xt7cvd6p0635 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7cvd6p0635/data/mets.xml Yandell, Lunsford P. (Lunsford Pitts), 1805-1878. 1870 books b92-96-27764306 English J.P.Morton, : Louisville, Ky. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Dudley, Benjamin W. (Benjamin Winslow), 1785-1870. Memoir of Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley / by Lunsford P. Yandell. text Memoir of Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley / by Lunsford P. Yandell. 1870 2002 true xt7cvd6p0635 section xt7cvd6p0635
A MEMOIR
OF
DR. BENJAMIN W. DUDLEY:
BY
LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, M. D.
FROM rTHE AMERICAN IXRACTITJONER.
LOUISVILLE, KY.
PRIENrD NV JOHN P. MORTON COMPANY, I16 AND 158 MAIN STREUr.
1870
This page in the original text is blank.
A MEMOIR
OF
DR. BENJAMIN W. DUDLEY.
The announcement of the death of Dr. B. W. Dudley,
though from his great age and increasing infirmities an event
not unexpected, will be read with feelings of sadness by ever)
American physician; and educated surgeons in every country
will feel, when they read it, that a great light of the profes-
sion has gone out. The oldest by many years of all the
eminent medical men of the West and South, for a long time
the unrivaled surgeon of the Mississippi Valley, one of the
founders of the earliest of all our western schools of medicine,
he was the last remaining link between the present genera-
tion of physicians and that which has passed away with him.
If he leaves behind him any superior in the profession of our
country, it is certain that no one of all our surgeons has occu-
pied a larger space in the public eye. He achieved indeed a
great reputation. He was equally distinguished as a surgeon
and as a teacher of surgery. His life and character were in
many respects remarkable, and furnish materials for a memoir
of extraordinary interest. It would be a pleasure to write a
history of his. professional career; and one, no doubt, will be
written in due time worthy of his fame and services. In the
limited space that can be afforded by a journal like this,
nothing more can be attempted than a brief notice of the
more prominent events and labors of his life.
A Iemoir of Dr. Beidamin W Dudley.
Dr. Benjamin Winslow Dudley was born of respectable
and pious parents in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, on the
12th of April, 1785. His father, Mr. Ambrose Dudley, long
known as a leading Baptist minister in Kentucky, and whose
memory is still affectionately cherished in the churches where
he labored, removed to the neighborhood of Lexington, into
what was then called the county of Kentucky, when he was a
year ol0(. In that neighborhood his long life was passed. He
grew tip with the beautiful city which was his pride, and of
which he was always a favorite son. The opportunities for
acqluiring an education in Kentucky when he was growing up
were very limited, and it is not known that he enjoyed any
which his own immediate neighborhood could not furnish.
If he studied any language but his own at school, it must
have been superficially, for he made no pretensions to any
knowledge of either the Greek or Latin; and the perfect com-
mand of the French which he is known to have possessed he
acquired later in life, and principally when he was abroad.
He was probably not a student. His turn of mind was not
literary. But his education was not neglected, and the train-
ing which he received was in studies which fitted him well for
a life of action. No doubt in subsequent life he often felt
painfully the want of those classical attainments which in the
pulblic mind are always associated with a professional edu-
cation, and he was sometimes embarrassed in the society of
scholars. But if he missed the grace of a thorough educa-
tion, he was saved from the temptation to which scholars are
exp)osed of wasting upon vain studies those powers which he
devoted with so much success to matters of practice. He had
not to regret at the end of his life, with the learned Grotius,
that he had consumed it in levities and strenuous inanities.
Medicine being the profession to which his taste inclined
him, he was placed by his father, when very young, under
the tuition of Dr. Frederick Ridgely, an eminent physician
at that time and for many years after in a large practice in
2
A Memoir of Dr. Betjamin IT' Dudley.
Lexington. In the office of this excellent instructor he was
not only taught the elements of medicine, but had constant
opportunities of becoming acquainted with disease at the
bedside. Dr. Dudley always spoke with warmth and esteem
of his scholarly and urbane preceptor, as a physician whose
high culture of mind and elevated moral tone reflected dignity
upon his profession.
In the fall of 1804 he went to Philadelphia to attend
medical lectures. He met in the University of Pennsylvania,
among the students of that winter, John Esten Cooke, Daniel
Drake, and William H. Richardson-names destined after-
ward to be associated so often and so closely with his. The
coincidence is interesting. Two of these students, like him-
self, were from the backwoods, and felt as he did the disad-
vantages of a deficient education. Richardson had been reared
in his own immediate neighborhood, and had not made him-
self even an English scholar. Drake by great assiduity had
already supplied many of the deficiences of his early tuition,
but knew no language except his own mother-tongue. All
became distinguished, and two of the three who were with
him in that class rose to an eminence hardly exceeded by his
own. At different times all subsequently were associated with
him as colleagues, and two sustained to him, at a later period,
the relation of strenuous competitors in rival medical schools.
But whether working harmoniously together in the same in-
stitution, or striving to build up rival schools, all were engaged
in shaping the profession of medicine in the frontier states,
and will always hold a place among the most useful and hon-
ored of its pioneers.
In the interval between the lectures, from April to October,
Dr. Dudley engaged in practice with Dr. Fishback, a distin-
guished physician of Lexington. At the close of his second
course in the University of Pennsylvania he took the degree
of M. D., near the end of March, i8o6-just two weeks before
he was twenty-one years old. Then returning to Lexington,
3
A Memoir of Dr. Bci/amin 1 V Dudley.
which had now become a town of note, and was indeed the
literary and commercial emporium of the West, he became
again a candidate for practice. But he seems not to have
entered heartily into the business. He was not satisfied with
his professional attainments. His ambition was fired by his
associations in Philadelphia. He was resolved to qualify him-
self for the highest position in his profession. And this, he
thought, could only be done by studying in the hospitals and
under the great teachers of Europe. His energies were all
directed to the accomplishment of this end; and with the view
of acquiring the requisite means he added some commercial
business to the practice of physic. On some adventure con-
nected with trade he went to New Orleans in a flatboat about
the year 1810. There he bought a cargo of flour, with which
some time in that year he sailed to Gibraltar. Disposing of
his cargo advantageously at that point and at Lisbon, he made
his way through Spain to Paris.
He remained nearly four years in Europe, and the larger
portion of that time was spent in the French capital. Its vast
hospitals and dissecting-rooms afforded the facilities he was
in quest of. His mind craved a knowledge of facts; and
though the fame of the great surgeons of London and Paris
had inflamed his ambition, it was things he had gone abroad
to see and learn. Diseases in their varied phenomena and
aspects, operations on the living subject, the minute structure
of the human body-these were the objects of his study.
Paris furnished them in amplest measure, and on the most
liberal terms; and it was in Paris undoubtedly that he gained
that perfect knowledge of anatomy and that familiarity with
surgical operations which laid the foundation of his success
as a surgeon. But though acquiring most of the knowledge
which availed him in future years through the institutions of
Paris, it was for the surgeons of London that he habitually
expressed the highest admiration, Baron Larrey perhaps
excepted. They certainly of all his teachers had the largest
4
A Memoir of Dr. Benjamin IV Dud/ly. 5
share in shaping his opinions and molding his professional
character. In manners he came home a Frenchman, but in
medical doctrine and practice he was thoroughly E'nglish. It
was impossible that he should not admire the great military
surgeon of France, and be captivated by the recital of his
wonderful experience. The memoirs of this extraordinary
man furnished him indeed with numberless incidents with
which he afterward added to the dramatic interest of his own
surgical lectures. But it was Abernethy who impressed him
as the leading surgeon of Europe. Sir Astley Cooper was
his beae idleal of an operator, but Abernethy he always quoted
as the highest authority on all points relating to surgery, as
at once the observant student of nature, the profound thinker,
and the sound medical philosopher.
The years embraced in Dr. Dudley's stay in Europe belong
to one of the most eventful periods in the history of France-
a period as fax'orable as could be for the study of that branch
of his profession to which he was specially devoting himself.
How wisely he improved those fine opportunities is best at-
tested by the perfect mastery of his profession which he
afterward exhibited in all the emergencies of practice.
It was while pursuing his studies in Paris that Napoleon
set on foot his gigantic Russian campaign. Having made
the acquaintance of Caulaincourt, the 1'mperor's trusted min-
ister, he was admitted to the chamber of deputies on the
occasion of Napoleon's appearing before that body at the
close of his disastrous expedition. The writer has often heard
him describe the scene as the most impressive that he had
ever w'itnesse(l. The Emperor's address was brief-"' The
grand army of the empire is annihilated." These were the
terrible wvords with which he commenced it.
In the summer of 1814 he returned to his old home at
Lexington. He returned with high aspirations, and with a
consciousness of superiority given by his advantages. There
wvas now no longer any hesitation in his movements or
A Mewoir of Dr. Bcis/amin W. Dudhcy.
diversion of his mind from medicine by foreign pursuits. His
profession had become the engrossing object of his thoughts,
and from that time on until age made it necessary for him to
relax his labors, he applied himself to it with undeviating
fidelity. I am sure I have never known a physician who
made himself more a slave to his profession. He had no
holidays. He sought no recreation: no sports interested him.
If his friends prevailed on him to quit the city on a trip of
pleasure, he returned to his business rather wearied than
refreshed by the excursion. His thoughts, he has been heard
to say, were always on the cases he had left behind, and not
on the objects or the amusements around him.
Such devotion had not long to wait for its reward. But,
apart from this faithful application to business, there were
other circumstances which rendered the time of his return pe-
culiarly auspicious to his success. Great as were the western
states at that day, and growing, as they were, daily greater,
they wvere still without a surgeon of note, and without a
meclical school. Students of medicine had then to cross the
mountains, or practice without a diploma, or the knowledge
derived from attendance on lectures. Dr. Dudley soon gave
assurance of his ability to meet both of these public wants.
With his consummate knowledge of anatomy, and the skill he
had attained in the use of the knife, he was not long acquiring
a national reputation as a surgeon; and when, a short time
after his return, the project of a school of medicine began to
be agitated, public opinion pointed at once to him as its head.
Added to these influences, which gave him early distinction,
another circumstance favored his immediate introduction into
practice. He found a disease presenting some strange feat-
tires prevailing in the country when he reached home. Traces
of the typhoid pneumonia which had just swept across the
continent were to be seen everywhere in Kentucky. The
fatal epidemic had given place to a bilious fever, characterized,
like the plague, by a tendency to local affections. Abscesses
6
A Memoir of Dr. Be,jamin I[V. Dudley.
formed among the muscles of the body, legs, and arms, and
were so intractable that limbs were sometimes amputated to
get rid of the evil. Arriving in the midst of so alarming
an epidemic, Dr. Dudley was not long without calls. His
attention while abroad had been specially directed to the
bandage as an agent, among other things, for controlling
ulcers of the extremities. It at once occurred to him that
this appliance was adapted to the treatment of the burrowing
abscesses with which he was continually meeting. The
efficiency of the bandage, now recognized by every surgeon,
was at that time not fully understood. Dr. Dudley's success
with it in these cases was striking, and from its novelty, as
well as its efficacy, his practice drew upon him general
attention.
In I817, three years after his return to Lexington, the
Board of Trustees of Transylvania University determined to
create a medical department in that institution, then the
leading college in the West. Dr. Dudley wvas made professor
of anatomy and surgery, and two of his fellow-students of
i8o5 were associated with him-Dr. Drake in the chair of
materia medica, and Dr. Richardson in that of obstetrics.
Dr. James Overton was elected professor of theory and prac-
tice of medicine, and to Rev. James Blythe, D. D., was as-
signed the chair of chemistry. A small class of medical
students encouraged the enterprise, and at the close of the
session one of the number, W. L. Sutton, afterward a distin-
guished physician of Kentucky, was admitted to the (loctorate.
The beginning was regarded as favorable, but before the win-
ter was over misunderstandings occurred among the members
of the faculty, and the feuds resulted in its disruption. Drake
went back to Cincinnati to inaugurate measures for establish-
ing a medical school in that rising city, and Overton, disgusted
with medical politics, removed to Nashville. Bitter animosities,
some sharp pamphleteering, and a duel between Dr. Dudley
and Dr. Richardson ensued, in which the latter received a
7
A M3emoir eof Dr. RBefizmin W. Dudiey.
pistol-shot in the thigh. No attempt was made that year to
carry on the department, but the year following a new faculty
was organized, with Dr. Dudley in his former chair, and Dr.
Richardson and Dr. Blythe again as two of his colleagues.
To these were added Dr. Charles Caldwell and Dr. Samuel
Brown, the former in the institutes of medicine, the latter in
theory and practice, and both widely known to the profession.
It should be remarked, as a fact creditable to Dr. Dudley,
that in the reconstruction of the faculty he made no objections
to serving with a gentleman with whom a little while before
he had had a hostile meeting; and that a few years later he
united with his colleagues in an invitation to Dr. Drake to
return to the school, though that gentleman in a public con-
troversy with him had written much that it was not easy to
forgive. The fact shows that he was both magnanimous and
wvise. He was able to rise superior to the prejudices which
personal bickerings engender, and gave his voice for the men
who had the greatest fitness for the places, regardless of their
social relations to him.
Dr. Dudley had in the faculty as now constituted some
colleagues who were worthy of him. Caldwell and Brown,
gifted and learned, ripe in their powers, of the most imposing
presence, and already known to fame, were just the men to
cooperate with him in his enterprise. Caldwell especially
had the qualities of mind and temper to render the infant
school the most important services. To his varied learning
anal uncommon eloquence he added boldness and energy, and
a devotion which never waned or wavered. All his time, all
his Lifts as a writer and a speaker were fully and enthusiastic-
ally devoted to the institution.
The Transylvania Medical School under this organization
grew apace. In the number of its pupils it began in a few
years to vie with the older schools on our Atlantic border.
The ability of its faculty could not be questioned. Its
alumni showed themselves to be equal in attainments and
8
A4 4J1emoir of Dr. ad gatzmin IV. Dudley.
professional skill to the graduates of the oldest institutions.
It took rank in a little while with the schools of Baltimore,
New York, and Philadelphia; and the reputation of Dr.
Dudley rose with it. His admiring pupils bore to every part
of the country reports of his surgical skill and of his powers
as a teacher. Unquestionably from the beginning he was
in their estimation the foremost man in the faculty. Drake
entered it in the fifth year of the school, when its success had
become assured, and he brought to it a brilliant reputation.
But Dudley's preeminence continued undisturbed. Students
doubtless there were not a few who would have declared for
other professors, who took more interest in other lectures
than his; but the great body of the class he had always with
him. To him they always hurried, however listlessly they
may have repaired to other teachers; and whatever other
rooms were deserted his amphitheater was always full.
Why, it is natural to ask, was this ascendency What
was the source of that superior influence which he so long
exerted It will not be claimed, I think, by his most ardent
admirers that he was intellectually superior to all his col-
leagues. Nay; he was the readiest himself to admit, as I
myself know, that in point of mental endowments several of
his associates had the advantage of him. There were with
him in the faculty at all times men who surpassed him in all
the qualities that go to form the popular lecturer. Caldwell
was far more brilliant and eloquent, besides being a pro-
found scholar. Brown was superior to him in voice and
person, in versatility of mind, and in depth and variety of
learning. Drake exceeded him in elocution, in earnestness,
in the extent of his attainments, and in grasp of mind. He
laid no claims indeed to oratorical powers or to professional
erudition. He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and
he had neither humor nor wit. And yet in ability to enchain
the attention of students, to impress them with the value of
his instruction and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off the
9
A MeAnoir of Dr. Beqjamin W Dudley.
palm from all the gifted men who at various periods taught
by his side. By common consent he stood as an instructor
among the foremost of them facile princeps.
This was partly due undoubtedly to the department of
medicine taught by him. There is, as all medical teachers
well know, an inherent charm about surgery for medical stu-
dents, a dramatic interest in the cases of the surgeon, an
cc/at about his operations which is found in no other branch
of our art. Something is also to be set down to his holding
two professorships. This had its effect upon the imagination
of students. But all this is far from accounting for the su-
periority which he maintained so long in the midst of such
competition. The true explanation of the fact is to be found,
I think, in the perfect devotion of his life to one pursuit.
Choosing this wisely with reference both to his own aptitudes
and its dignity, he concentrated upon it all the powers of his
mind and made himself a master in it. All other studies he
neglected. To all pleasures that would draw him away from
it he turned a deaf ear. Cool, quick, calm, decisive, with a
sound judgment and a steady hand, he had all the attributes
of a great surgeon, and he improved them by severe applica-
tion. In point of skill he rose to an eminence which no one
around him approached. Patients came to him from afar be-
cause it was believed that he did better what others could do
than any one else, and that he did much which no one else in
reach could do. Students looked up to him as an operator
who had distanced competition, and a teacher who gave them
not what was in the books, but what the writers of books had
never understood. Like John Hunter, he rather prided him-
self on his independence of authorities, and this increased the
admiration of his pupils. They listened to his words as those
of a master who drew continually upon the stores of his own
ample experience, and not upon the teachings of others.
They were persuaded that there was much they must learn
from his lips or learn not at all.
10
A Menioir of Dr. Beifainin WM Dudley. .
His manner as a lecturer was singularly imposing and im-
pressive. It was magisterial, oracular, conveying the idea
always that the mind of the speaker was troubled with no
doubts. His deportment before his classes was such as fur-
ther to enhance his standing. He was always in presence
of his students not the model teacher only, but the dignified,
urbane gentleman; conciliating regard by his gentleness, but
repelling any approach to familiarity; and never, for the sake
of raising a laugh or eliciting a little momentary applause,
descending to coarseness in expression or thought. So that
to his pupils he was always and everywhere great.
The medical school at Lexington, owing to the influence
of his great name more than to any other cause, flourished
for more than twenty years. But he was painfully aware that
it wvas beset by difficulties which must ultimately cause its
decline. He often alluded mournfully to these circumstances
in conversations with his colleagues; and when the effort was
made, in i837, to transfer the school to Louisville, it was ex-
pected that he would favor the measure. But he decided
otherwise. His attachment to Lexington, where he had been
brought up and was surrounded by such troops of friends,
overbore all considerations of policy, and he remained with
the school on the spot where they had risen together. His
last course of lectures was delivered in 1849.
In some respects Dr. Dudley, as a practitioner, wvas in
advance of his age. He condemned blood-letting, and used
to say that a man's life was shortened a year for every bleed-
ing. On this point he was up with those of our day who are
the most ultra. His use of the trephine in epilepsy and his
treatment of fungus cerebri were original. The bandage in
his hands assumed an importance not dreamed of in our
country before his time. His views on many surgical subjects
were peculiar, and he adopted novel methods in the cure of
others which have been sanctioned by general exI)erience.
But at his practice in another and a large class of affections
I I
A A Memoir of Dr. Beinjamin W Dudley.
the physician of modern times stands aghast. To "puke and
purge, purge and puke," as he advised, day after day, for weeks
and months together, in tubercular diseases, affections of the
hip-joint, spine, etc., all the while restricting patients to a diet
of skimmed milk and stale bread, or a few half pints of water-
gruel, would be, as we regard it, to conspire with the disease
against the life of the patient. And yet if Dr. Dudley was
not a successful practitioner he was greatly deceived-and
the public was sadly deceived with him. Unquestionably he
had the reputation of success, and he was himself fully per-
suaded that he was making cures all his life, by his energetic
practice, of diseases which are esteemed the most unman-
ageable.
Dr. Dudley's reputation as a surgeon rests chiefly upon
his operations for stone in the bladder, in which he succeeded
better than all other surgeons either of our own or of former
times. He performed lithotomy in the course of his life two
hundred and twenty-five times, and it was not until after about
his hundredth case that he lost his first patient as a result
of the operation. This success, it is believed, is unparalleled.
He never adopted lithotrity, but performed the lateral opera-
tion, and to the last adhered to the gorget for making the
incision into the bladder, and preferred an instrument rather
under than over size, regarding the danger from contusion of
the parts in extracting a large calculus as less than that of
hemorrhage from a free incision. He was an expert operator
but rather cautious than bold, and conservative rather than
adventurous ; not inclining at all to operate in doubtful cases.
His confidence was great in the constitutional treatment of
patients about to be submitted to the knife, and his remark-
able success he always attributed more to the care with which
he prepared his subjects for operations than to his superior
skill in operating.
It was not until Dr. Dudley had been many years a lead-
ing teacher that he became known as a writer. It is doubtful
12
A Memoir of Dr. Re;itzinin WK DudleT-
in fact whether he would ever have written at all but for the
appearance of a journal of medicine under the auspices of
Transylvania University. He had no taste for writing, and
but little leisure. The Transylvania Journal of Medicine was
issued on the ist of February, 1828, edited by Professors
Cooke and Short, and through their influence Dr. Dudley was
induced to prepare a paper on injuries of the head. This
remarkable paper forms the first article in the first number
of that journal. Seldom has an article appeared in modern
times setting forth more original views. By a number of
cases he showed that epilepsy is frequently caused by pressure
on the brain, resulting from fractures of the cranium, and is
curable by trephining. Five epileptics were operated upon,
and three out of the five were relieved; while the other two
were much benefited by the operation. Spicula of bone in
some instances were found growing from the seat of the
fracture and penetrating far into the brain. The sense of
relief experienced by some of the patients was immediate,
and in some of them there was no recurrence of the convul-
sions after the bone was removed. Dr. Dudley always and
justly referred to his operation of trephining for epilepsy as
constituting a new era in surgery.
But another lesson of the greatest value was communi-
cated in this paper, in illustration of which other striking
cases are reported. They relate to the treatment of fungus
cerebri. In one of his cases a brick-mason had his head
extensively fractured by a piece of falling timber. The de-
pression was so great that the surgeon thought he might have
buried his forearm in the cranium. At the conclusion of the
third week a fungus of frightful magnitude was detected
growing up from the brain. For this formidable growth Dr.
Dudley adopted graduated pressure. Dry sponge was placed
on the fungus, and bound as close as the feelings of the
patient would permit. By imbibing moisture the sponge ex-
erted increased pressure. On removing the dressings he had
I 3
A Memnoir of Dr. Beidamin WI Dudley.
satisfactory evidence of the efficacy of the remedy, but it was
discovered that the fungus had shot branches into the sponge.
To prevent this subsequently a piece of thin muslin was
interposed, and the patient recovered fully. And, what was
remarkable, he showed on recovery a decided increase of
intellect, which continued, however, for only a few years. In
the end he became epileptic, and thirteen years after receiving
the injury was nearly fatuous. Dr. Dudley, in connection
with this case, remarks that he has cured fungus cerebri by
the use of dry sponge in five days.
His second paper appeared in the following number of the
same journal. The subject is hydrocele, in which he proposed
a new operation: a free incision into the tunica vaginalis, the
introduction of a tent, and exsection of the preternatural sac,
if one is found to exist. In the fourth number he commenced
an elaborate article on the bandage, which is continued
through three successive numbers. In the fifth volume he
reports a case of epilepsy successfully treated by the trephine.
His next paper appeared in the ninth volume, and treats of
fractures, in the management of which he shows the great
utility of the bandage. His last paper was on the nature and
treatment of calculous diseases, and was published in the
same volume of that journal. It is rich in details most inter-
esting to the surgeon. In his first case he found it necessary
to apply a ligature to the transverse perineal artery, on ac-
count of its unusual size. Of one hundred and forty-five
patients who, up to the time at which he wrote, had applied
to him, he operated upon all but ten. In one case, when his
patient was on the table before his class and some of his col-
leagues, he discovered that his accustomed operation was
impracticable from deformity of the pelvis, and while his
assistants were taking their positions resolved to make the
external incision transverse, which was executed before any
one else present had remarked the difficulty. A stone eleven
inches in circumference was extracted.
14
A AJeinoir of Dr. Be yjamin W Dudley.
This is the sum of Dr. Dudley's contributions to medical
literature. He meditated other papers, but never found time
to prepare them. It was once said of him by a colleague, who
greatly admired him both as a surgeon and a teacher, that
"his Hippocrene soon ran dry." From the turn of his mind
and the nature of his studies this was necessarily so. He
wrote only on subjects purely practical; and where his expe-
rience ceased, there he stopped. But if the stream which
flowed from his pen was not an abounding river, it was a
Vauclusa fountain which has arrested the attention of sur-
geons everywhere, and by the banks of which students of
surgery still love to linger.
Dr. Dudley was married on the 9th of June, 182!, to Miss
Anna Maria Short, daughter of Major Peyton Short, and
sister of the late Prof. Charles W. Short. This estimable
lady died young, leaving him two sons and a daughter: the
present Dr. Wilkins Dudley, XV. A. Dudley, Esq., and Mrs.
Anna Tilford. He never married a second time. In the
summer of i848 he removed to a beautiful country residence
near Lexington, and gradually withdrew from the practice of
his profession. He delivered his last lecture in February,
i85o, and the last entry on his books bears date April 28,
i853. He was consulted often afterward by his professional
brethren, but from that time forward he never treated any
patient of his own. His death took place on Thursday,
the 20th of January, 1870, in the eighty-fifth year of
his age.
The life of this distinguished and useful man was extended
far beyond the term allotted to those who commenced life
with him and were his closest friends. Of the surgeons who
competed with him in early manhood, and of all those who
were associated with him as teachers in the earlier organiza-
tions to which he belonged, not one now remains. He was
permitted to linger on amid the scenes which had witnessed
his triumphs for eighteen years after the last one of those
I 5
I6 A Mezoir of Dr. Bei/amin [V. Ddedicy.
who had officiated with him in the first medical faculty of
which he was a member had passed away, and for a quarter
of a century after most of his old associates were gone. His
beneficent life had surrounded him by hosts of friends. In
his prime he had wisely provided for an old age of infirmity,
and his declining years were solaced by all the comforts that
wealth and affection can supply.
b92-96-27764306
Electronic reproduction. 2002. (Beyond the shelf, serving historic Kentuckiana through virtual access (IMLS LG-03-02-0012-02) ;
These pages may be freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically.
Memoir of Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley / by Lunsford P. Yandell.
Yandell, Lunsford P. (Lunsford Pitts), 1805-18