man and lead a life of ease, elegance and gentility. This was their idea of a
doctor's life. The young maidens wept and old ladies were not sparing in
their good advice to Daniel. They cautioned him against being too proud.
Uncle Cornelius, who had some knowledge of the world, spoke of the bad
young men that were rather plentiful in "Cin," as they called Cincinnati in those
days. All wished Daniel success and amid the good wishes of his friends and
neighbors he set out on horseback for Fort Washington on the 16th of De-
cember, 1800, accompanied by his father and a neighbor. As he was slowly
riding away, he looked back and caught the last greetings and words of encour-
agement that came out of the heart and from the lips of his good mother.
Two days later the party arrived in Cincinnati, and Daniel presented himself
at the house of Dr. Goforth, his preceptor. The arrangement which Isaac
Drake had made with Dr. Goforth, was that Daniel should live in his pre-
ceptor'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 language, which, up to that time, he had wholly neglected. For his
services and board, the preceptor was to receive 400, a tolerably large sum,
considering the limited resources of Daniel's father.
    Dr. Goforth was the most prominent physician in Cincinnati, and, being
socially well connected, was one of the foremost citizens. He was a unique
character, dignified, aristocratic, a typical gentleman of colonial times. Con-
sidering all this, he must have been strangely at variance with the crude and
primitive conditions that characterized the early pioneer times in the Western
country at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Daniel Drake always
retained a lively and grateful recollection of his preceptor, and has given us
such a masterful sketch of him that I could not do any better than to repro-
duce the greater portion of it:
   Dr. William Goforth, under whom Daniel Drake now began his appren-
ticeship as a medical student, was born in New York in 1766. His preparatory
education was what may be called tolerably good. His private preceptor was
Dr. Joseph Young, of that city, a physician of some eminence, who, in the
year 1800, published a small volume on the universal diffusion of electricity,
and its agency in astronomy, physiology and therapeutics, speculations which
his pupil cherished throughout life. But young Goforth also enjoyed the
more substantial teachings of that distinguished anatomist and surgeon, Dr.
Charles McKnight, then a public lecturer in New York. In their midst, how-
ever, A. D. 1787-88, he and the other students of the forming school of that
city, were dispersed by a mob, raised against the cultivation of anatomy. He
at once resolved to accompany his brother-in-law, Gen. John S. Gano, into
the West; and on the 10th of June, 1788, landed at Maysville, Ky., then
called Limestone. Settling in Washington, four miles from the river, then
in population the second town of Kentucky, he soon acquired great popularity,
and had the chief business of the county for eleven years. Fond of change,
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