190.*
* Dr. Yandell's Introductory Lecture for 1852. 
20
  While  quietly pursuing his practice, and  editing the
journal which he had established only a few years before,
Dr. Drake was called, in 1830, to  the Professorship of
Medicine in the Jefferson College of Philadelphia; an in-
stitution  founded only five  years previously, and now,
after the lapse of a quarter of a century, the first school,
in the  number of its pupils,  on the  Continent.  Among
his colleagues were two gentlemen whose reputation, then
in an ingravescent state,  became finally, like his own, co-
extensive with the American Union.  I allude to the late
Dr. George McClellan and the late Dr. Eberle, the one an
ingenious and adroit surgeon, the other an able and accom-
plished physician.   Both were excellent teachers of their
respective departments, and both, but especially the latter,
erudite and successful authors.  It is no  disparagement
to these gentlemen to declare that the backwoodsman not
only acquitted himself with great credit, but that, long
before the close of  the session, he was the most popular
professor in the institution.   His prelections, I well recol-
lect, created quite  a  furor  among the physicians of the
city,  as  well as among  the pupils in the University of
Pennsylvania, not a few of whom wandered off,  as  the
hour of their delivery approached, to her young, and then
obscure, rival.  Eloquence such as his, ready and off-hand,
had not fallen from the lips of any teacher since the days
of Rush; his manner, too,  had something about it most
winning  and attractive;  it was full of force,  energy, and
expression, and could not fail, of itself, to rivet the atten-
tion of the dullest intellect,  while it was sure to captivate
and charm  the refined and  cultivated.  His  success was
complete ; backwoodsism had triumphed, and henceforth
 medical  men talked of Western teachers with more re-
 spect.
   Had Dr. Drake remained  in the Jefferson School no one
 can doubt that the brilliant success which has since await-
 ed it would have been attained years before.  With such 
21
colleagues as Eberle and McClellan, it would have rapidly
risen into notice,  and soon taken rank  with the proudest
institutions of the kind in the country.  But such was not
his wish ; he had other objects in view, and no sooner had
the session terminated than he  returned  to Cincinnati.
Previously, however,  to doing this he organized a Medical
Faculty in connection  with the Miami University at Oxford,
Ohio.   But the scheme,  which embraced two  of his late
Philadelphia colleagues, was not successful, and was final-
ly abandoned before  the commencement of the proposed
lecture-term the ensuing autumn.
   The Medical Department of the Miami University was
evidently intended as a rival of the Medical  College  of
 Ohio, the fortunes of which had long been on  the  wane.
 The friends of the latter, perceiving the design, exerted
 themselves to effect  an amalgamation of the two  Facul-
 ties,  and so  far  succeeded as to draw off a sufficient
 number of Dr.  Drake's  adherents to accomplish  their
 object.  To Dr. Drake himself was assigned a subordi-
 nate department, which,  at the end of the  session,  he
 vacated, and once more retired to private life.
    In the summer of  1835, Dr. Drake  conceived the pro-
 ject of organizing the medical department  of  the Cincin-
 nati  College.  He had, a short time before,'been invited
 to the chair of medicine in the Medical College of Ohio,
 which he had  founded sixteen years previously ;  but be-
 lieving that it would be impracticable, in the then existing
 state of things,  to place   the  institution  in a flourishing
 condition,  he deemed it his duty to decline the offer, and
 to enter at once  upon the business of establishing a new
 school.  The first course of lectures  was  delivered the
 ensuing winter to a class of sixty-six pupils.   The faculty
 consisted of seven members, with Dr.  Drake at the head
 as professor of medicine.   His colleagues were Dr. L. C.
 Rives, the present able and popular professor of obste-
 trics  in the Medical College of Ohio; Dr. Joseph Nash 
22
 M'Dowell, now of the University of Missouri; Dr. John P.
 Harrison, formerly of this city, and, after the downfall of
 the Cincinnati College, a professor in the Medical College
 of Ohio; Dr. James B. Rogers, afterwards professor of
 Chemistry in  the  University of Pennsylvania;  and Dr.
 Horatio G. Jameson, a  distinguished Surgeon of Balti-
 more, and at one time a professor in the Washington Col-
 lege of that city.   To myself was  assigned the Chair of
 Pathological  Anatomy, at that period almost the only one
 of the kind in the  United States.   Most of these gentle-
 men had either belonged to medical Schools, or had been
 private teachers, and had thus already established a reputa-
 tion as successful and popular instructors.  Several, on the
 contrary, appeared before their pupils  for the first time;
 but,  notwithstanding  this, they discharged their respec-
 tive duties not only with credit to themselves, but to the ad-
 miration of their classes.  At the close of the session Dr.
 Jameson resigned, and was succeeded by Dr. Willard Par-
 ker, the present justly distinguished Professor of Surgery
 in the Collegeof Physiciansand Surgeons of the city of New
 York.
   With such  a faculty the school could hardly fail to pros-
 per.  It had, however, to contend with one serious disad-
 vantage, namely,  the  want of an  endowment.  It  was,
 strictly  speaking, a private enterprise; and although the
 citizens of Cincinnati contributed,  perhaps not illiberally,
 to its support, yet the chief burden  fell  upon the four ori-
 ginal projectors,  Drake, Rives, McDowell, and myself.
 They found the edifice of the  Cincinnati College, erected
 many years before, in a state of decay, without apparatus,
lecture-rooms,  or museum ; they  had to go east of the
 mountains for two of their professors, with onerous guar-
anties ;  and they had to encounter no ordinary degree of
prejudice and actual  opposition from the friends of the
Medical College of Ohio.   It is not surprising, therefore,
that after struggling on, although with annually increas- 
23
ing classes, and with a spirit of activity and perseverance
that  hardly knew any  bounds, it should at length have
exhausted the patience and even the forbearance of its foun-
ders.  What, however, contributed more, perhaps, than
any  thing else, to its immediate downfall was the resigna-
tion  of Dr. Parker, who, in the summer of 1839, accepted
the corresponding chair in the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of the city of New York,  an institution which
he has been so instrumental  in elevating, and  which he
still continues to adorn by his talents and his extraordin-
ary  popularity as a teacher and a practitioner.  The vaca-
tion of the surgical chair was soon followed by my own re-
tirement and by that of my other  colleagues,  Dr. Drake
 being the last to withdraw.
   During the four years the school was in existence it edu-
 cated nearly four hundred pupils; the last class being nearly
 double that in  the rival institution, an evidence at once of
 its popularity, and of the ability and enterprise of its facul-
 ty.   The school had cost each of the original projectors
 about four thousand dollars, nearly the amount  of the
 emoluments of their respective chairs during its brief but
 brilliant career.
   Dr. Drake had the success of this enterprise much  at
 heart, and often expressed regret at its failure ; what  the
 result might have  been, if it had been vigorously pros-
 ecuted  up to the present time,  must,  of course, remain a
 matter  of conjecture.   I have often thought,  and so had
 my lamented friend, that we had vitality and energy enough
  in  our faculty to build up a great and flourishing institu-
  tion, creditable alike to the West and to the United States.
  He had a high opinion  of the ability,  zeal and learning of
  his colleagues, whom he never ceased to regard as one of
  the most powerful bodies of men with whom he was ever
  associated in medical teaching.  The correctness of his
 judgment was  amply confirmed by the elevated position
  to which  most of them have since attained.  Gradually 
24
one after another was called into the field, until  all were
at length employed in their former useful and honorable
pursuits.  Of that band, to which my heart and mind fre-
quently revert,  only four remain ; three, after having at-
tained an elevated position and reputation, slumber among
the dead ; while another is gradually and silently tottering
into the grave which yawns beneath his feet.
  Dr. Drake did not long continue idle.   The Faculty of
the Cincinnati College had hardly been disbanded, when he
received an invitation from the Trustees of this University
to the chair of Clinical Medicine and Pathological Anat-
omy.    This chair, created with special reference to him,
was not only novel in its character in this country,  but it
labored under the additional disadvantage of being an
"eighth chair" ; a circumstance without a precedent in
the United States. The anomaly was still further increased
by the establishment of an aggregate ticket of one hundred
and twenty dollars.   It was a bold experiment;  but the
result showed that those who made it had  not acted in the
matter  unwisely.  The new incumbent acquitted himself
with great ability, the new chair soon became popular, and
the rapid increase of the school fully attested the wisdom
and the policy of the  new measure, which secured  to its
faculty a gentleman of such enlarged experience  and re-
putation as a teacher.
  Dr. Drake remained in the occupancy of this chair until
the spring of 1844, when, on the retirement of Dr. Cooke,
he was transferred to the chair of Medicine. He continued
to labor in this department with his accustomed zeal and
eloquence until  the close of the session of 1849; when he
sent his resignation to the Board of Trustees.  The win-
ter before he vacated his chair he lectured to four hundred
and six pupils, the largest class ever assembled within the
walls of any medical institution in the valley of the Missis-
sippi.   The  prosperity of the University, indeed, could
hardly have been greater when he left it, although the 
25
number of students was somewhat less than the preceding
session, and the utmost harmony prevailed in the Faculty.
Notwithstanding these  circumstances, he deemed it his
duty  to retire.  The reason which he assigned for this
step was, that he should, in another year,  reach the period
of life, when, by an act of the Board of Trustees, a profes-
sor becomes superannuated, and he  thought it his duty to
anticipate this law, notwithstanding the framers of it had,
when they learned his intentions, abrogated it in his favor.
   Soon after  his  retirement from Louisville, Dr. Drake
was invited to the  Chair of Medicine in the Medical College
of Ohio ;  an appointment which, after  some hestitation, he
 accepted, but which he filled only one session.  Troubles,
either real or imaginary, arose during the winter, and at
the close of the term he found himself once more without
a professor's chair.   The introductory  lecture which he
delivered at the opening of the course is  so characteristic
of his love for the institution of his founding, and so  ex-
pressive of his ardent temperament, that I cannot refrain
from quoting from it one passage.
   After alluding  to his connection with various medical
 institutions, and to the fidelity with  which he had served
 them; to the fact  that he had been the first medical pupil
 in Cincinnati; and to the circumstance that he  had  founded,
 thirty years ago,  the school in which they were then as-
 sembled, he says: "My heart still fondly turned  to rny
 first love, your alma mater.  Her image,  glowing  in the
 warm and radiant tints of earlier life, was ever in my view
 Transylvania had been reorganized in 1819,  and included
 in its Faculty Professor Dudley, whose  surgical fame had
 already spread throughout the West, and that paragon of
 labor and perseverance, Professor Caldwell, now a veteran
 octogenarian.   In the year after my separation from this
 school, I was recalled to that; but neither the eloquence of
 colleagues, nor the greeting of the largest classes which
  the  University ever  enjoyed, could drive that  beautiful
                           4 
26
 image from my mind. After four sessions I resigned ;  and
 was  subsequently called  to  Jefferson Medical College,
 Philadelphia; but the image mingled with my shadow;
 and when we reached the summit of the mountain,  it bade
 me stop, and gaze upon the silvery cloud which hung over
 the place where you are now assembled.  Afterward, in
 the Medical Department of Cincinnati College, I lectured
 with men of power, to young men thirsting for knowledge,
 but the image still hovered around me.  I was then invi-
 ted to Louisville, became  a member  of one of the ablest
 Faculties ever embodied in the West, and saw the halls
 of the University rapidly filled.  But when I  looked on the
 faces of four hundred students, behold, the image was in
 their midst. While there I prosecuted an extensive course
 of personal inquiry into the causes and cure of the diseases
 of the interiorof the continent; and in journeyings by day,
 and journeyings by night — on the  water, and on the land
 — while struggling through the matted rushes where  the
 Mississippi  mingles  with  the Gulf — or camping with
 Indians and Canadian boatmen, under the pines and birches
 of Lake Superior, the image was still  my faithful compan-
 ion,  and whispered sweet words of encouragement and
 hope.  I bided my time; and after  twice doubling  the
 period through which Jacob waited for his Rachael,  the
 united voice of the Trustees and Professors has recalled
 me to the chair which I held in the beginning."
  In the autumn of 1850,  Dr. Drake was recalled to Lou-
 isville, to  the  chair  which he  had vacated eighteen
 months before.  He  remained in the school for two ses-
 sions, and then finally left it, once more  to re-enter  the
 Medical College of Ohio, now re-organized with an abler
 Faculty,  and under brighter auspices. It was here, just
at the  opening of the session, full  of hope and expecta-
tion  about the class and the prospects of  the Institution,
that the hand of death was laid upon him,  and that  his
varied but brilliant career was arrested. 
27
   The  friends of Dr.  Drake  cannot but  regret that he
 should have deemed it necessary, at his advanced age, to
 leave the University of Louisville, with which his name
 and fame had  been so long  associated, for the Medical
 College of Ohio.  He could  hardly have hoped,  under
 the circumstances,  to  teach much longer,  and it  was
 scarcely reasonable in him to expect, that, in his endeavors
 to build up a great and flourishing institution, he  could,
 at least for  the first few years, enjoy much ease of mind,
 or relaxation of body.  But  a destiny seemed to have
 hung over him,  and to have hurried him on.  He could
 not, and would not,  resist a long-cherished wish to  spend
 the evening of his life in an institution, to which, early in
 his career, when he had not yet acquired any substantial
 fame, he had given birth.   His affections  had never been
 alienated from  her for a moment, even  in his exile as a
 teacher  in other States; he fondly  hoped that  he should
 live long enough to see her assume a proud  rank among
 the great schools of the country;  and he prayed that God
 might permit him to breathe out his  last breath  in her
 service, and that he might die in the midst of her pupils,
 and be  followed by them  to his final resting place in the
 tomb.   His wish, in this  respect, was gratified; and few
 can doubt, that, had his life been spared a few years lon-
 ger, he would have realized his other expectations.
   Having spoken of Dr. Drake as a founder of Medical
 Schools, and of  his connection  with  various Medical
 Faculties, we may, in the  next place, contemplate him as
 a philanthropist and a patriot.
   The subject of public education and morals was always
 near his heart.  He took  an active part in the establish-
 ment and support of the "Western Literary Institute and
 College of Professional Teachers" at Cincinnati, attended
many of its meetings, often served upon its committees,
and delivered several addresses, replete with wisdom  and
sound learning.  The first time I ever heard him  speak 
28
in public was at a meeting of this  kind in 1834.  He
cherished, with a deep and abiding interest, all institutions
for the diffusion of knowledge,  and for the promotion of
virtue and piety, as well as all  charitable establishments,
especially hospitals,  lunatic  asylums,  and  schools for
the education of the blind and the deaf and dumb.
  In 1821, he procured, by personal application to the
Legislature of Ohio, aided by the recommendation of Gov.
Brown,  the establishment, at Cincinnati, of a charitable
institution, denominated the Commercial Hospital of Ohio,
of which, at the time of  his death, he was one of the phy-
sicians.   The grant was accompanied by an endowment,
which has afforded the institution great facilities, and en-
abled it to diffuse its blessings widely among the poor-sick
of the city and  township of Cincinnati, as well  as among
the  boatmen of the  Southwestern waters.   Connected
with the  Hospital was a Poor House, and an Asylum for
the Insane;  the latter of which, however, proving inade-
quate to  the objects intended, Dr. Drake used every pos-
sible exertion, by repeated appeals to his brethren, and,
finally, to  the  Legislature, to  have  this  portion of the
establishment  removed,  and  placed  under  a separate
board.  The result was the  present noble Institution for
the Insane at Columbus, the Capital of Ohio.
   In January, 1834, we  find him addressing an appeal to
the  Legislature of his  adopted  State  in  behalf of the
establishment of an institution for the education of the
Blind; and, early in the following year, he  read an able
report before the Medical Convention  of Ohio, at their
meeting  at Columbus, on the necessity for hospitals in the
valleys of the Mississippi and the Lakes, for the accom-
modation and relief of those engaged in the commerce of
the Southwest, as well as of travelers.  Copies of this
report were transmitted to the General Assembly of Ohio,
and to the President of the United  States, to Congress,
 and to the Heads of Departments.  How far these  labors 
29
were instrumental in promoting the object in question, I
am not informed ; but  it is certain  that  Congress soon
afterwards authorized the establishment of these institu-
tions, and that  they now greet the  eye  and cheer the
spirits of the boatman at numerous points of the South-
west.  It is but justice to state,  in this connection, that
the idea  of this great and noble  project originated with
Dr. Cornelius  Campbell, a benevolent physician of  St.
Louis.
   In  1827, Dr. Drake established the Cincinnati Eye  In-
firmary.   It was modeled after similar institutions in New
York  and Philadelphia, had a regular  board of visitors,
and was intended  for the reception and accommodation of
all classes of ophthalmic patients, the poor as well as  the
rich, but particularly the former.  It was the first attempt
of the kind in the Southwest, and,  for a time, was emi-
nently successful.  The indigent sick from the city and
neighborhood flocked to it daily for advice and treatment,
and it speedily attracted persons from a distance. The
consequence was  that Dr. Drake soon became  a distin-
guished  oculist, and acquired no little skill as an ophthal-
mic surgeon.   I doubt  whether  any other practitioner in
the Southwest performed, during the first few years after
 the establishmentpf this institution, so many operations
for cataract,  artificial  pupil,  pterygium, and  lachrymal
 fistula-   His favorite operation for cataract was division,
but he also occasionally  performed  extraction;  a proce-
 dure  requiring great manual dexterity  and a  thorough
 knowledge of the anatomy of the eye.
   How long the Eye Infirmary remained  open, I am una-
 ble to say; its usefulness was much impaired by the  fre-
 quent absence of its founder, and after having been  in a
 languishing  condition for several years, its doors were
 finally closed.   No attempt to revive  the institution has
 since  been made; a circumstance so much the  more re-
 markable, considering the astonishing number of persons 
30
affected with all kinds of diseases of the eye in the West-
ern and Southern States.
  During his connection with this institution, Dr. Drake
made ophthalmic medicine and surgery his special study;
he purchased numerous works  upon the subject, both in
the English and  French languages, and supplied himself
with all the most approved instruments.  Some of these
works he reviewed elaborately in his medical journal; and
he  also published, about this period,  several interesting
and valuable papers upon different topics connected with
this department.
  To the influence of Dr. Drake  was due, in no small
degree, the establishment of the Kentucky School for the
Instruction of the Blind in this city.  The circumstances
which led to the organization of this noble institution, so
honorable to Louisville and to our State, are not without
interest, and reflect much credit upon the zeal and benev-
olence of the subject of this memorial, who, admidst his
vast professional labors, severe enough to daunt the hearts
of fifty ordinary men, was ever keenly alive to the welfare
and happiness of his fellow creatures  of every rank  and
condition.  In the winter of 1840—41, soon after he be-
came a professor in this University, he delivered,  once a
week, upon the  very  spot upon which I now stand, a
course  of popular lectures on Physiology, and when he
came to the eye,  as an organ of vision, devoted an evening
to the method of instructing the blind.   With  the aid of
Mr. Patten, a former pupil of the School  at Boston, he
gave a practical illustration of the manner of teaching this
unfortunate class of beings, in reading, writing, arithmetic
and geography,  concluding with an urgent and eloquent
appeal to the audience, a highly numerous and respectable
one, in favor of such an establishment in this  city.   The
 appeal, thus made, was not in vain.  I t was like a spark
of  fire falling  upon combustible  material.   Every one
 present was affected by it; that evening, the blind, hitherto 
31
neglected, and almost forgotten, had many friends. Among
these stood preeminent, as he always does in every charit-
able and benevolent enterprise in this community,  one
whose name is not less beloved than respected.  I allude
to our distinguished fellow-citizen, Judge Bullock.  This
gentleman, at the time referred to, was a member of the
Legislature, and as soon as the lecturer sat down he came
forward  and expressed his  determination to agita'e the
subject in the General Assembly, immediately after the
opening  of the  session at Frankfort.  Professor Drake
afterwards furnished him with a variety of documents and
reports,  by the aid of which  he framed a bill,  which he
sustained by  an eloquent speech.  Without difficulty  it
passed the house of which he was a member, but was laid
over in the other.*
   At the next session the bill was passed almost without
a dissenting voice ; the Legislature at the same time gran-
tino- ten  thousand dollars to endow the institution, on con-
dition that this city  would first raise the means to put it
into operation. These means being promptly supplied, the
school was organized forthwith.  What progress  it has
made, what good it has achieved,  and what blessings it is
daily conferring,  under the wise and benevolent manage-
ment of its present superintendent, Mr. Patten, is too well
known to require any  comment on this occasion.
   It would be doing injustice to my own feelings, as well
 as to the subject,  if I  were  to neglect to mention, in con-
 nection with this topic, the names of Dr. Howe, of Boston,
 and Mr. Chapin, of Columbus, Ohio.  These gentlemen,
 who are the superintendents, respectively,  of the institu-
 tions for the education of the blind in Massachusetts and
 Ohio, benevolently visited Frankfort  and Louisville, each
 with 'two  pupils, with whose  aid they gave several most
 interesting exhibitions, to  the gratification both of the
* Western  Journal of Med. and Surgery, vol. 5, p. 317 :
                        3* 
32
members of the Legislature and of the community at large.
Such was the impression made by the exersises of these
children- upon the General  Assembly, that, as  has just
been stated, Judge Bullock's bill was passed with hardly
any opposition.
  Dr. Drake had always, from an early period of his life,
evinced a deep interest in  the cause of temperance, un-
fortunately now so much on the decline.  During his res-
idence at Mays Lick,  the rallying point, for many years,
of the people of the neighborhood on election, parade, and
gala days,  as well  as during court-time, he often had oc-
casion,  when yet  a mere boy, to witness the deplorable
and disgusting effects of the inordinate use of intoxicating
drinks, and subsequently, after he had become a student
and practitioner of medicine, he could not fail to observe
that it was a frequent cause of  disease and death,  both
moral and physical.  He saw that it was the source of in-
calculable  mischief, and that  it lay at the foundation of
nearly all the crimes that degrade and  debase society, and
reduce man to the level and condition of the animals by
hi ch  he is surrounded.   He saw at work an  enemy,
which, like "the  pestilence that walketh by noon-day, "
silently but effectually destroys the peace and happiness of
the domestic circle, which  raises the arm  of the parent
against the child and of the child against the parent, and
which fills our infirmaries, poor-houses, and penitentiaries
with inmates.   In a word,  he  saw that intemperance was
sitting, like a mighty incubus, upon the bosom of society,
tainting its very breath, and, in some instances, threaten-
ing the annihilation of entire families.
  To such scenes, so  well  calculated to rouse his young
and philanthropic mind, Dr. Drake could not long remain
an  idle and unconcerned spectator.  He  felt that there
was a necessity for reform, and, like a true christian and
patriot, as he was, he  vigorously engaged in the work,
determined, as far as his time and means would admit, to 
33
do his part in arresting an evil, fraught with such momen-
tous consequences to the peace  and happiness of his fel-
low-creatures.  Address followed address,  and for a time
the pages of  his medical journal,  the  sure  and  steady
medium of communication between him and his profes-
sioal brethren,  were literally  teeming with articles upon
the  subject,  dwelling with  eloquent emphasis  upon the
 malign and destructive effects of ardent spirits upon the
 human subject, considered in  his moral, physiological, in-
 tellectual, and legal relations.
   It was, while thus occupied in advocating and advancing
 the cause of temperance, that an incident occurred in the
 neighborhood of Cincinnati  which afforded Dr.  Drake an
 opportunity for the application of his knowledge and talents
 to the elucidation of a question of juridical medicine, often
 agitated but  never until then  fully established.  In March,
 1829, an old man, named Birdsell, was convicted  on an ac-
 cusation of the murder of his own wife, and sentenced to
 capital  punishment.   He had been long addicted to the
" inordinate  use  of ardent spirits,  followed by occasional
 attacks of mania a potu, in one  of which he committed
 the crime  which he was  about to  expiate upon the gal-
 lows.   Dr. Drake having carefully investigated the case,
 became so fully satisfied that the prisoner labored under
 a paroxysm of this kind at  the time referred to,  that he
 was induced to regard him as an irresponsible individual,
 precisely as a man  who perpetrates homicide when af-
 fected with  mental  alienation from other causes.   The
 court, however, waved all discission of the point, so ably
 presented by the learned witness, and submitted the case,
 with the  broadfacts, to the jury,  who  returned a verdict
 of murder in the first degree.   A minute account of the
  trial was soon after  published in the third volume of the
  Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, in
  which Dr. Drake fully elaborated his views, and unhesita-
  tingly affirmed that insanity of this kind ought in law to
    oJ                      5 
34
be an immunity from punishment.   The paper attracted
much attention, and its sentiments received the unqualified
approbation of a number of the leading medical men  of
the country.   The American Jurist and Law Magazine,
published at Boston, gave an extended  notice of it, and
endorsed the correctness of the  author's conclusions ;  a
circumstance, which, considering  the able character  of
that periodical, was highly flattering to his  judgment and
scientific attainments.   Professor  Beck, of  Albany, also
presented a full  outline of the case in his  great and
learned work on Medical Jurisprudence,  expressing his
conviction of the correctness of Dr. Drake's opinion, and
awarding to that  gentleman the praise of originality for
bis suggestions.   The  case likewise attracted the atten-
tion of  Gov.  Trimble, who  considered  it of  sufficient
importance to invite to it,  in his annual message, the at-
tention of the General Assembly of Ohio, and who, when
he found that his  appeal was in  vain, had  the humanity,
 as well as the sagacity and firmness, to commute the pun-
ishment of the criminal into  perpetual imprisonment;
thereby preserving the judiciary from the odium of ille-
gally depriving a citizen of his life.
   In December, 1841, Dr. Drake organized in this Univer-
sity, then the Medical Institute of Louisville,  "the Physi-
ological  Temperance Society," for the benefit of the mem-
bers of the medical class, of whom it was exclusively com-
posed.  ItS object was to investigate the subject of alcoholic
drinks, in their effects upon the system, and, incidentally,
the abuse of other  stimulants  and  narcotics.  The society
soon became popular with the pupils; for, in less than a
month  after its establishment , it had upwards  of one
hundred members, embracing nearly two-fifths of   the
entire  class.   Its meetings  were  held  semi-monthly
throughout the session of the school;  and its exercises,
 n which the distinguished and philanthropic founder, who
was also its President, always took  an active part, con- 
35
sisted  in the reading  of reports and  the delivery of ad-
dresses on  the  nature  and composition of the different
kinds of liquor, and of their  effects upon the system, in
its healthy and diseased condition.  The association con-
tinued in active operation until the  Spring of 1849, when,
in consequence of Dr. Drake's retirement from the Univer-
sity, it was abandoned.  That its labors accomplished
much good, and were frequently blessed in the persons of
its members is too obvious to require any comment.  The
influence which it exerted was not confined  to the pupils
of the University, nor the members of the society; it ex-
tended over a wider sphere,  and exhibited itself in every
community in which its members settled.
  In 1835, he exerted himself, with the ability of a states-
man and the zeal of a true patriot, to enlist the attention
of the people of the  Southwest in favor of the establish-
ment  of a  great railroad chain between  the  Ohio  river
and the tide-waters of the Carolinas and Georgia.  In the
month of August of  that year, he presented an elaborate
report upon the subject at a public meeting of citizens of
Cincinnati, pointing out the advantages, in a commercial,
social, and political aspect, of such a road, and concluding
with  an eloquent appeal to the people of  the different
 States through which it was to pass,  or which were to be
benefitted by its erection.  Great interest was, for a while,
felt in the subject. On the 4th of July, 1836, a large conven-
tion was  held at Knoxville, Tennessee, at which not less
 than nine States were represented.  Dr. Drake was a mem-
 ber of that convention, as well as a member of the general
 committee which prepared business, and made a report
 on the practicability of the enterprise, and the best met! od
 of obtaining  the  requisite  authority for carrying it  mto
 successful operation.  The plan  finally failed chiefly on
 account of the unwillingness on the part of Kentucky,
 whose welfare, it was supposed, might seriously suffer by 
36
the result, to grant the right of way through  her terri-
tory.
  I was always of opinion, as indeed 1 am still, that Dr,
Drake  was exclusively  entitled to the honor of  having
originated this gigantic scheme, so well calculated to de-
velope  the resources of  the Southwest, and  to furnish a
means of intercommunication between her citizens, thus
aiding  in breaking down the bitter  feelings of prejudice
and hostility, growing out of the differences of their inter-
ests and domestic institutions;  but I learned, some years
ago,  that another gentleman, since deceased, had set  up
his own claims, and defended them with some  degree of
acrimony.  My information does not enable me to decide
the question of priority  in  favor of either party.   But I
may be permitted to say  that I  was present at the meeting
above referred to, at which  my late friend read his report,
and  indulged in remarks tending  to show that  the credit
of the  suggestion  belonged entirely  to himself.   Subse-
quently, in conversation  with  him upon  the subject,  he
held similar language, and it is perfectly certain, as the
proceedings declare,  that he offered the resolution which
led to the appointment of the committee of which he was
the chairman.   However the question may be  ultimately
decided by those  most interested in it,  it is much  to be
regretted  that an enterprise, pregnant with  such impor-
tant results to the whole Southwest,  and  advocated  by so
able and zealous a  champion, should never have been car-
ried into  effect for the want  of  proper  co-operation of
some of our States.
   After having spoken of some of the advantages which
would be likely to accrue from  the undertaking, Dr. Drake
makes thefollowing pertinent remarks, the truth of which
every one will acknowledge:  "But  the most  interesting
and  affecting consequences that would flow from the exe-
cution of  this enterprise would be the social and  political.
What is now the amount of personal intercourse between 
37
the millions of American fellow-citizens of North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia, on the one hand,  and Ken-
tucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, on the other ?   Do they
not live and die in ignorance of each other; and, perhaps,
with wrong opinions and prejudices, which the intercourse
of a  few years would  annihilate  forever?   Should this
work be executed,  the personal  communication between
the  North and South  would instantly become unprece-
dented in the United  States.   Louisville  and Augusta
would be brought into social intercourse ; Cincinnati and
 Charleston would be neighbors; and parties of pleasure
 would  start from the banks of the Savannah for those of
 the  Ohio river.  The people of the two  great valleys
 would, in summer,  meet in the intervening mountain re-
 gion of North Carolina and Tennessee, one of the most
 delightful climates in the United States; exchange their
 opinions, compare  their sentiments,  and blend their feel-
 ings; the North and the South would, in fact, shake hands
 with each other, yield up  their social  and  political hos-
 tility,  pledge themselves to  common  national interests,
 and part as friends and brethren."  Noble sentiments!
 What heart is there that does not vibrate in unison with
 them, and devoutly wish for their consummation !  The
 enterprise,  if it had been executed,  would  have  formed a
 great and enduring monument to the  genius and patriotism
 of Dr. Drake, and served as a chain of adamant between
 the West and the  South, identifying their interests, and
  binding them together by indissoluble ties.  The Buckeye
  and the Palmetto  would have intertwined  their branches
  and kissed  each other.
    In  a brief memorial, it cannot  be expected that we
  should touch upon every event in the  life  of Dr. Drake.
  It is the duty of biography to elaborate his history and to
  place before  the world, in a bold and conspicuous light,
  the prominent traits of his career.   We cannot, however,
  close this branch of the subject,  without bringing before 
36
you the recollection ofa feature in his character, as extra-
ordinary as it is beautiful and impressive.   I allude to his
attachment to Cincinnati, the checkered  scene, for fifty
years, of his labors and his usefulness.   Although he was
often  absent, such  was his loyality and devotion,  that no
earthly consideration could induce him to change his resi-
dence or abandon his citizen-ship.  If he occasionally left
l.er for a season,  it was only that he might enjoy her the
more  at his return, as a lover  sometimes  voluntarily  ab-
sents  himself from his  mistress that  he  may  enjoy her
presence the more at his reunion with her.  His love  for
Cincinnati was real and unaffected.  He had been her first
medical pupil, her first medical graduate, her first medical
author, and the founder of her first medical school.   He
had watched her  progress with the satisfaction that a
parent watches the career of a favorite  and  promising
child  ; he had seen her in her weakness, and he had  be-
held her in the  might of her strength,  after she had risen
to opulence and  respectability as a  great  commercial
mart,  as  a nursery of painters and sculptors, and as a city
of able, enterprising, and enlightened men.  If she is not
the seat ofa great medical school, an object which he had
unceasingly at heart for the third of a  century, the fault
was not his, but of the circumstances by  which he was
surrounded, and which neither his genius, his industry,
nor his tactics could control.  Whether absent or present,
whether  in prosperity or adversity, he never  ceased to
love her, and to feel and manifest the deepest interest in
her welfare and prosperity.  There was hardly a measure,
projected during  his life-time, intended to  promote her
advancement, that did not either originate with him, or
meet  his hearty co-operation  and support.   Her people
owe him  a lasting debt of gratitude, not only for the many
services which he rendered her, but also for being, at the
time of his death, her greatest and most illustrious citizen.
  His attachment to the West was hardly less remarkable. 
39
No inducements could seduce him away from the adopted
home of his parents;  he loved its broad and luxuriant
fields, covered with herds and wild flowers, its noble and
romantic forests,  rendered vocal with the music of birds
and insects, and its graceful and majestic streams, bearing
upon their bosom thrice a thousand vessels, freighted with
the  produce of  its rich and  fertile soil. Every thing
around him was in harmony with his nature;  and a resi-
dence in New-England, or New-Jersey,  his native  State,
would have been as irksome and distasteful to him, as a
residence at the Capital of the Union would be to the wild
man of the forest.
  Yet was his love not selfish ; it was not limited to Cin-
cinnati and the West;  it embraced the whole Union, and
gloried in every measure that was adopted for its safety,
welfare, and  perpetuity.  A nobler and truer heart never
pulsated in the bosom of an American citizen ;  a brighter
and more steady flame of patriotism  never burned  in the
breast  of an American  statesman.  He watched with in-
tense anxiety,  hardly  exceeded by that  of Mr. Clay him-
self, the Compromise of 1850, and no one was more hear-
tily rejoiced at its successful issue.   While his domestic
feelings, all his home sympathies,  were for the West,  his
heart'and  soul were for the Union, embracing all its most
 cherished  interests.
   While the discussion of the Compromise question was
going on in the Senate of the United States, and every
 where  agitating the public mind, Dr. Drake was not idle.
 He had long perceived and lamented the ignorance which
 prevailed  upon the subject of slavery in the Northern and
 Eastern states, and he  determined, though not without
 reluctance, on account of the novelty of his  position, to
 correct, if possible, some  of the many  misapprehensions
 under  which many even of the better  and more enlight-
 end people of those regions labored.    He knew, at all
 events, that an appeal to facts, vouched  by his own  ex- 
40
perience and veracity, could do no harm, while, perhaps,
it might effect some good.   He could not disguise from
himself the circumstance that his name was familiar to all
the great and leading men of New-England, and he accor-
dingly addressed himself,  as  the honored vehicle of his
communications,  to one of the fathers of his own profes-
sion in that country.  This gentleman was Dr. John C.
Warren, an old  personal friend,  by several  years his
senior,  and for a long time  professor of Anatomy and
Surgery in Harvard University at Boston.   The letters
which he addressed to this distinguished  physician and
surgeon, were three in number, and  they were published,
some  months afterwards,  in the National Intelligencer at
Washington.  They were written in the winter of 1850-51,
while  the author was  delivering  a  course of medical
lectures in this University,  and are characterized by great
force of style, by  remarkable moderation of tone and feel-
ing, and by extraordinary logical precision, combined with
a thorough knowledge of  the subject.  They  attracted
much attention at the time, and deserve to be  preserved
in book  form, for  extensive distribution.   A copy should
be sent  to every house in the  free states ; for  no better
antidote could be furnished against the poisonous influen-
ces of such exaggerated  productions as  "Uncle Tom's
Cabin."   It would induce the rash  and  misguided to
pause, and to consider whether the course they are pursu-
ing is not calculated to do  vast and abiding mischief, not
only to  the slave but to the Union.   Dr. Drake deserves
the thanks and the  gratitude  of every American citizen
for  stepping aside from his ordinary pursuits, from no
other  motive than that of serving his country, to discuss,
in so able aud philosophical manner, a topic of such great
and absorbing interest.
  I have heard it alleged that  Dr. Drake was an abolition-
ist; an  abolitionist in the modern and northern  sense of
the term.   Such  was not the fact.   He  was a man of too 
41
much intelligence, and too intimately acquainted with the
subject of slavery, in all its forms and phases, to favor, in
the most remote degree,  the ill-judged, wild, and unfortu-
nate movements of the northern fanatic.   He knew that
their tendency but too surely was to rivet the chains more
firmly  upon the colored man, and he had  seen enough of
slavery in his travels in the south to satisfy himself, that
the condition of Africa's  descendants was far better  and
happier than that of the  free negro of the north, or even
of the  poorer  classes  of whites.  Until  the close  of his
fifteenth year, when he took  up his residence at Cincin-
 nati,  he was  an eye-witness to slavery in many  of its
worst forms.  The early settlers of Mays Lick were  severe
task-masters ; and numerous occasions occured in  which
his feelings  were  deeply shocked and  his sympathies
warmly excited.  It was during his sojourn here, when he
was hardly  thirteen years of age, that the second consti-
tution  of Kentucky was  adopted.  During  the canvass
immediately preceding this event, a very  strong effort
was made over the whole State  to elect members  to the
convention,  who  would  favor   the  gradual abolition of
slavery.  Mr. Clay, who had only a short time  before
emigrated from Virginia,  and settled at Lexington,  united
himself with that party, and labored zealously in the good
cause; which, however, as is well known, failed of success.
Dr. Drake's father was a warm  and impassioned partizan;
and his own feelings and thoughts ran in the same channel.
  Subsequently, while he was connected with this Univer-
sity, and engaged in collecting materials for his great work
on the  diseases of the Southwest,  he had excellent op-
portunities for investigating the  whole subject of slavery,
and the result was that he became satisfied that the con-
dition of the negro in all  the States which he had visited
— Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,  Missouri, Mississippi,
Louisiana. Alabama and Florida — was far better than in
former times ; that he was better fed, clothed and lodged;
                          6 
42
 less severely punished ; and, in all respects, better cared
 for than he was forty, thirty, or even twenty years ago.
 In short, he  saw every where around him  evidences  of
 amelioration  and improvement,  and a  state of  things
 strictly in harmony  with the spirit and humane tendencies
 of the age.   After  having discussed the subject in all its
 bearings and relations, he concludes with  the expression
 of his opinion that the pdicy and  true interest of all is  to
 leave all slaves and  all  negroes, except those of the north,
 to the management  of the south.
  Dr. Drake was a voluminous writer. His contributions
 to medical journals,  in the form of original essays, reviews,
 and bibliographical  notices,  his temperance lectures, and
 public addresses, would, if collected, form several large oc-
 tavo  volumes.   Much, indeed by  far the most, of what
 he wrote was excellent; some was,  perhaps, indifferent;
 but none  was bad.    "Nihil quod  tetigit nonornavit."
 His style was always clear, fresh,  and vigorous, often elo-
 quent, and sometimes elegant.  Asa reviewer, his perfor-
 mances  were generally rather analytical than critical.  In-
 deed, as a critic he usually failed from a sense of too much
 cautiousness.  As a medical journalist,  belabored hard,
 and long, and zealously to elevate the character and dig-
 nity of  the profession  in the West and South, and did,
 beyond  doubt, the cause an immense  amount of service.
 His pen, for many years, was never idle; and if it was
occasionally dipped  in the ink of bitternes,  to  minister a
rebuke or silence an enemy,   it was  only for a  moment,
when it  would resume its wonted channel, and deposit the
rich and varied freight of his well-stored mind.
  His first attempt at medical or  scientific authorship
 was in 1810,  five years after he attended his first course
 of lectures  in  Philadelphia,  and  five  years before he
 became  a graduate.   It was comprised in a small pam-
 phlet on the " Topography, Climate, and Diseases of Cin-
 cinnati,  " where he  then resided.  Although designed ex- 
43
clusively for his professional and scientific friends, the
work soon attracted the attention of travelers,  in quest of
inlormation concerning the West,  and thus suggested to
him  the  idea of a treatise,  constructed on a  similar but
much more extended scale.  The result was his " Picture
of Cincinnati, " which soon acquired for him  not only an
American but a European reputation.   It was published
at Cincinnati  in  1815,  under the title of " Natural and
Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami
Country. "  It was illustrated  by maps, and  accompan-
ied by an appendix giving an account of some late earth-
quakes,  the aurora borealis, and  Southwest wind; the
whole forming a duodecimo volume of two hundred and
fifty-one pages.  The book soon attracted the attention of
the  public, and invited emigration to the West, but espe-
cially  to Cincinnati, from all  parts of America and Eu-
rope.  Everybody became interested in a country, before
so little known, and possessing advantages  so glowingly
depicted in the work under consideration.  It was evident
that the author had made a hit,  not in a pecuniary point
of view, but decidedly as it respected his reputation, and
the future growth of what, in due time, was destined to
become the  " Queen City. "
   To give an  analysis of this work would be out of place
on this occasion.  Suffice it to say that it  is  occupied
with a geographical and historical account of the West,
with a consideration of its  physical,  civil,  political, and
medical  topography,  and  with  a description  of its anti-
quities, together with a  notice of its  projected improve-
ments and future prospects, the latter of which are deline-
ated in  eloquent and  patriotic  terms,  worthy  of their
and  the author's high  destiny.  As  a mere literary per-
formance, the  " Picture of  Cincinnati"  reflects the force
and  vigor of  an able pen ; but its pages are deformed by
a bad style, a strange   punctuation,  and a  profusion of
dashes and commas, indicative of the writer's  inexperi- 
44
  ence as a practical scholar.  Of  these defects he himself
  seems to have been fully sensible, as he apologizes for them
  in his preface.
    In 1827, twelve years after the publication of the < Pic-
  ture of Cincinnati," Dr.  Drake projected the Western
  Journal of the  Medical and Physical Sciences, the first
  number of which  appeared in April of that year.   The
  motto of the work, engraved upon a flower of the Cornus
  Florida upon the title page, was exceedingly happy and
  appropriate:   "E sylvi», aeque atque ad  sylvas  nun-
  cius."  It was literally,  at that period, a  messenger not
  only from,  but also to,  the woods.  During the first year
 he had associated with  him, as co-editor,  Dr. James C.
  Finley,  but at the end of that time it  was brought out
  under his own  management,  which was continued  until
 1836, when, in consequence of his numerous engagements,
 and his frequent absence from  home, he  procured the effi-
 cient aid of Dr. William Wood, of Cincinnati, one of his
 former  pupils.   The  Journal  was  originallv issued
 monthly; but afterwards quarterly,  and it continued to
 appear in this manner up to the period of the dissolution
 of the Medical Department of the Cincinnati  College in
 1839, when it was transferred  to this city, and merged in
 the Louisville Journal  of  Medicine and Sugerv, be-un
 under the auspices of Professors Miller and Yandell, and
 Dr. T. S. Bell, but suspended  before the  completion of
 the first volume.*
   It is no easy matter,  even  under the most  propitious
 circumstances, to maintain a public  journal of medicine
 The difficulties were much greater twenty five years ao-o
 than at present; then the West had few writer's, and an
 editor was often compelled, from the paucity of material
 to rely mamly upon his own efforts for filling up the pages

^* Drake's Discourse before t^G^^^^^~ 
45
of his periodical.  Many of the contributions that  were
sent in for the. Western Journal of the Medical and Physi-
cal Sciences,  displayed the most miserable scholarship,
and the consequence was that not a few of them had to
be entirely re-written before they could be committed to
the  hands of the compositor.  "Copying, transposing,
abridging, inverting, retroverting, decomposing, and re-
composing," were a part of the labor  and drudgery to
which  Dr. Drake had to submit in  the progress  of his
enterprise.  Nothing daunted, however, he worked hard
upon its pages, which he adorned with  many of his  own
effusions, both in the form of original articles and of re-
views, until, after having been engaged upon it for twelve
years,  he finally, on  his removal to Louisville, disposed of
it in the manner already mentioned.
   Writing nine  years after the commencement of the
journal, he quaintly observes  that he had already  owed
allegiance to  not less than  nine publishers.   "Thus,"
says he, "if our editorial vitality had not been truly feline,
we should  now  be  defunct."   In consequence of these
frequent  changes the work was rarely issued with any
regularity, and hence much complaint on the part of sub-
scribers was the  result.
   The  work received little or no patronage in the Middle
and Atlantic States. When it  had reached  the comple-
tion of the sixth volume it had not a dozen subscribers on
the other side of the Alleghany mountains.  In Philadel-
phia, the  seat of the  editor's alma mater, <tnd the so-called
emporium of medical science, medical  education, and
medical scholarship, the  only subscriber, for  sometime,
was the high-minded and public-spirited Mathew Carey,
Esq., of that  city.   Nor was this all; the enterprise,  it
would seem, seldom  received any notice from the medical
press of the Eastern States: yet the work lived on, and 
46
attained quite a respectable age for one so entirely back-
woods in its origin, style, and garb.*
  The periodical having been transferred  to  Kentucky,
now assumed the name of the Western Journal of Medi-
cine and Surgery, which it still retains.   Dr. Drake hav-
ing acquired an extensive reputation  as an able and inde-
fatigable editor, consented to place his name upon ihe title-
page, and  thereafter the work was issued  under the joint
supervision of himself and Dr. Yandell.   The senior edi-
tor, however,  did not contribute  much to  its pages,  for
nearly all his time was now occupied in teaching and in col-
lecting materials for his great work, and, in 1848, he finally
withdrew from the enterpise.  It is but just to add that for
about four years, during which the editorship was in the
hands of Dr. Drake, the journal received most important
services from Dr. Colescott, of this city, upon whom much
of its drudgery  devolved, and  who  rendered the work
somewhat famous on  account of  some of his caustic re-
views.
  The interest  which Dr. Drake always felt for his pro-
fession induced him, in 1829,  to begin the publication, in
the Western Journal of the Mediwil and Physical Sciences,
of a series  of " Essays on  Medical  Education  and the
Medical Profession in the United States."  The papers
appeared in successive numbers of the periodical in ques-
tion, and were  finally, in 1832, collected into a small octavo
volume of upwards  of one hundred closely printed pages.
They are written with the author's wonted vigor of style,
and display, throughout, great sound sense, a discrimina-
ting judgment,  and a profound  acquaintance with the to-
pics of which they treat.   The number of essays amounts
to seven ;  the first of which  relates to the selection and
preparatory education of pupils ; the second  to private

  *  West. Jour. Med. and Phys. Sciences, vol. 3, p. 152; 2d Hexade-
I00.5, 
47
pupilage ; the third to medical colleges ; the fourth to the
studies, duties,  and interests of young physicians ; the
fifth to the causes of error in the  medical  and physical
sciences; the sixth to legislative enactments; and the last
to professional quarrels.
   In looking,  lately, with some degree of care, over this
work, I have become impressed with the conviction that
it  is a  production of great merit,  and one that ought to
be in the hands of every medical  pupil  and junior prac-
titioner in the  country.  It comprises an admirable out-
line of medical ethics,  or of the  duties  of medical men
towards each  other, of the responsibilities and require-
ments of the profession, and of the proper method of ob-
serving and investigating disease, conveyed  in  language
at once  forcible, dignified, and impressive.  No one  can
rise from its  perusal  without sensibly feeling how much
he has been instructed, and how  far  short he falls of the
standard laid  down by its distinguished author.    It may
be stated, as  a remarkable fact, that  the work covers ihe
whole g-ound of medical education, and that it comprises
every topic  respecting medical reform so zealously, but
indiscreetly,  urged upon the consideration of the Ameri-
can Medical Association,  at every returning meeting of
 that body.
   In 1832, Dr. Drake published  "a Practical Treatise on
 the History,  Prevention, and  Treatment of  Epidemic
 Cholera,"  which was  then desolating Ci: cinnati and  the
 Western States.  The work,  forming a duodecimo volume
 of nearly two hundred pages, was designed both  for pro-
 fessional and  general  use,  and comprised an excellent
 and graphic  account  of that formidable malady ; but it
 does not seem to have been well received, nor did it, 1 think
 add anything to the aulhor's reputation.   From  the fact
 that much of it had been composed,  and published in the
 Western Journal of tne Medical and Physical Sciences,
 before he had witnessed the  disease, it  failed to inspire 
48
 public confidence, and fell, in some degree, still-born from
 the press.
   Two years after the publication of  this treatise, he an-
 nounced,  as in progress  of  preparation,  a work on
 "Anatomy,  Physiology, and  Hygiene,"  as a  text-book
 for schools and colleges.   The object  was to promote the
 popular  study of this branch of science, and  to pourtray
 the  pernicious  effects of mere  mental  culture, without
 proper physical training.   Some months after  the an-
 nouncement appeared  he published  a  specimen  of the
 style and arrangement of the book,  and this was the last
 of it ; for his leisure never permitted him to complete it.
 Some years after this he  announced his intention of pub-
 lishing a "Treatise  on General  Pathology," as a text-
 book for his pupils; but this also, for a  similar reason, was
 never issued.   The fact  is that all his thoughts and affec-
 tions were engaged  upon his great work, and he regarded
 every thing else as of subordinate importance.
  In 1842, Dr.  Drake published, in  the sixth  volume of
 the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, a paper on
 the "Northern L.ikes as a Summer Resort for Invalids of
 the South,"  which at  the time attracted much attention
 from the medical and public press.  The  article,  which
 had  been previously read as an introductory address to his
 course of lectures in the University, was designed to illus-
 trate the advantages ofTered, in the hot season, by our nor-
 thern lakes, as  a  residence, to the  people  of the south,
 and  was  founded, mainly, upon his  own observations
 made the preeedk.g summer in a professional tour of two
 months.  It abounds in beautiful and graphic delineations
 of the wild and romantic scenery of these great inland
 seas, of the towns and villages wh;ch  stud and embellish
 their banks, of the nature of the climate, the productions
of the surrounding country, the battle scenes of the late
war  with Great Britain, and the character and mode of
life of the inhabitants, themselves a subject of study for 
49
the painter, the poet,  and the philosopher.  There are
few tracts, of the same size, in the English  language on
the subject of travel, which contain so vivid, gorgeous,
and life-like an  account  of the countries to  which they
relate.  Nothing seems to have escaped  the  observation
of the author.  At  one  time his mind  is dazzled  and
almost  bewildered  by a vast, dark,  and impenetrable
forest ; at another, by  the silvery and unruffled surface of
a broad and unfathomable lake, reflecting the variegated
and fantastic tints of the sky, or bearing  upon its  bosom
the mighty steamboat, and the canoe if the adventurous
Indian,  the  Canadian trapper, or the holy and self-deny-
ing  missionary; now, by some  lofty and  majestic cliff,
rearing its head into the clouds,  and serving as  a  monu-
ment of the works of God ; and  anon, by the bewitching
beauties of the  setting sun,  as  his  rays sport upon the
heavens above,  or paint, in all the gorgeous colors of the
rain-bow, his image  upon the  waters below.
   The latest of the  minor productions of Dr.  Drake's pen
was a small volume of "Discourses," delivered, by appoint-
ment, before the Cincinnati Medical Library  Association,
on the 9th and 10th  of January, J85J.  It is comprised in
a  duodecimo volume of ninety-three pages, and is divided
into two parts, the first of which treats of the early medical
times in Cincinnati,  and  the other of medical journals and
libraries.  Few medical men, indeed few men of any pro-
fession,  will rise  from the perusal of this unpretending
little  volume without feeling that  they have been both
interested and instructed.  The  first part, giving an ac-
 count of the pioneer physicians of the "Queen of the
 West," and of the  prominent men and  scenery  of that
 early period, possesses, in my opinion, all the charm and
 interest of a romance, in which the lamented author, while
 he exhumes  his  predecessors  and  cotemporanes, and
 places them, in life-like colors, before the eyes of his rea-
 rms, forms a prominent  and conspicuous feature. His
                           7 
5Q
 feelings were evidently deeply imbued with the spirit of
 the subject, and he has treated it in a style and manner of
 which  no other man, either at Cincinnati or elsewhere in
 the West, is  capable.  It is replete with the characteris-
 tics of a man of feeling and genius.  His similes  and
 illustrations are so striking and forcible, that, in perusing
 this part of the book,  the reader imagines himself in  the
 veritable presence of the men  and [things  which he deli-
 neates, and which pass, as in a  moving picture,  before
 him, even to the little Chickasaw pony, and the horrible
 witches,  which at  that  early  day  still  infested  the
 neighborhood, and tormented the  poor inhabitants!  I
 doubt whether there is within the same compass of the
 "Pioneers,"  that  most delightful  romance  of  James
 Fenimore Cooper, so  great an amount of powerful and
 graphic delineation of character,  with so much true,  ar-
 tistic coloring.
   On the occasion on which this address was  delivered
 he looked around in  vain for some  of those professional
 brethren, whom, at the commencement of his career, nearly
 fifty years before,  he had been in the habit of meeting in
 the sick-room and at  the  social  board.  They had long
 since been removed from the busy scenes of life, and many
 of those who immediately succeded them, had  shared a
 similar  fate.   "Like the living forms of an old geological
 era, they have," says the speaker, "become extinct,°yet,
 as occurs with some species in  geology, an individual has
 run into the  later epoch, to mingle with its new and more
 perfect  inhabitants.  Of the little  band behind the veil,  I
 am the  sole survivor ; a sort of contingent remainder, be-
 queathed to  the present generation, for any purpose to
 which so small a legacy may be  applicable. For this length
of days, I should humble myself before the Father of Life •
but I may further manifest my  gratitude by rescuing from
oblivion the names of those  who were my predecessors
and my  compeers of that by-gone ao-e." 
51
  At the close of the discourse he remarks :  "I have thus
given you some account of our past,—of the first third
part of the life-time of our city profession.   It was then
in its infancy, and the foot-prints of childhood soon grew
dim.  Yet, if possible, this should  not be allowed to fade
quite away.  Under this sentiment, I have used a little the
chisel of Old Mortality;  and feel that I have but discharged
a duty, which, at all times, the present owes to the past;
and the members of a  generous profession to each other.
Having been pars minima of what I have described, the
verity  of  history required that 1 should not exclude my-
self.  *   *   *  *  Every epoch of life should be allowed
to illustrate itself.  You yourselves will successively fol-
low on.  *  *  *  At  whatever age you may be gathered
to your fathers, many of your plans will be left unfinished.
I pray that the time may be far off; and, still more, that
when it comes, each of you may be able,  in faith,  to lay
hold of the cheering declaration of the inspired apostle—
"Blessed  are the dead who die in  the Lord : they rest
from their labors, and  their works  do follow them."
  The second discourse exhibits an account of the origin
and influence of medical periodical literature;  and the
benefits of public medical libraries. Time does not permit
me to analyse it.  It abounds in interesting and striking
passages,  and presents a full history of the periodical
literature of the medical profession, both in  America and
Europe.  At the close of it he exhorts his associates  to
constancy and perseverance in the enterprise thus auspi-
ciously begun, and winds up  with this eloquent passage :
"The causes of failure generally lie in our own weakneses,
of  which  the  greatest is the want of unfaltering con-
stancy.  Holding on to the end in any laudable enterprise,
is, with few  exceptions, to achieve a  triumph.   I hope,
arid feel, and believe, that we shall steadily hold on ;  and
thus, when some young  student, now sitting thoughtful
and silent in our midst, shall, with age and tottering foot- 
52
steps, follow the mortal remains of the last of us  to  the
crave, he will say to the physicians of another generation,
then assembled around :  "Carry forward the -oble work
which they began, make it better than you found  it,  and
then hand it on to posterity."
  The "Discourses" are dedicated to  that accomplished
gentleman, finished  scholar, and eloquent  teacher.  Dr.
Dickson, Professor of Medicine in the  College at Charles-
ton, South Carolina.
  But the most splendid exhibition of his genius is in his
work on the Diseases of the Interior Valley  of North
America,  an enduring monument of his industry, his re-
search,  and his ability.   Upon  this  production, which,
unfortunately, he did not live to complete, he spent many
of the best and  riper years of his life.   As early as 1S22,
in an appeal to the physicians of the Southwest, he an-
nounced his intention of  preparing it, and  solicited  the
cooperation of his professional brethren.  His  object, as
stated in  his circular,  was  to furnish a  series of essays
upon the principal diseases of this region  of America,
derived from his own observation and from that of his
friends, and forming, ^hen completed, a national work.
Various circumstances conspired to delay the appearance
of the work.  The  author's time, in  the  winter  season,
was much occupied in teaching, and  in matters growing
out of his official  relations.   Medical schools  were
obliged to be erected, fostered, and protected.   Besides,
he  was  the editor of a medical journal, to the pages of
which he  was often the chief contributor ; and he was also
frequently compelled to deliver  public addresses, which
consumed much of his  leisure.   His  facility,  in  this re-
spect, was too  well known  in the community,  to permit
him to remain unoccupied.  The objects concerning which
he was called  upon to address his fellow-citizens were
often of  a benevolent  character, and he had  too much
good nature to resist them,  however much they might en- 
53
croach upon his more legitimate pursuits and  the great
aim of his life.
  In 1837, fifteen years after the publication of his circu-
lar, he found, for the first time, sufficient leisure to enter
vigorously  upon the  collection of materials for his long
contemplated work.   In the summer of this year, accom-
panied  by his two  daughters, he visited a portion of the
South for that  purpose, during  a tour of about three
months.  In  1843, he  made  a second tour,  embracing
Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Gulf of
Mexico;  and subsequently he explored  the  interior  of
Kentucky,  Tennessee, the two .Carolinas, Virginia, West-
ern Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Indiana,  Michigan,
Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, the great Lakes, and Canada.
Wherever  he went his fame  preceded him, and he was
kindly  received  by his  professional  brethren, many  of
whom  vied with each  other  to show him  attention and
hospitality.   It was during his absence upon  these mis-
sions, which he performed with the zeal of an  apostle of
science,  that he wrote those numerous and interesting
traveling editorials,  as he styled them, for the Western
Jourrtal of  Medicine and Surgery.  These epistles, which
form so conspicuous a  feature of that periodical during
the time  referred to,  were usually descriptive of the man-
ners, habits,  and diseases of  the people among whom he
wandered, of the climate, scenery, and productions of the
country,  and, in short, of whatever seemed, at the moment,
to strike his fancy, or interest his mind.
   The materials thus  collected were gradually digested
and arranged, and  finally presented  to the  profession, in
the summer of 1850, under the elaborate title of "A Sys-
 tematic Treatise,  Historical, Etiological,  and Practical,
on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North
 America, as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian,
and Esquimaux Varieties of its Population."   The work,
the first volume of which only has yet appeared, is illus- 
54
trated  by numerous  charts and maps,  designed  and en-
graved at great expense, and was printed and  published
at Cincinnati  under the  author's immediate  supervision.
A second volume,  the composition of which was nearly
completed at the time of his decease, will be issued during
the ensuing summer,  under the care of a competent edi-
tor, and will be entirely devoted to subjects on practical
medicine.  The two together will constitute a monument
of the genius  and industry of their author, as durable as
the mountains and the valleys, whose medical history they
are designed  to pourtray and  illustrate.  The toil and
labor expended upon their  production  afford a  happy
exemplification of what may be accomplished by the well-
directed and persistent efforts of a single individual, un-
aided by wealth, and  unsupported by the patronage of his
own profession.
  It was originally the intention of Dr. Drake to comprise
his work in two volumes;  but as he progressed with the
elaboration of his materials he found that he should have a
sufficiency for another ; which,  now, that he is dead, will,
of course, never be completed.  The treasure remains,
but the key wherewith to unlock it is gone.
  It is  to be regretted that the first seven hundred pages
of the  first volume were not  published by  themselves,
apart from the matter which  relates to  the  subject  of
febrile diseases, and with which they have no particular
affinity.   The arrangement was an unfortunate one,  and
is calculated to impair the sale  of this portion of the trea-
tise, which is  better adapted to  the taste and appreciation
of such men as Humboldt and Malte-Brun, than to those
of the  medical profession, who seldom, at least, in  this
country, patronize works not strictly practical.
  Every where at home  the work recieved the most fav-
orable commendation.  All concurred in pronouncing it a
performance of stupendous labor, and not a few of the
leading journals declared that  it was the most original 
55
production that our country had yet furnished.  One of
the most beautiful and appreciative notices of it appeared,
soon after its publication, in the Daily Louisville Journal,
from the pen  of my colleague, Professor Yandell.   Dr.
Stille,  Chairman of the committee on Medical Literature,
alluded to it in terms of high commendation in his report
to the  American Medical Association, at their meeting at
Cincinnati, in May, 1850.  Abroad its appearance  was
hailed with similar feelings.  The British and  Foreign
Medico-Chirurgical Review, one  of the ablest and  most
discriminating periodicals of the  day,  published a long
and highly flattering notice ofit. The veteran philosopher,
Humboldt,  to whom  my  colleague,  Professor Silliman,
took a copy, expressed his great delight at the work, and
regarded it as a real treasure.
   It would be premature to predict what estimate will be
placed upon his works by  posterity.  That they will al-
ways  be regarded as among the most valuable contribu-
tions of the nineteenth  century,  so prolific in  noble  pro-
 ductions, will not be doubted by  any one at all familiar
 with  the character of their contents.  Truth is eternal,
 and whatever of this sublime essence they contain  must
 be transmitted  from one  generation to  another so long as
 man remains  a civilized being, and possesses the faculty of
 communicatiug knowledge. Based as they are upon the ob-
 servation of nature, and the just interpretation of her laws,
 they must always retain an  ever-green beauty and fresh-
 ness.   They  may become  musty upon the shelf, the leaves
 may become stained, and their cover may become tarnished
 by age, yet will the student always find in them a never-
 failing source of instruction and enjoyment. Their author,
 like his illustrious name-sake, has performed  a voyage of
 circumnavigation, which future scientific navigators may
 improve and extend, but which they must always follow
 as their chart and guide.  Posterity will not fail to award 
56
him the enviable title  of " Pioneer-Father  of Medicine "
of the Great Interior Valley of North America.
  The works of Hippocrates,  composed more than two
thousand years ago, are as fresh to-day, and as much ad-
mired for their fidelity and truthfulness,  as they were
when they left the hands of the master-spirit  that evoked
them into  existence.   They have  been translated into
every language of Europe, and no one can read them with-
out  being  sensible that  the stock of his knowledge has
been amplified and improved.  The works of the American
Hippocrates will be equally indestructible.  Like his great
prototype,  he gathered their materials from the  deep re-
cesses,  as well as from the surface of nature, and  sub-
jecting  them to  the  plastic  powers  of his genius, he
moulded them  into a beautiful  and harmonious whole,
which proudly challenges our  admiration and our grati-
tude.  He has inlaid every line,  and every  sentence, and
every paragraph with  the skill  of an artist,  and the  finish
of an accomplished writer;  his style is always clear and
forcible, his language strong  and  pointed,  his reasoning
philosophical, his deductions just and logical,  his arrange-
ment  of topics easy and natural.  His composition,  if not
a model of elegance, abounds in examples of strong An"-lo-
Saxon vigor, which must strike and impress  every sensible
reader.
  In  studying the treatises of these two  extraordinary
men, one is sensibly struck with the similarity  of the  man-
ner of their production.  Both  traveled extensively in
their  respective countries  in quest of material for  their
works, both were close observers of nature,  both are clear
and forcible delineators of disease.   Many of the events
of the life of Hippocrates are  involved  in  obscurity and
fable.  From some statements, however, contained in his
treatises, it appears that he spent much of his time in
travel, residing now at one  place,  and  then  at  another
practising his  profession, and  studying the topography,' 
57
climate, and diseases of the regions which he visited.  In
this manner he accumulated that rich store-house of facts
which have transmitted his name to the present times, and
which have laid the foundation, broad and deep, of medi-
cal science.  The countries which  he  specially visited
were Thrace, Athens, Delos, and Thessaly ;  but he pene-
trated many other regions, and it is generally supposed
that he  spent some time in Macedonia, in attendance upon
the court of Archelaus.
   The plan  pursued by  Drake was, in many respects,
similar.   He carried his perambulations,  however, much
further than Hippocrates, embracing a greater range and
diversity of the human race, of climate, and diseases.  We
have already enumerated the names of the states and ter-
ritories which he traversed in search of material for  his
 work,
   Other points of resemblance are  to  be found between
 these great men.  Both were bold practitioners.  Hip-
 pocrates laid much stress upon diet in acute diseases, and
 bled freely in cases  of  extreme pain  and  inflammation ;
 sometimes opening two  veins at once,  to produce speedy
 fainting.  Drake  was a firm believer in the use of the
 lancet "in the treatment of all acute inflammatory affec-
 tions ;  his teachings  upon this subject are  not  forgotten
 by his pupils, and all his friends know what confidence he
 placed in this  remedy.  Both practised Surgery.  The
 practice of Hippocrates, in  conformity  with the times in
 which he lived, consisted ofa few of the more simple pro-
 cesses of the art, as phlebotomy, cupping, and the applica-
 tion of the actual cautery ; Drake, on the other hand, per-
 formed  some of the  more nice and delicate operations.
 We have already seen that he possessed more than com-
 mon skill as an oculist.
    The works of Hippocrates were collected and published
  after  his death by  his  daughter.  Drake issued one
  volume,  but left the remainder incomplete, to be edited 
58
and published as  a posthumous treatise.   The works of
great men would seem to resemble great cities,  being al-
ways unfinished.
  But  while Drake  resembled the father of physic in
these respects he was unlike him in others.  Hippocrates
was descended from the iEsculapian family, under whose
auspices and influence the medical school of Cos attained
its high eminence and popularity.   Drake, on the other
hand, was the son of a poor, illiterate husbandman, whose
ancestry, as far as it could  be  traced, was  never distin-
guished for any achievements in medicine,  law,  divinity,
politics, or arms.  By the mother's side, Hippocrates was
descended from Hercules;  the mother of Drake had no
such genealogy; all she could boast was that she was a
good house-wife,  and a  kind-hearted, Christian woman.
Hippocrates was rich ; Drake was poor ; the former pos-
sessed  great scholastic advantages ; the latter none ;   the
one was educated early in life; the other comparatively late;
Hippocrates enjoyed the'benefit of the fame of his ances-
tors ; it stimulated him, and brought him business ; Drake,
on the  contrary, was the architect of his own fortune, and
was obliged to depend for his advancement  upon his own
exertions.
  I am not aware that Dr. Drake  ever  engaged in  any
purely  literary composition, or that he ever contributed
any thing to the literary periodical press, beyond some
addresses and reports. For such pursuits he had no time,
whatever  might have been his fitness  and inclination.
Nor had he much  leisure for indulging his  taste in mis-
cellaneous reading.  Every moment of his time was occu-
pied in lecturing to his pupils, in writing upon scientific
subjects,  and in laboring for the advancement of his pro-
fession, or the cause of morality and benevolence.
  To his other accomplishments he added that ofa ooet.
Several of his pieces, composed during the hours of  re-
laxation from  his professional  pursuits, possess much 
59
beauty and sweetness.   They  generally partook either
of the huTiorous,  or of the solemn and  pathetic.  His
 "Parting Song," sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne'"
 at the anniversary  supper of the Ohio  State Medical
 Society,  at their meeting at Columbus, in  January, 1835,
 and published in the eighth volume of the Western Journal
 of the Medical  and Physical Sciences, is an ode of much
 beauty and feeling,  and elicited the warmest applause at
 the time.  It exerted the happiest effect upon every mem-
 ber present.
   Dr. Drake was a man not of one, but of many charac-
 teristics.  His  very  look, manner, step and gesture were
 characteristic ;  they were the outward signs of the pecu-
 liar nature within ; his conversation, his voice, and modes
 of expression  were   characteristic; all  tending to stamp
 him,  in the estimation and judgment of the beholder, as
 an extraordinary personage.   But  there was one feature
 which jutted out, prominently  and conspicuously, above
 and beyond the rest, and which served, in an eminent de-
 gree, to distinguish  him from all the men of my profession
 I have  ever known.   This  was  intensity, intensity  of
 thought, of action,   and of purpose.   This  feeling,  to
 which he was indebted for all the success which marked his
 eventful career, exhibited itself in all the relations of life ;
 in his extraordinary devotion to his family, his attachments
 to his friends,  his unfaltering love for his profession, in his
 interest in the  cause of temperance, in his lectures before
 his pupils in the University, in his writings, his debates,
 and  his controversies.   No apathy or lukewarmness ever
 entered his mind, or influenced his conduct, in any scheme
 which had for  its object the welfare  of  his  species, the
 promotion of science,  or the improvement of the human
 intellect.  His temperament was too ardent to  permit him,
 had  he  otherwise felt so inclined, to be an idle and uncon-
 cerned  spectator of the world around  him.   It was hot, 
60
 and positive, like the pole of an electric battery, intense,
 ever restive, always doing.
   It was this attribute of his mind which would have made
 him great and  distinguished in any walk  he might have
 chosen.  He had talent and intellect enough, had he wished
 it, to have shone in the Senate, adorned the bar, or made
 a great pulpit orator.  I have often thought that he had
 mistaken his profession,  and that he ought to have been
 a politician.   He might  have made a  great Secretary of
 State; for he had the  astuteness of a  Webster, the sub-
 tilty ofa Calhoun, and the indomitable energy ofa Benton.
  His mind  was quick, grasping, far-seeing ; he acquired
 knowledge with great facility, sometimes almost intui-
 tively, and readily perceived the relations and bearings of
 things.  Embued with the true spirit of the  Baconian phil-
 osophy, he delighted in tracing effects to their causes, and
 in unravelling the mysteries of human science and human
 knowledge.   He was a keen observer,  not  only  of pro-
fessional matters, with which his daily studies brought him
 into more immediate contact, but of society and the world
 at large.  Added to all this, he had a retentive memory,
 extraordinary powers of analysis, profound ratiocination,
 and great originality, with industry and perseverance sel-
 dom combined in the same individual.    He possessed, in
 short, all the attributes of a great and commanding intel-
 lect, capable of vast exploits, and the accomplishment  of
 great designs.   His executive powers were extraordinary.
  No where did this intensity exhibit itself in a more strik-
 ing manner,  or in a greater degree, than in  the lecture-
 room.  It was here, surrounded by his pupils, that  he dis-
 played it with per uliar force and emphasis.  As he spoke
 to them, from day to day, respecting the great truths  of
medical doctrine and medical  science,  he produced  an
 effect upon his young disciples, such as few teachers are
 capable of creating.  His words dropped hot and burning
 from his hps, as the lava falls from the burnin- crater"- 
61
enkindling the fire of enthusiasm in his pupils, and carry-
ing them away  in total forgetfulness of everything, save
the all-absorbing topic under discussion.  They will never
forget the ardor and animation which  he infused into his
discourses,  however dry  or  uninviting   the  subject ;
how he  enchained their  attention, and how, by his skill
and address, he lightened the tedium  of  the  class-room.
No teacher ever knew better how to enliven his auditors,
at one time with glowing bursts of eloquence, at another
with the sallies of wit, now with a startling pun, and anon
with the recital of  an  apt and amusing anecdote;  elicit-
ing, on the  one hand, their admiration for his varied intel-
lectual riches, and, onthe other, their respect and venera-
tion for his extraordinary abilities as an expounder  of the
great and fundamental principles of medical science. His
 o-estures, never graceful,  and sometimes eminently  awk-
 ward; the peculiar incurvation of his body; nay, the very
 drawl in which he frequently gave expression to his ideas;
 all denoted the burning fire within, and served to impart
 force and vigor to every thing which  he uttered from the
 rostrum.   Of all the medical teachers whom I have ever
 heard, he was the  most forcible and  eloquent.  His voice
 was remarkably clear  and distinct, and so powerful that,
 when the windows of his lecture-room were open, it could
 be heard at a great distance.  He  sometimes  read  his
 discourse,  but generally he ascended the  rostrum without
 note or scrip.
    His earnest manner often  reminded  me of that of  an  old
 and venerable methodist preacher, whose ministrations I
 was wont to attend in my early  boyhood. In addressing
 the Throne of Grace, he seemed always to  be  wrestling
 with the  Lord for a blessing  upon  his  people, in a way
 so ardent  and  zealous as to inspire the  idea that he was
 determined to  obtain  what he asked.  The same kind of
 fervor was apparent  in our friend.  In his lectures he
 seemed always to be wrestling with his subject, viewing 
62
and exhibiting it in every  possible  aspect and  relation,
and never stopping until, like an ingenious and dexterous
anatomist, he had  divested it,  by means of his mental
scalpel, of all extraneous matter, and placed it, nude, and
life-like, before the minds  of  his pupils.
  With abilities so transcendent,  manners so ardent and
enthusiastic, and a mind so well stored with the  riches of
medical science, Dr. Drake ought to have been universal-
ly popular as a teacher;  nevertheless,  such was not the
fact.  First course students often complained that his lec-
tures were abstruse, in a degree wholly beyond their com-
prehension ; that  they could  not  follow his reasoning,  or
argumentation, and that,  despite their best directed ef-
forts, they were unable to derive much profit.  The more
advanced members of his  classes, on  the contrary, never
experienced any such trouble;  they felt the deepest in-
terest in every thing  that he uttered, and never failed  to
look upon him as a most able and instructive teacher.  To
account for this discrepancy it  is necessary to state that
Dr. Drake's method of instruction differed materially from
that of most of his cotemporaries,  both in  this country
and in  Europe.  Instead of beginning  his course with the
practical, every-day details of his department, he always
devoted the first  six weeks to the inculcation of general
principles, deeming a knowledge of them of paramount
importance  to  every student of medicine.  This he al-
ways regarded as the philosophical part of the course, and
he spared no  efforts  to place it prominently  before the
minds  of his pupils.   In doing this he  was fullv conscious
of the  difficulty under which he labored, and  often la-
mented, in bitter  strains,  the deficiencies, on the part of
his classes,  which prevented  them from  appreciating his
instruction.   He saw how little  many of the youthwho
resort  to  our  lecture-rooms are prepared, by ther habits
and education, to profit by such a mode of teaching; and
yet he  could not, durst not, in conformity with the dictates 
63
of his conscience and judgment, pursue any other.   He
would rather be unpopular with a portion  of his classes
than sacrifice duty  and principle,  or deviate  from the
standard which he had adopted  as the rule and guide of
his conduct in the lecture-room.
   His fluency and facility of language gave him great ad-
vantage as a public debater.  To his ability as a profound
reasoner, he added subtilty of argument, quickness at rep-
artee,  and  an impassioned tone and style,  which rarely
failed to carry off the palm in any contest in which he was
engaged.  During his sojourn in Philadelphia in 1830-31,
Broussaisism, then  so fashionable in that city, formed the
subject of discussion before the Philadelphia Medical So-
ciety.  Being a member, he was induced to take part in the
debate against the doctrine, while Dr. Jackson,  the pres-
ent Professor of the Institutes of Medicine in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania,  and himself no  mean speaker, ar-
rayed himself on the opposite side.  The discussion, which
had been  in progress for  several evenings, waxed warm-
er and warmer, and excited universal  interest among the
members and visiters.  Dr. Drake had the floor, and had
 already made a brilliant effort, when, suddenly stopping,
 he exclaimed, in a loud voice, and with peculiar emphasis,
 addressing himself to the chairman, the distinguished Dr.
 Condie, "Sir, is it not so?"   The effect was electric.
 The worthy dignitary, unconscious apparently of what he
 was doing, sprang upon his feet, exclaiming,  "Yes sir, I
 believe it is," to the great amusement of every one present.
    Dr Drake always manifested extraordinary  interest in
 the moral  training  of medical  pupils.   Sensible  of the
 temptations which constantly beset their path,  and allure
 them from their duty, he took special pains at the opening
 of every session of the different schools with which he was,
 from time  to time,  connected,  to point out to them their
 proper  position, and to warn them of their danger.  As a
 means of promoting this object, as well as of advancing 
64
the respectability of the profession,  he delivered,  while
a professor in the Cincinnati College, for several winters,
a series of Sunday morning dicourses to the  students  of
that institution, on medical ethics, the morale of the pro-
fession, and the virtues and vices of medical men, embra-
cing their duties to their  patients, to the community, and
towards  each other.  These addresses were  usually at-
tended by large numbers of ihe citizens of Cincinnati, and
exerted a wide and  happy influence  upon the youths for
whom they were more especially prepared.   Their pub-
lication would, I doubt not, be well received by the pro-
fession.
  In this University, as was before stated, he interested
himself greatly  in promoting the cause of temperance
among the students; and, as a means of religious improve-
ment, he was in the habit, for many winters, of joining such
of them  as felt an  interest in  the  subject, at a Sunday
morning prayer meeting.   In a word, he was ever ready
with his advice and kindly offices, often affording aid and
comfort to those who, in the absence  of their parents and
guardians, stood in need ofa counsellor and friend.
  He had a decided taste for  the society  of the young
men of his profession, and always evinced a deep interest
for their prosperity.  The instances were not few in which
he labored to advance the welfare of  young men, some of
whom  have  since risen to deserved distinction.'  It was
his lot, especially in the earlier periods of his life, to have
numerous private pupils,  several of whom he  educated
gratuitously,  at  the  same  time  treating them with true
parental  regard  and tenderness.   As a public teacher in
the different schools with which he was connected  he
aided in educating several thousand young men, and fittin-
them for the practical and responsible duties of their pro&-
fession.  The seed thus sown has brought forth  much
good fruit, the happy effects of which will be felt in future
generations. 
65
  His  own  standard of medical knowledge was  of the
most elevated nature.  No one understood better than he
the importance of a thorough  education, and of a well
disciplined mind.   His own early deficiencies, ever pre-
sent, and ever-recurring,  had made an  impression upon
him,  which  nothing could efface.  His occupation as  a
teacher of medicine had brought him,  for years,  in  daily
contact with men and youths, who were  not only destitute
of preliminary education, but absolutely, from the  want of
opportunity,  and  mental capacity, utterly  incapable of
acquiring any.  This state of  things,  so prevalent and
deplorable, he often lamented to his friends and colleagues,
while  he never failed,  on  all proper occasions, to assail it
in  his writings  and  prelections.  The difficulty under
which a teacher labors in imparting  instruction  to such
pupils, and preparing them for the  successful exercise
of their high and responsible duties, as practitioners, can
 be more easily imagined than  described.  His daily ex-
 perience in the lecture-room showed Dr. Drake how much
 of the good seed that is there sown falls upon barren soil;
 or how, instead of producing good fruit, it yields nothing
 but tares and thorns.  Such  was his  feeling upon this
 subject that in numerous conversations he had with me
 respecting it, he often expressed himself as being almost
 ready to Abandon teaching forever.  Like many others, he
 perceived the remedv, but was unable,  from the  want of
 cooperation, to apply it.   Poor as  he was, he  would a
 thousand times rather have lectured  to a hundred intel-
 ligent and  well-prepared young men  than to five hundred
 ignorant aud ill-prepared.  His object,  was not the acqui-
 sition of -ain, but  the desire to be useful and profitable to
 those whom it was his duty to instruct in the great prin-
 ciples of the healing art.
    Of quackery, in all its forms and phases, he was an un-
 compromising enemy.  He  loved his  profession and the
 cause of truth too well to witness, without deep solicitude,
                            9 
66
its impudent and  unhallowed assaults  upon the purity
and dignity of medicine,  considered as a humane,  noble,
and scientific pursuit.  Hence,  he permitted no suitable
opportunity to pass without rebuking it, and holding up
its advocates to the scorn and contempt of the public. In
common with many of his brethren he deprecated its un-
blushing effrontery, and regretted the countenance and
support which it derives from a thoughtless clergy and an
unscrupulous and  unprincipled  press.  He saw that it
was an evil of great magnitude, threatening the very exist-
ence of our profession ; and, as a journalist, he deemed it
his duty  to bring the subject frequently and  prominently
before his readers, intreating their aid and cooperation
in suppressing  it.    How well he served the cause of his
profession, in this respect, those only who are acquainted
with his labors are competent to judge.
   He was the founder of no new sect in medicine.   For
such an enterprise he had no ambition, even if he  had
been satisfied, as he never was, of its  necessity. He found
the profession,  when he  entered it,  at the dawn of the
present century, steadily  advancing  in its lofty and  dig-
nified career, refreshed, and, in some degree, renovated,
by his immediate predecessors, and his chief desire was to
ingraft himself upon it as an honest, conscientious,  and
successful  cultivator.   How well he performed  the part
which, in the order of Providence, he was destined to play,
in this respect,  the medical world is fully apprised.   No
man was more sensible than he of the imperfections  and
uncertaintiesof the healing art, and no  one, in this country,
in the nineteenth century,  has labored more ardently and
zealously for its improvement.   For the systems of the
schools no physician and teacher ever entertained a more
thorough and immitigable contempt.  He was an  Eclectic
in the broadest and fullest sense of the term.   His genius
was of too lofty and pervasive an order to be  trammelled
by any  authority,  however  great, respectable,  or  influ- 
67
ential. Systems and system-mongers were alike despised
by him, as they could not, in his judgment, be otherwise
than dangerous in their practical bearings, and subversive
of the best interests of science.  It was Nature and her
works that he delighted to study and to contemplate ; not
that he  regarded with indifference  whatever was good
and valuable in the productions of others, but simply be-
cause he preferred to drink at the fountain instead of at
the turbid stream.   Like Hippocrates and Sydenham, he
was a true observer of nature, and, we may add, a correct
interpreter of her laws and phenomena ; his ambition was
to be her follower during life, and at his death to  leave a
record, a true and faithful transcript, of the results of his
investigations for the benefit of his brethren.
   In  his intercourse with his professional friends his con-
duct  was a model.    His code of ethics was of the purest
and loftiest character.  He  was  not only courteous and
dignified, but eminently considerate of the rights of others ;
his habits of punctuality were  established  early  in life,
and were never departed from.   He made it a rule never
to make a professional  brother wait for him at a consulta-
tion.   When the appointed  moment arrived, he  was  at
his post, ready  to  enter upon the business before him.
 His deportment, on such occasions, towards his juniors,
 was always  conciliatory, and, at times, even deferential.
 It was,  apparently,  a study with him to make them feel
 at ease,  that they  might deliver their views and opinions
 freely, and without embarrassment.  If he differed in sen-
 timent, concerning a point of pathology, diagnosis, or prac-
 tice, he expressed himself with the modesty  of a gentle-
 man, and the kindly feelings  of a  professional  brother.
 He was as free from hauteur and assumption as  he was
 from affectation and pedantry, which no man more des-

    The examination of his cases  was conducted with
 great care and attention; indeed, he seemed occasionally 
68
 to be over-minute and even tedious, spending a longer time
 over his patients than the exigencies appeared to require.
 His early habits of caution never forsook him at the bed-
 side of the sick.
   In his  intercourse with his  patients his conduct was
 regulated by  the  nicest sense  of honor.  No one  under-
 stood better how to  deport himself in  their presence, or
 how  to  preserve inviolate their secrets.   Hippocrates,
 who exacted an oath from his pupils never to reveal any
 thing that was confided  to them by their employers, never
 more scrupulously  observed the  sanctity  of  the  sick-
 chamber.   Kind  and gentle in  his  manners, he was as
 much the friend  as  the physician  of his patients,  not a
 few of whom made him their confidant and counsellor. The
 advice which he delivered under such circumstances was
 often of great  service to the interested party, by whom it
 was never forgotten,  owing to the earnest and solemn tone
 in which it was imparled.
   In the bestowment of  his time and labor, he  made  no
 distinction between the rich and  the poor;  the latch-string
 of his heart was accessible to all.   « The  importance o°f
 the malady, and not the  patient's rank or purse,  was the
 measure of the attention  which he  paid  the case. "  It
 was his province, from  his peculiar relations, to attend
 gratuitously, long after he had attained  the most exalted
 rank in his profession, numerous widows and orphans,  as
well as the families of not a few of his  old  friends,  who
had become poor in consequence of the  vicissitudes  of
fortune.  These labors,  which encroached much  upon his
time and domestic enjoyments, he always performed with
a willing heart, ever regarding their objects  as  specially
 entitled to his  consideration and  regard.
  I had great  confidence in his professional  acumen- I
saw enough of him in the sick chamber to satisfy me that
he had a most  minute and thorough knowledge of disease
 and of the application of remedial  agents.   There was 
69
no one whom I would rather have trusted in my own case,
or in that ofa member of my family; yet there were some,
and some in our own profession, who  pretended to have
no confidence in his judgment or skill, who thought him a
mere theorist, a bold, closet speculator, and an unspar-
ing, reckless practitioner, whose treatment was altogether
too  spoliative,  and, consequently,  dangerous.   Of the
truth  of such  a  charge, I never,  during a familiar ac-
quaintance with him of many  years,  had  any evidence.
The charge, doubtless, had its origin in jealousy and mis-
conception.   It can  hardly be supposed that a man of such
 transcendent intellect,  who had studied his profession so
 well,  so anxiously, and so  intensely, who had observed
 disease so long and so thoroughly,  who had  written so
 much,  and  delivered so many courses of lectures; in a
 word, who had devoted his  whole life to the science of
 medicine  and its kindred  branches,  should have been a
 bad or even an indifferent  practitioner.  The idea is too
 absurd to require serious refutation.   It is abundantly dis-
 proved by the fact  that those  who  knew him best  had
 generally most confidence in him in this respect.  Many of
 his most intimate  friends in Cincinnati continued to em-
 ploy him  up to the  latest period of his life, as did also not
 a few of his earlier  patients; persons who may be presum-
 ed to have been fully  competent to appreciate his judg-
 ment and practical ability.  He rarely gave a lecture in
 this University without,  at the close of it, prescribing for
 five or six of his pupils.  An hour was thus  not  unfre-
 quently spent every day of the week.
    Besides,  he never  lacked  business; in the early part
 of his career his practice was large and laborious, and if,
 as he advanced in age, it became comparatively small, it
 was owing, not to a want of confidence on the part of the
  nublic but  to his   frequent  and protracted absence from
  Cincinnati;   a circumstance wholly at variance, in every
  community, with the acquisition and  retention ofa large 
70
family practice.  Such a practice, in fact, especially as he
grew older, he did not desire; it  was  incompatible both
with his inclinations and the great object of  his ambition,
which was to teach medicine, and to compose a great and
useful work on the diseases of the interior valley of North
America.   Business never forsook him at home or abroad;
the numerous letters which he received from his profes-
sional brethren and from patients  at a distance,  soliciting
his advice in cases of difficulty and  doubt,  show in what
estimation his science and skill were held by  the public.
  His practice in  acute inflammatory  diseases  was bold
and vigorous.  The lancet was his favorite  remedy, and
he drew blood freely  and  without stint in  every case in
which the symptoms were at all urgent or threatening, pro-
vided the  system was in  a condition to bear its  loss.
Having attended,  in early life, the lectures of Dr. Rush,
the most eloquent and captivating teacher of medicine in
his day, in  this country, and a strenuous advocate of san-
guineous depletion, he imbibed a strong prejudice in favor
of this practice, which he retained to the latest period of
his career.  But it would be unjust to say that he employed
the remedy without  judgment or discrimination.  If he
bled freely he also knew when to  bleed.   No man had a
better  knowledge of the  pulse  and the powers of the
heart.
  His conduct, in all  the relations of life, was  most ex-
emplary.   In his friendships, usually formed with much
caution, he was devoted,  firm, and reliable, as many who
survive him  can  testify.   His attachments were strong
and enduring.  Few  men,  as he  himself declared to me
only a few  months before  his death,  possessed so many
ardent and faithful friends.   His social qualities were re-
markable.  He loved his friends, enjoyed their society, and
took great  pleasure in joining them at the domestic board;
where, forgetting  the author and the teacher, he laid  aside
his " sterner nature, " and appeared in his  true charac- 
71
ter, plain and simple as a child, cheerful, amiable and en-
tertaining.   It was during such moments, which served to
relax the cords of his mind, and  fit it for the renewal of
its labors, that he shone to most advantage.  His conver-
sational powers on such occasions, as well as in the draw-
ing-room,  although superior, were not equal.   Like all
great and busy men, he  had his cares and annoyances, his
hours of depression and despondency, his fits of absence
and  restlessness.
  We have  stated  that  Dr. Drake had  many warm,
staunch, and admiring friends.  It would be untrue to say
that he had no enemies.   He had too ardent and positive a
temperament, too much ambition,  too much intellect, to
be altogether exempt from this misfortune, if such, indeed,
it may be called.  I assume, and I think the world's record
abundantly confirms the conclusion, that no great, useful,
or even truly good man  was ever wholly without enemies.
Such  an  occurrence would be an anomaly in the history
of human nature.   It has been well  observed by one who
was himself great, and who occupied, for many years, no
small  space of the public eye, that "slander  is the tax
which a  great  man pays for his greatness."  The  more
conspicuous his position the more likely will he be to have
enemies, to assail and misrepresent his character.  It is only
the passive, the weak, the idle, and the irresolute who are
permitted to pursue, unobserved and unmolested "the even
tenor of their way."  To this classour friend did not belong.
His mission was a higher and a nobler one.  He was des-
tined, under the arrangements of Providence, to perform
great'deeds, and to be a great and shining light in his pro-
fession, and it would have been just as impossible for him,
in attempting to carry out these designs, to steer clear of
enemies, as it was for the three great and illustrious states-
men,  whose loss has been so recently bewailed by  a na-
tion's tears, to fulfil their great mission, and live and die
in peace with the men  and parties whose interests, and 
72
passions, and prejudices they were constantly obliged to
assail and combat.
  But to the credit of Dr.  Drake  let it be  said that he
never wilfully wronged  any human being.  He was always
just, always truthful,  always conscientious.  He never
struck a blow where none had been struck before.   Men
who are fond of using harsh expressions have accused him
of being captious, over-bearing, dictatorial.  During an
acquaintance, intimate and uninterrupted, of nearly twenty
years,  during most  of  which we were colleagues at  Cin-
cinnati and in this city,  I never witnessed any exhibition
calculated to confirm such an accusation.  His official re-
lations in this University, as my  associates here can tes-
tify, were of the most  agreeable and harmonious nature.
There was not a measure, intended to advance the pros-
perity of the institution,  proposed by his colleagues, or
the Honorable Board of Trustees, that did not meet with
his  hearty concurrence and support.  There was no one
whose pen  was more frequently and effectively employed
in repelling the assaults of its enemies, in encouraging the
lukewarm, and in cheering the friendly.
  His early associations in Medical schools, particularly
in the Medical College  of  Ohio, his first and last love,
were  unfortunate, and  exerted  for  a long time, if  not,
indeed, during the rest of his life, an unhappy influence
upon his reputation as a quiet and peaceable man.  Many
of his colleagues were ordinary individuals, either wholly
unfit for the discharge of the  responsible duties assigned
to them by the nature of their chairs, or, at all events', ill-
calculated to aid in building up  a  great and flourishing
school. Misconceptions, misrepresentations,  and, finally,
bitter  and unrelenting  quarrels were the consequence of
this connection, which,  from the attitude in which he  was
always placed as the prominent party,  generally  fell with
severest effect upon Dr. Drake. Thus he was often made
to occupy before the profession and the public a false po- 
73
sition, and  obliged to act a part which did not naturally
belong to him.  It seems  to have been a  principle with
him, at this period of his life, never to allow a charge utter-
ed by an assailant against his character to pass unnoticed
orunrebuked.  So frequent were  these missives that, at
length, even some of his warmest and mosUntimate friends
were disposed  to look upon him as a bitter and unrelent-
ing controversialist.   Nothing, however, could have been
more unjust.  His great error was that he was morbidly
sensitive, and that he permitted himself to be annoyed by
every puff of wind that swept across his path.  Baseness
and malignity never entered into his character.  In all his
difficulties and troubles, growing out of his early profes-
sional  relations, I  know not a solitary one in which he
had not strict justice on his side.  Nature and art had
combined to give him powerful weapons,  and no  man
better understood how to use them against the assaults of
 his enemies.
   Of all his early associates in the  Medical College of
 Ohio, Dr. John  D.  Godman was almost the only one for
 whom  he cherished any sincere respect, or who came up
 to the  standard he had formed of what a colleague and a
 teacher ought to be.  That standard was, perhaps, ca-
 priciously high, so  elevated as to render it  difficult for
 any but a favored few to attain it.  Be this as it may, it
 was I doubt not.the cause of many of the troubles in which
 he was so  soon to be involved, and which fate, blind and
 ill directed, seemed ever ready to recall and  perpetmrte.
 For Godman, his first colleague in the chair of Surgery in
 the Medical College of Ohio,  rocked, like himself, in the
 eradle  of poverty,  deprived, like himself, of early educa-
 tional advantages, and set apart, like himself, for some me-
 chanical pursuit, he ever cherished  the warmest fnend-
 £ and the  most tender regard   He  was evidently a
 "an a^r his own heart,  pure,  of lofty ambition, full of ge
 "lus and industry, and bent upon the achievement of great
                           10 
74
designs.   How well he succeeded the history of his short,
sorrowful, and not uneventful life bears abundant testi-
mony.   Compelled to work for nearly two years with only
one lung for his daily bread, he performed, even while in
this  crippled and dying condition, an  amount of labor
which may well put to shame the puny and flickering at-
tempts at support and reputation of the Young Physic of
the present day, so vaunting, and yet so unproductive of
useful and profitable results.  Cut off at the age of thirty-
seven, by a ruthless disease  which never spares its vic-
tim, he had acquired a character for purity of conduct,
varied learning, and profound attainment  as an anatomist
and naturalist, as rare as it was extraordinary and won-
derful.   It seems  as if nature had offered him as an ex-
ample of what a man,  supported by talents, industry, and
singleness of purpose, may accomplish in the  shortest
time, under circumstances the most adverse,  and under
trials which, to ordinary mortals,  appear insurmountable.
Godman expired at Germantown, Pennsylvania, on the 17th
of April,  1830.  His friend was not unmindful of him after
his death.  In the fourth volume of his journal, he paid a
beautiful and touching tribute to the memory of one who
was, in every respect, worthy of his esteem and affection.
  Genius has its infirmities, as  well as  its weaknesses.
The world, looking merely at the surface of a man's char-
acter, without comprehending the machinery of his mind,
and the motives and circumstances which  impel it to ac-
tion, is often incapable  of appreciating  his feelings, his
sentiments, and his wants.   The sun, although constant-
ly emitting the same amount of light, is often obscured by
clouds, which obstruct his rays, and impair his genial influ-
ence.   Man, true  and faithful to his nature, cannot always
 smile; his  temper is often ruffled, and his mind is often
overcast  by sadness. He cannot be the same at all times, or
to all men.  Human nature  is human nature in all classes
and conditions; now serene and composed, now agitated by 
75
storms and passions, approximating man, in the one case,
to an angel, in the other to a fiend.   In  studying the
character of men we should never lose sight of the fact
that they  are but men; nor forget the circumstances in
which  they are placed,  and move, and have their being,
nor  the  ends and  designs which they aim and strive to
accomplish.  Dr. Drake had his foibles and even his faults;
but it may be truly asserted that few men, engaged in the
turmoil of a public life, were more free from the former
or more exempt from the latter.  Now that he is gone,
let us forget both, and only remember  his resplendent
virtues.
   Dr. Drake never had a vice.  His enemies cannot point
 to a  single act of his life, in which there was the slight-
 est  approximation to any  exhibition of the kind.  His
 moral character was  cast in  the finest and purest mould.
 He could not have been bad.  His conscientiousness and
 love of  approbation were  too large to admit of it.  The
 attachment  8nd  reverence  which he  cherished  for his
 parents were opposed to every feeling of licentiousness
 and immorality.   Their early  training  produced an im-
 pression  upon  his mind  which neither time nor circum-
 stances  could  efface, but which  steadily grew with his
 growth and strengthened with his strength. His conduct,
 in all the periods and phases  of his life, was  squared
 by the strictest rules of honesty, and by the nicest regard
  for the feelings and rights of others. Although he was long
        he always paid his  debts to the uttermost farthing.
  »Pav what thou owest" was with him a golden maxim.
    For  public amusements  he had not only no love, but
  they were eminently  repulsive to his tastes and feelings.
Tl e impression made upon his tender mind  at Mays
Lick, by  this  species of life on parade  and gala days,
^o ,  his  father's  neighbors, was indelible.  He never
Saved a game of cards in his life; gambling and gamblers
he- dike detested.   His  whole  career, in fact, from its 
76
commencement to its close, was an exhibition of attach-
ment to moral principle.  His life was one of constant and
untiring  industry and  exertion, exhausting meditation,
and the most resolute self-denial.  He never knew any
thing of the luxury of the chase, or of trout-fishing.  He
might have read Isaak Walton's  "Complete Angler," the
"Contemplative Man's Recreation," or  "Salmonia," or
"Da\ s of Fly-fishing," with a view of seeking refuge from
ennui,  or  relaxation  from his scientific labors; but never
for the purpose of learning, much less practising, the art.
In a word,  he labored incessantly under the impulse ofa
lofty ambition, and under an intense desire to improve his
profession and benefit mankind.
  We  have said nothing,  as yet,  of Dr. Drake,  as he
appeared in his domestic relations, in the bosom of his
own family,  among his  children  and grand children, and
at his own hearth.  It is no idle curiosity which prompts
us to  lift  the  veil  of private  life, and  to look,  for a
moment, into the very caverns and  recesses of the heart
of our departed friend.   We have already seen how fond
he was of her who,  for nearly twenty years, had shared
his joys and his sorrows ;  how tenderly he loved her, and
how faithfully he  cherished her memory after her death.
His attachment to her never faltered ;  it was deep, firm,
and abiding, inrooted in the very fibres of his heart.   It
was sublime!
  To say that he was a tender,  devoted, and exemplary
father would but ill express the truth ; he was more ;  his
love ran in the deepest and broadest channel.   He idolized
his children and watched over their interests and happiness
with the care and  solicitude with which the eagle watches
over his young.  His affection for them was omnipresent,
and all-absorbing.  The numerous letters which he ad-
dressed to them during his long winter residences in this
city, and  during his travels in  various sections  of the
Union in search of materials for his great work, to say 
77
nothing of his frequent visits to Cincinnati, amply attest
the truth of this remark.   It seemed as if the caldron of
his affection were constantly boiling over,  and seeking
vent  in such missives.   They were to him  as  winged
messengers,  bearing glad-tidings from  his own heart to
the hearts of his children and grand-children.   His cor-
respondence with the different members of  his  family
would cover many volumes ; for it was not only frequent,
but copious, extending often through many pages.  His
grand-children came in  for a  full  share of this  kind of
intercourse, so  honorable to the heart  and head  of this
great and good  man.   Their birth-days never failed to be
nailed by a letter, generally abounding in some witticism,
some simple anecdote, or some good advice,  conveyed in
a plain, agreeable, and tender style, well adapted to their
comprehension.   During his sojourn in our city, he paid
them every winter not less  than three or four visits, often
lecturing twice, and,  sometimes,  even  thrice a day, that
he might get in advance of his course, and  thus obtain
 the requisite time.  He had not a colleague of whom he
 did not occasionally borrow an hour for this purpose.
   In connection with this branch  of the  subject  may be
 mentioned  a series of letters which Dr. Drake addressed
 to his children, a few years ago,  while engaged in deliv-
 ering a course of medical lectures in  this city.   They
 exte°nd over several hundred pages of manuscript,  and
 have lately, since  his  death, been  bound  in a quarto
 volume, under  the title of "Reminiscential  Letters."  I
 am sure that every one who peruses them will,  like my-
 self regard them as a most precious legacyYrom a doting
 father to his devoted childred and  grand-children.  They
 recount, in glowing terms, and with a true Daguerreotype-
 likness the deeds and scenes of his childhood and boyhood
  uo to the time he entered Cincinnati as a student of that
  profession which he was destined so much to adorn and
   llustrate by his  labors, his teachings, and  his  writings. 
78
 There is not an occupation incident to a new settlement
 in the West,  or in which he was himself engaged,  which
 he does  not pourtray in these epistles in the most vivid
 and graphic  manner.  Had he  been able to wield the
 pencil of a Cole, he could not have painted, in truer colors,
 the  voyage of the first  fifteen years  of his monotonous
 but not uneventful life.  A selection,  by some judicious
 relative, or friend, of the deceased, would form a valuable
 contribution to our literature, especially for  the young,
 whose minds could not fail to be benefitted and improved
 by its perusal.  In point of charm and interest, in  moral
 and religious tone, in filial reverence and devotion, in just
 and  philosophical deduction, they are not surpassed by
 the beautiful Autobiography of Jean Paul, as it is exhibited
 in the life of that extraordinary man by Mrs. Lee, herself
 one of the most delightful of writers.
  The life of Dr. Drake was eminently eventful. No man
 that our profession has yet produced  has led so diversified
 a career.  He was, probably, connected with more medical
 schools  than  any  individual that ever lived.    It  is
 rare that physicians interest themselves in so many public
 and professional enterprises as he did.   His mind was of
 unlimited application.  His  own  profession,  which he
 served so well and so faithfully, was incapable of restrain-
 ing it;  every now and then it overleaped its boundaries,
 and wanderd off into other spheres.  His career,  in this
 respect, affords a remarkable contrast with that ofmedical
 men generally, whose pursuits furnish few incidents of
 public  interest or importance.  His  mission to his  pro-
 fession and to  his age was a bright and happy one.    No
 American physician b«s performed his part  better, or left
 a richer savor along his life-track.
  But his life was not only eventful; it was also eminently
laborious.  No medical man ever worked harder, or  more
diligently and  faithfully; his industry  was  untiring, his
perseverance  unceasing.   It  was  to this element of his 
79
character, blended with the intensity we have described,
that he was indebted for the success which so preeminently
distinguished  him from his professional co-temporaries.
He had genius, it is true, and genius ofa high order, but
without industry and  perseverance it would have availed
him little in the accomplishment of the great aims and
objects of his life.  He seemed to be early impressed with
the truth of the remark  of Seneca:   " Non est ad astra
mollis a. terris via. "  He felt that he  did  not  belong  to
that fortunate class of beings whose peculiar privilege it is
to perform greatenterprises without labor, and to achieve
great ends without means.  His habits of industry, formed
in early boyhood, before, perhaps, he ever dreamed of the
 destiny that was awaiting him, forsook him only with  his
 existence.   His life, in this respect,  affords an example
 which addresses itself to the student  of every profession
 and pursuit in life, which the young man should imitate,
 and the old man not  forget.
   There was one trait in his character of which I have  not
 yet spoken, and which I approach with much diffidence.
 I allude to his humility.   So largely did this enter into
 his conduct and character,  that I cannot,  for  a moment,
 suppose that it was  not real and genuine.  From  what I
 saw of it, in the different circumstances of  his life, it
 appeared to me as if it had been deeply inlaid in his very
 constitution, and  that it was, therefore,  compelled,  not
 unfrequently,  to exhibit itself in his conduct and conver-
 sation   What corroborates  this  opinion is  that in  his
 "Rem'iniscential Letters," already more than once alluded
 to   he speaks of the low state  of  his pride.   " That
 n^ssion "he remarks, "was, indeed, never strong; and,
 moreover, was counterpoised by a humility, which always
 jested how far short I came of the excellence which
2*It to be attained.  With these traits,  he continues, if
Thad been born a slave,  I  should never  have become  a
 ebel • but conforming  to  my  condition, and rendering 
80
 diligent  service, have acquired  the confidence  of  my
 master."
   Dr. Drake never visited Europe.  In the many conver-
 sations  which  passed between  us  on  this  subject, he
 invariably assigned, as a reason for not going, his literary
 and scientific deficiencies, ?s if he feared to come in con-
 tact with his transatlantic brethren, whom he supposed to
 be so much more enlightened than himself.   I never conld
 doubt the  sincerity of his  declaration.   That he would
 have  been  a worthy  representative of our profession
 abroad, none that knew him can doubt.
  He always had an humble estimate  of his scientific
 labors.   When the first volume of bis  great work was
 published,   he  was naturally very  anxious as  to the
 manner in which it would  be received by the profession.
 Almost the first notice of it  that appeared was read in his
 presence at  the meeting of  the  American  Medical Asso-
 ciation at Cincinnati, in 1850, by Dr.  Stille, chairman of
 the Committee  on Medical Literature, and had the effect
 of completely overpowering him.   He felt that the  work
 was safe, and humility baptized his triumph in a flood of
 tears.
  The great defect  in  his character was restlessness, grow-
ing, apparently, out of his ardent and impulsive tempera-
ment, which never permitted him to  pursue any subject
very long without becoming tired of it,  or panting for a
change.  His mind required diversity of occupation, just as
the stomach, to be healthful, requires diversity of  food.
Hence, while engaged in  the composition of his great
work, he could  not resist the frequent temptations that
presented themselves to divert him from his labors.   His
delight was to appear before the public, to deliver a temper-
ance address, to preside at a public meeting, or to make a
speech on the subject of internal improvement, or the Bible
or missionary cause.   For  a similar reason he stepped
rmt of his way  to write his letters on Slavery, and his 
81
Discourses before the Cincinnati Medical Library Asso-
ciation.  No man in our land could have done these things
better, few, indeed, so well ; but, useful as they are, it is
to be regretted that  he undertook them,  because  they
occupied much of his time  that might, and, in the  opinion
of his friends, ought to, have  been devoted to the  com-
position and completion of his great work, the ultimate
aim and object of his ambition.   Like Adam Clarke, he
seemed to think that a man could not have too many irons
in  the  fire, and  the  consequence was that he  generally
had the tongs, shovel, and poker all in at the same time.
   It was the same restless feeling that caused his frequent
 resignations in medical institutions.  Had his disposition
 been more calm  and patient, he would have been satisfied
 to identify himself with one medical school, and to  labor
 zealously for its permanency and renown. In moving about
 so frequently, he induced  people to believe that he was a
 quarrelsome man, who could not agree with his colleagues,
 and whose ruling passion was to be a kind of autocrat in ev-
 ery medical faculty with which  he was connected.  But,
 while  his own conduct gave coloring to such an idea, noth-
 ing could have been more untrue.
    But Dr. Drake was not merely a physician, a teacher,
 and an author.  He was more;  he was a Christian, and a
 Christian from choice and conviction, not from motives of
 expediency and self-interest.   A reverence for the Deity
 had been deeply implanted in his very constitution; and the
  pious teachings of his parents, in his early childhood, were
  never effaced from his mind.
    In 1840, he united himself in this city with St. Paul's
  church then under the pastoral charge of that  excellent
  and  holy man, the late  Rev. William  Jackson.  He
  had  lono- contemplated such a step, and as the time ap-
  proached for its consummation he looked forward to the
  event with feelings of no ordinary satisfaction.  His wish
       to be brought into closer fellowship with his christian
                           11 
82
 brethren, and to seal his affection for the church with the
 blood ofa dying Savior.  He was ever afterwards a faith-
 ful,  consistent, and  untiring attendant upon public wor-
 ship.  Nor was he a less regular observer of the daily du-
 ties of private and family devotion.   The charge of irre-
 ligion,  sometimes urged against medical men,  never re-
 ceived any confirmation from his character.
  His  mind was deeply impressed with  the  evangelical
 truths of the gospel, and he could not contemplate, without
 serious apprehensions, the High Church  movements and
 tendencies of the present day.  He saw that Puseyism had
 taken deep root in the minds of many good  people, and
 he considered it a sacred duty to aid, if possible, in coun-
 teracting what  he regarded as its evil  influences.  So
 much  did he have this subject at heart  that jhe was in-
 duced, only a few years before his  death, to discuss it, at
 some length, in  the Philadelphia Episcopal Recorder, in a
 series of articles written with much judgment and ability.
 They appeared under the signature of a " Western Lay-
man, "  and attracted much attention at the time.  At the
period  of his death, he was under an engagement to fur-
 nish  a series of articles for a new Review, about to be es-
tablished by the leaders of the " Low Church " party.
  Nearly all the early settlers of Mays Lick were baptists,
 and hence all his early ideas of Christian doctrine,  wor-
 ship, and deportment were derived from  that denomina-
 tion.   He  would probably have attached himself to that
 church, had he not been deterred by the fact that it has no
 written creed, and no system of government beyond the
 democracy of the congregation.   When  only six years
of age,  and when he was yet hardly able to read, a baptist
 catechism was put into his hands by the Rev. Mr. Wood,
 an old clergyman, of Washington, Kentucky. It'opened
 with the doctrines of the Trinity, which so perplexed him
 that  he ever afterwards retained a prejudice against all 
83
similar publications.  The first Episcopal Church of Cin-
cinnati was organized at his house. *
  He was well read in the Bible; and his acquaintance
with theological literature was  by no means inconsidera-
ble.   He was familiar with the tenets of  the principal de-
nominations which compose the  Christian  world ;  and,
while he was tolerant of  other sects,  he had  a warm and
decided leaning towards his own.
  Every thing relating to a distinguished man acquires an
interest, which produces a desire to become acquainted
with  his  personal history and appearance  ; even to the
most trifling circumstance.  We wish  to know how he
looked, and walked, and talked ;  how he deported himself
in the social circle, in the drawing-room, and in the  pres-
ence  of his friends and neighbors ; how he amused him-
self, and spent his time ;  how he studied; and what means
he employed to make himself just the man he was.  The
little sayings and  doings of a  great man are always ob-
jects of interest, and frequently throw more light upon his
real  character  than his public  acts.    Our interest in
Socrates is  heightened ten-fold  by our knowledge of
Xantippe. We can almost forgive the sentence which con-
demned him to  swallow the fatal draught: but we can
hardly excuse the conduct of a wife who destroyed the
domestic happiness of her husband.
   In regard to our friend, his  personal  appearance  was
 striking and commanding.  No one could approach him,
 or be in his presence, without feeling that he was in con-
 tact  with a man of  superior intellect  and  acquirement.
 His features, remarkably regular, were indicative of manly
 beauty, and were lighted up and improved by blue eyes of
 wonderful power and penetration.  When excited by an-
 ger or emotion of any kind, they literally twinkled in their
 sockets, and he looked as if he could pierce the very soul
  f his opponent.   His countenance  was sometimes staid
 -"ITRenainiscential Letters. 
84
and solemn ; but generally, especially when he was in the
presence of his friends, it was radiant and beaming.  His
forehead, though not expansive, was high, well-fashioned,
and eminently denotive of intellect.  The mouth was of
moderate size, the lips of medium thickness, and the chin
rounded off and well-proportioned.  The nose was prom-
inent, but not too large.  The frosts of sixty-seven  win-
ters had slightly silvered his temples, but had  made no
other inroad upon his hair. He was nearly six feet high,
rather slender, and well-formed.
  His power of indurance, both mental and physical, was
extraordinary.  He seemed literally incapable of fatigue.
His step was rapid and elastic,  and he  often took  long
walks, sufficient to tire men  much younger, and, appar-
ently, much stronger than himself.  He was an early riser,
and was not unfrequently seen  walking before breakfast
with  his hat under his arm,  as if inviting  the morning
breeze to fan his temple and cool his burning brain.
  No examination was made of his brain after death.   Had
this organ  been placed in the scale, its weight would have
fallen far below that of the brain of Cuvier, and of Web-
ster ; but if it could have been analysed by the chemist and
the  microscopist, its finer texture would have been found
fully equal to that of either of these illustrious individuals.
It is  the^mind that makes the man,  and the structure,
not  the  wreight  of the  brain,  that makes the mind.   A
person may have an enormous brain,  and yet be an idiot;
and, on the other hand, this organ maybe unusually small,
and yet the intellect over which it  presides be astonish-
ingly great, and of the noblest quality.  The engine of
Dr. Drake's brain was, to borrow a not inappropriate ex-
pression, of the finest  manufacture,  and our regret is
that  it cannot be put into some new hull for further service.
   His manners  were simple  and dignified; he was easy
of access, and eminently social in his habits and feelings.
His dress, and style of living were  plain and  unostenta- 
85
tious.   During  his residence in Cincinnati, previously to
his connection  with  this University,  his house was the
abode of a warm but simple hospitality.  For many years,
no citizen of that place entertained so many strangers and
persons of distinction.
   In politics he was a Whig, and never failed to exercise
his elective franchise.  During the presidential canvass of
 1840, in which his early friend, the late General Harri-
 son, himself at one  time a student  of medicine, was the
 Whig candidate, Dr. Drake evinced a deeper interest, and
 took a more active part, than he ever did before, or after-
 wards, in  any contest of a similar kind.  He was the ar-
 dent friend of rational liberty throughout the world; and
 no man ever gloried more in the institutions of his country.
   He was naturally  conscientious.  A desire to  execute
 every  trust that was confided to him, promptly and faith-
 fully, formed a prominent trait in his character.  He was
 always unhapyy, if, through neglect, inadvertence, or mis-
 fortune,  he made a  failure.  This  feeling pursued him
 through the whole of his life.   A little incident, of which
 he himself has furnished the particulars, strikingly illus-
 trates the truth of this remark.   One day,  when hardly
 six years old, he was sent to borrow a little salt from one
 of the neighbors, an article which was then  very scarce,
 and which cost at least twelve times as much then as now.
 It was a small quantity, tied up in a paper,  which,  when
  he was about half way home, tore,  and out rushed the
  precious  grains upon the ground.   "As I write," says
  he  " nearly sixty years afterwards,  the anguish which I
  felt at the sight seems almost to be revived.   I  had not
  then learned  that the spilling of salt was portentous, but
  felt that  it was a great present affliction." *
    He was a  man  of extraordinary refinement.   This
  feeling was deeply ingrafted in his constitution, and always
* Reminiscential Letters. 
86
displayed itself, in a marked degree, in the presence of the
female sex.   Although  his  parents  were  uncultivated
persons, and hardly ever mingled in refined society, they
cherished as high and pure an idea of the  duty of good
breeding as any people on earth. The principle ofpoliteness
was deeply rooted in both, and they never failed to practice
it in their family and in their intercourse with the world. *
  An admiration for the female sex was one of the earliest
sentiments  developed in his moral nature.  It swayed him
through life, and  continued to govern him to  its close.
" When that solemn event shall come, " says he,  " I hope
to see female faces around my bed."—
            "And  with a woman's hand to close
            My lids in death, and say—"Repose."
  His mode of living was peculiar, and, in the opinion of
the world  and some of  his  friends, parsimonious  and
eccentric.    Nothing,  however,  could have  been more
erroneous.   The affection of his brain,  which ultimately
destroyed  him, and to occasional attacks of which he
was for many years subject,  compelled him  to  live dif-
ferently from  other  men.  The slightest indulgence  at
dinner invariably  brought on  an attack  of  cerebral op-
pression,  followed by an inability for useful mental and
physical exertion  ;  and it was a knowledge of this fact,
the result of ample experience, that induced him never
to take any thing  at this meal, except a cup of tea and the
smallest  quantity  of vegetables;  frequently,   indeed,
nothing but a little pastry.  At his breakfast and supper,
however, he generally ate as heartily as any one.  I allude
to this subject, trivial as it may appear, and irrelevant as
it may be to the true dignity of biography, because I wish
to place my friend right beforejthis community,  in whose
midst  he  lived  and  toiled for  so many  long winters.
The explanation  is due  to his memory, to his children,
* Reminiscential Letters. 
87
and  to his friends.   Boarding houses and  hotels were
disagreeable to him ;  he could find no congeniality at a
public table, and  in the noise and confusion  of public
apartments.  He preferred his own room at the University,
with his cracker and cup of tea, to the most splendid table
in the State.  For many years he  found a congenial place
and a hearty welcome at the  houses of  his friends.  It
was not to save and hoard up money that he thus lived;
for no man ever spent money  more liberally, no one ever
had a greater contempt for it.  His late associates in this
University, and a few friends in this city, who alone knew
him thoroughly and truly, can best appreciate the force
and truth of my remarks.
   To those who are  engaged in scientific, literary, and
educational pursuits, or in the practice of medicine, it will
not be uninteresting to know that Dr. Drake was poor, and,
until the last eight years of hislife,pecuniarily embarrassed.
It was not until after his connection with this  University
that he began to lay up any thing from his earnings. His
 medical journal  only brought him into debt.   The first
 volume of his great work has sold slowly, and  had not
 yielded him one dollar at the time of his death.  Since
 that period his son-in-law, Alexander H. McGuffey, Esqr.,
 has  received,  as  his literary executor, two hundred and
 fifty dollars as the  balance to the author's credit up to
 that time.   This sum is not more than one tenth of what
 he paid for the maps alone,  contained  in the  work,  and
 en-raved at his own expense.  Nothing, in fact, that Dr.
 Dr&ake ever undertook was  pecuniarily profitable.  He
 was not a man of the money-making character.   He lost
 money by every enterprise  in which he  ever  engaged.
 His aims were always so lofty, and so far removed from
 self, that he never thought of money,  except so far as it
 was necessary to their accomplishment.
    But  although he has not, like Csesar, left any landed
 estates,  villas"  orchards,  or vineyards  to  his friends 
88
and the public, he has bequeathed them, what is far more
precious and induring, a name without reproach, a bright
example, and imperishable works.
  Dr. Drake received, at various periods of his life, tes-
timonials of the high  appreciation of  his  professional
character from different societies, both foreign and domes-
tic.  The names, with the date of their diplomas, of a few
only of these are subjoined.
  1. The Philadelphia Medical Society, March  1st, 1806.
2. The American Antiquarian Society, April 15th, 1818.
3. The American Philosophical Society  at Philadelphia,
April 17th, 1818.   4. The  Wernerian  Natural History
Society of Edinburgh, Feb. 11th, 1826.  5. The Linnsen
Society of Philadelphia.   6. The Medical Society of Mas-
sachusetts, July 10th, 1836.   7. The American Ethno-
logical Society, Nov.,  1842.  8. The Sweedish National
Medical Society at Stockholm,  Dec. 19th, 1848.
  Only  a fortnight before he died, he was elected an hon-
orary member of the Kentucky State Medical Society  at
its meeting in this city.   Dr. Bartlett, Profesor of Materia
Medicain the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New
York, and Dr. Deaderick, of Athens, Tennessee,  whose
name is so honorably associated  with  the operation  of
excision of the lower jaw, were elected at the same time.
  But the diploma which, of all  others,  he  valued and
appreciated most highly was  the  one  already alluded
to as having been given him by Dr. Goforth,  at the close
of his private pupilage.   He was more  proud  of it, and
felt more pleasure in recurring  to it, than of any testimo-
nial that could have been bestowed upon him by the Royal
College of  Surgeons of London,  op. the  Royal  Academy
of Medicine of Paris.   It was, as it were, his first pro-
fessional love ; he had worked hard for it, and, no doubt,
felt that he was worthy of it, conscious as he was of his de-
ficiencies.  This document, written on form paper, in a bold
and beautiful hand, ran in this  wise :
\ 
89
      "Cincinnati,  State of Ohio, August 1st,  1805.
                     I do certify
                        that
                 Mr. Daniel Drake
          has pursued, under my direction,
                    for four  years,
     the study of Physic,  Surgery,  and Midwifery.
               From his  good abilities
                         and
          Marked attention to the prosecution
                    of his Studies,
      1 am fully convinced that he is well-qualified
             to practise in these branches.
                 William Goforth, Jr.,
                         Surgeon-General
                    1st Divis. Ohio Militia. "

  How little he valued his  other diplomas, is shown by the
fact that he never referred to them in any of his  publica-
tions.  In his work on the diseases of the Interior Valley
of North America his name appears without any titles,
merely as Daniel Drake, M. D.   I do not know that he was
proud of this simplicity; probably he might have consider-
ed himself more honored by the breach than the observance.
  Such, my associates, was the character of the physician,
the teacher,  and the medical philosopher,  who,  in the
mellow twilight of evening,  was struck from our ranks ;
and  such, my  fellow-citizens,  was the character  of the
man, who, in the full vigor of his intellect, and in the hour
of his usefulness, was struck from your midst.   Truly, a
o-reat and good man has fallen.   A great and noble intel-
lect is extinguished.  A bright and burning light has dis-
appeared.  But,  although our friend is dead, yet does he
live ' He  survives in his works and his  example.  His
body has gone to  the  tomb, to moulder into dust, and
return, atom by atom, to the  earth from whence it was
taken •  his soul, purified and redeemed, has been restored
to its God and its Creator;   but all that  was lofty, and
refined,  and intellectual in his character will remain with
                  12 
90
 us and with our posterity after us ; gaining strength, and
 beauty,  and freshness as it descends the stream of  time.
 The  good seed which he scattered upon the earth will
 continue to germinate and fructify as long as there  shall
 be any soil for its reception, and the quickning of its living
 principle.
   Shall it be said that such a man was  born  without an
 object; or that it does not matter whether he wrote  such
 a work, or performed such a deed?  The world, forgetful
 of its loss, and unconscious of his greatness, may move on
 in its unconcern as when he was in its  midst;  but that
 world would not have been complete without him.    His
 presence was necessary to the age and generation in which
 he lived.  Every human being, however humble or insig-
 nificant,  is created for some given or specific purpose,
 although our feeble comprehension may  not enable us to
 determine  what  that  purpose  is.    Look  at yonder
 star in the firmament.   It is the smallest of its myriads
 of sisters, so small, indeed, as to be haidly visible to the
 unassisted  eye, a mere speck,  as it  were, in the great
 celestial diadem, and yet, if removed from its orbit, or the
 place allotted to it, the whole machinery of the planetary
 system would instantly be thrown into a  state of disorder
 and confusion.  Will any one affirm that it was of no  use,
 or that there was no  design in its creation? The smallest
 pebble upon  the sea shore, nay, the minutest grain of
 sand  of which the imagination  can conceive, is just as
 necessary to  complete, and, for aught we know to  the
 contrary,  to uphold, the Universe as the mighty rock of
 Gibraltar, which rears  its dark and frowning head aloft
 into the heavens from its broad ocean bed in the Atlantic.
 Truth is eternal, and  immutable ; the works of the human
 mind never die;  they form a part of the  Universe,  and
 are indispensable to the fulfilment of God's designs.
  Dr. Drake lived in  one of the most  memorable  epochs
of the development of the human mind.   The first half of
the present century does not yield, in fame and usefulness, 
91
in great discoveries and improvements, to any period of
time that has preceded it.   His own profession has never
advanced  with a more steady and truly progressive pace.
The lamp of medical  science has never burned  with a
brighter and steadier flame.  Discovery has followed dis-
covery, and  improvement  improvement until the mind
is absolutely bewildered by the scene before us.
  Literature, science,  and the arts,  poetry,  and phil-
osophy,  have  never  been more widely,  or more  suc-
cessfully,  cultivated.   The blessings of knowledge, the
arts of peace, and of civil and religious liberty have never
been more extensively diffused among the nations of the
earth.   His own country has risen  from an humble and
feeble  republic to  the most exalted position  that any
government or people can occupy.  The West, the more
immediate theatre  of  his own fame and usefulness, has
been transformed from a wilderness, the abode of the red
man and the panther, into a smiling and luxuriant garden,
covered with millions  of inhabitants,  and studded every
wherewith cities, and towns, and villages, teeming with the
arts, and luxuries, and refinements of civilized life.   Its
great waters, which, at the commencement of the present
century, knew no vessels, save the Indian's canoe, and the
adventurer's flat-boat, are now traversed by thousands of
 noble steamers, freighted with the rich and varied produce
 of our soil, and conveying the traveler in speed and safety
 to his destination.
   The facilities of intercourse have been vastly increased.
 Fifty years ago a journey from Cincinnati to Philadelphia
 occupied  the° traveler between  three  and four weeks;
 now it can be performed in as many days.  In 1800, there
 was not  a single  rail-road in the world;  now there  are
 thirteen thousand miles in the United States alone. Haifa
 century a*o it took nearly a month to convey intelligence
 from Cincinnati to New Orleans, or from the West to the
 Atlantic  cities; now  it requires  hardly  a few minutes.
 Then the lightning had been tamed; but it had not  yet 
92
been taught  to  speak.  Fifty years  ago printing  was
performed entirely by hand ; now it is performed by steam,
a single press behg capable of throwing off twenty thou-
sand newspapers an hour.  When Dr. Drake entered the
profession there was not a single medical school in  the
valley  of the Mississippi;  now there are nearly twenty.
Then there were few graduates of medicine; now they are
scattered over every portion  of the country.   He found
his profession weak and obscure, and he left it in strength
and beauty,  having advanced it by his own  labors, and
adorned it by his own character.
  But time admonishes me to bring this sketch to a close.
Much more has already  been  said than the occasion  re-
quires,  though  much might  be added that might be of
interest and benefit to us all.    In reviewing my labors I
am conscious that they  have fallen far short of what they
ought to be, or of what they might  have  been in more
able  hands.   From  my  intimate relations, personal  and
official,  with'the deceased,  for a period of nearly twenty
years, my colleagues, doubtless, concluded that the task
of preparing a memorial of his life  belonged more appro-
priately to me than to any one else.   I can only say that
I have endeavored to discharge the sacred trust,  which
their partiality has confided to me, to the best of my humble
ability.  It has been to  me, throughout, a labor of love,
not unmingled with the deepest sadness at the loss of him
whose  life and services we have this evening met to com-
memorate.   I have endeavored to present a true picture
of his character, and to speak of him as he was, and as he
exhibited himself to us  in his "daily walk and conversa-
tion."   I have  not indulged in panegyric,  or fulsome
eulogy.  It has not been my object  to weave a chaplet
for his brow, an  office of which he does not stand in need ;
but to drop upon his grave, still fresh with the  sod that
covers it,  a sprig of gnaphalium, as  an  emblem alike
of our affection, and of his immortality upon earth. 
 
 
JUN i ? 1^46 
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