xt7gms3jx89d https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7gms3jx89d/data/mets.xml Juettner, Otto, 1865- 1909  books b92-104-27766228 English Harvey, : Cincinnati : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Drake, Daniel, 1785-1852. Medicine History Biography. 1785-1909  : Daniel Drake and his followers; historical and biographical sketches / Otto Juettner. text 1785-1909  : Daniel Drake and his followers; historical and biographical sketches / Otto Juettner. 1909 2002 true xt7gms3jx89d section xt7gms3jx89d 































I-AZ19-

 












1 785-1909



DANIEL DRAKE AND HIS


                 FOLLOWERS


   HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES


                                BY
            OTTO JUETTN ER, A. M., M.D.
                Author of "Modern Physio-therapy"
          Editor of "Songs of the University of Cincinnati"
 Fellow of the American Academy of Medicine, the American Association for the Advance-
   ment of Science, the Ohio Historical Society, the Association of American Medical
     Editors, the American Electro-therapeutic Association, the American Physio-
        therapeutic Association, the Royal Society of Medicine (England),
        the Royal Microscopical Society, the Royal Anthropological In-
           stitute of Great Britain and Ireland, the London Roentgen
             Society, the Society of Arts (Lorrdon), the German
               Roentgen Society, the Societ6 de Radiologie et
                   Eleirologie (Paris), etc., etc., etc.





            "The world is moved by men of uneasy soul. -H





               HARVEY PUBLISHING COMPANY
                           CINCINNATI

 





















































COPYRIGHT, 1909.
By OTTO JUETTNER.

 

















                          FOREWORD



J HIS book contains the story of some of the great architects of yester-
        day, who laid the foundation of and helped to build the stately
        edifice of Western medicine. A few years ago I picked up Mans-
field's "Memoirs of Daniel Drake," and was completely fascinated by the
character and the life work of Drake. Posterity has done nothing for this
great man. He seems to be entirely forgotten.   To hold up the mirror
of the past to the present generation was the motive which primarily sug-
gested the writing of this book. Incidentally I felt that even a modest
attempt to preserve some of the unwritten professional records of the past,
and in this way arouse additional interest in the medical history of this
country, would be a sufficiently worthy motive to justify the appearance
of a new book and apologize for any shortcomings of the latter. The
life work of Drake and the immediate and remote effects of his labors on the
evolution of medical practice and education in this part of the country are
not unworthy of being placed beside those of the immortal Rush. The latter
was not a greater man in the East than Drake was in the West. We are
no longer in the stage of transition from primitive conditions of existence
to more settled modes of life. The time has come when the people of the
Middle XVest can retrospectively contemplate the records of their past, and
experience the thrill of inspiration which must be communicated to their
inner consciousness by the knowledge of a history, a tradition, a raison d'ctre,
distinctly Western in character and inseparable from Western people and
Western soil.  Therein lies Drake's claim to the gratitude of posterity
because he was one of the great standard bearers of civilization in this
Western country.
   The present volume includes the records of those who continued the
work left by Drake. Among these followers of Drake were some whose
labors form a part of medical history, while others might be charitably
interred in the grave of oblivion. Yet their records, collectively, add an
interesting page to the history of American medicine, not without significant
lessons to the present and future. These lessons might prove a source
of solace to some, while there is hardly any one who can not discern some
meaning in and derive some instruction from the story of the eternal mutation
of things, as exemplified in the happenings of a hundred years in and near
the old town which Daniel Drake loved so much and so loyally.

 













    For valuable assistance in obtaining material, I am indebted to Mr. Albert
 H. Morrill, of Cincinnati, a great-grandson of Daniel Drake, and to many
 members of the profession, particularly Dr. Frederick P. Henry, Honorary
 Librarian of the College of Physicians (Philadelphia); Dr. A. G. Drury, Dr.
 P. S. Conner, Dr. Wm. H. Taylor, Dr. Edwin Landy, Dr. H. W. Felter, Dr.
 S. R. Geiser, Dr. R. C. Stockton Reed, Dr. E. S. McKee, Dr. H. Dieckmeyer
 and Dr. Thos. C. Minor, of Cincinnati. Acknowledgments are due Mr. P.
 Alfred Marchand, of the Cincinnati Hospital Library, and Misses Laura
 Smith and K. W. Sherwood, of the Cincinnati Public Library, for their
 courtesy and never-failing readiness to help in research work; also the Hon.
 M. F. Wilson for valuable aid in securing material. I regret my inability
 to mention all those who are entitled to some expression of my gratitude in
 return for assistance rendered and encouragement given. That some attempts
 were made to impede the progress of the work, was not altogether unex-
 pected. Some of the persons, things, events and situations of the recent past
 have not sufficiently receded into the mist of the distant past to have entirely
 lost the glow of life or to have assumed the placid garb of historical dis-
 interestedness.
   In the preparation of "Daniel Drake and his Followers" much assistance
was given by some of the older physicians in the way of oral information.
The gathering of the portraits involved a good deal of labor, but was made
interesting and pleasant by the uniform courtesy and willingness with which
people in all parts of the country aided the author in this arduous and time-
robbing task. Many of the portraits are rarities of the greatest historical
value. The following bibliographic references represent the sources whence
the contents of this book were largely drawn:
   1-Medical journals, especially those published since 1822 in Cincinnati,
Lexington and Louisville.
   2-The writings of Daniel Drake.
   3-The writings of Samuel D. Gross, especially his "Autobiography."
   4-Cist's "Cincinnati." 1841. 1851. 1859.
   5-Ford's "Cincinnati." 1881.
   6-Nelson's "Cincinnati." 1896.
   7- 'Centennial History of Cincinnati," by C. T. Greve, a work upon
which too much praise can not be bestowed. It is a veritable mine of informa-
tion. It contains a valuable chapter on "Medical Cincinnati " by Dr. A. I.
Carson.
   8-Controversial pamphlets written at various times by different indi-
viduals, especially D. Drake, A. Goldsmith, J. C. Cross, J. F. Henry, J. L.
Vattier, M. B. Wright, G. Blackman, J. A. Thacker, etc., etc
   9-The transactions of various State Societies.
   10-Annual Catalogues and Announcements of medical schools.
   11-Annual Reports of Colleges, Hospitals and other public institutions.
   12-Books of medical biography, by Williams, Atkinson, Gross, Stone,
and others.

 













   13-Mumford's "Medicine in America."
   14-Biographical sketches written by M. B. Wright, T. C. Minor, A. G.
Drury and others. These sketches have appeared in different journals at
various times.
   15-The "Index Medicus" and the "Index Catalogue of the Surgeon
General's Office," two monumental.works which do not seem to be known
and appreciated by the profession, as they deserve to be.
   16-Writings of Edward D. Mansfield, especially his "Personal Rem-
iniscences" and "Memoirs of D. Drake."
   17-Howe's Historical Recollections of Ohio.
   18-Archives of the Ohio Historical Society.
   19-Archives of the Cincinnati Hospital Library.
   20-The Mussey Collection of Medical Books (Cincinnati Public Li-
brary).
   21-Felter's History of the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical Institute.
   22-King's History of Homeopathy.
   23-Archives of the Philadelphia College of Physicians.
   24-Archives of the Ohio State Medical Society.
   25-Wilder's History of Medicine.
   2G-Archives of the German Literary Club, Cincinnati.
   27-"Der Deutsche Pionier" (monthly), Cincinnati.
   28-Files of daily papers, published in Cincinnati, especially from 1800
to 1850.
   29-Transactions of the Alumnal Associations of the Ohio and Miami
Medical Colleges, Cincinnati.
   30-Medical Directories.
                                                       OTTO JUETTNER.
   Cincinnati, Ohio.
      On the Ninetieth Birthday of the
          Medical College of Ohio, January 19, 1909.

 
This page in the original text is blank.


 

















CHAPTER I.



               DANIEL DRAKE'S CHILDHOOD.
                       Childhood shows the man,
                       As morning shows the day.-Milton.
       HE story of the early advancement of medical learning and practice on
T      our Eastern seaboard is interwoven with the names and labors of quite
        a few sturdy pioneers and men of genius. Benjamin Rush, one of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, a leader of men, and one of the
greatest medical teachers the world has ever seen; Elijuh H. Smith, a medical
philosopher and humanitarian of rare attainments; David Hosack, a surgical
genius and scholarly exponent of surgical science; Jacob Bigelow, that versatile
educator and scientist; Nathan Smith, whom S. D. Gross calls the best all-
around American physician of his time, and many other men of similar caliber,
were blazing the paths of progress on behalf of medical science and of medical
men in New England and throughout the Eastern parts of our country. The
labors of these men were performed under comparatively favorable conditions.
The East, socially and educationally, had already achieved a relatively high
degree of development at that time. The opportunities for study and for the
acquisition of an academic education were plentiful and quite equal to the
European standard. Thus the early Eastern physicians, at least those who
took a leading part in the development of American medicine, were educated
men and not pioneers or self-made men in the crude sense of the term. In the
West, however, where every foot of ground was wrested from the embrace of
primitive nature and the banner of civilization was planted and reared by the
hardened hands and stout hearts of heroic pioneers amid a vast empire of bar-
barism, conditions were decidedly more crude and rugged, and the men repre-
senting the advance guard of civilization were pioneers in name and in fact.
The men who had come to the West to seek fortune and happiness on its virgin
soil, disputing the problem of the survival of the fittest with the wily and bel-
ligerent red man, did not bring with them a degree from Harvard or from the
University of Pennsylvania or from one of the great seats of learning in the
mother countries of Europe. They had nothing but the sweat of their brow
and the products of brawn and brain to depend on. It does not seem strange,
therefore, that the men who developed any particular line of human activity
in the early history of our country were fewer in number in. the wbrd
West than they were in the more refined East. Yet, there wece rien of ofer-
towering genius among these Western pioneers. Genius seems to thrive on

 













crude soil quite as well, if not better, than on the culture-beds of civilization.
Genius is an elementary force of nature, and is instinctively at war with the
controlling and refining hand of convention and tradition.
    In the medical history of the West one colossal figure looms up in the very
 foreground. It is of such gigantic proportions that all else appears accidental
 and merely like a part of the stage-setting. Even when viewed through the
 aisles of time at a distance of many decades it appears as large and distinct
 as it did when it first emerged in the center of the stage of events. It is the
 figure of him who was the Father of Western Medicine, one of the greatest
 physicians America has produced, a patriot of the truest blue, a nobleman by
 nature, a scholar by ceaseless toil, the peer of any of the Eastern pioneers in
 medicine, the bearer of one of the most distinguished names in the intellectual
 history of our country-DANIEL DRAKE.
     A recent writer, in an accurate and very readable sketch of this wonderful
man, very aptly likens him to another example of Western genius, Abraham
Lincoln. Like the great Chief Executive, Drake began life as the son of an
uncultured, hard-working settler who could not give his son even ordinary
advantages of training and education. Yet, both these poor farmer boys rose
from their humble surroundings to positions of distinction and honor and
became great in different spheres of activity. Daniel Drake was born on a
farm near the present town of Plainfield, Essex County, New Jersey, October
20, 1785. When he was two and a-half years old, his parents joined a party
of New Jersey farmers who were seeking new homes in the Western country.
This was about the time when the first settlers were invading the vast and
unknown territory West of the Alleghenies and were building the first log-
cabins at what is now Marietta, Ohio. It was fully two years before a solitary
block house had arisen on the site of Cincinnati. Daniel Drake's father, Isaac
Drake, with his wife and children, located in the wilds of Kentucky, twelve
miles southwest of the present town of Maysville, and about seventy-five miles
from Lexington. The name of the new settlement was Mayslick. Here it
was where Daniel Drake grew up in the bosom of nature, the child of simple
and pure-minded countryfolk.
   The year of Drake's birth will ever remain memorable in the annals of
American medicine. It was the birthyear of three other Americans who
became leaders in their respective departments of medical science. William
Beaumont, the great physiologist, whose name is inseparably connected with
the case of Alexis St. Martin, was born in 1785 in Lebanon, Conn. He was
the first American who seriously concerned himself about physiological prob-
lems, and has not inappropriately been called the Father of American Physi-
ology. Another great American that first saw the light of day in 1785 was
Benjamin Winslow Dudley, whose achievements in genito-urinary surgery
under priontive conditions of practice, have hardly been surpassed, even in
ofr advanced day. His marvelous record as a lithotomist will always remain
a source nf pride to the profession of this country. He was a Virginian by
                                    8

 












birth, but spent nearly all of his professional life in Lexington, Ky., as pro-
fessor of surgery in the Medical Department of Transylvania University. He
was fourteen years the junior of his great neighbor, Ephraim MacDowell. of
Danville, Ky., whose name will for all times be linked with an act of scientific
heroism never surpassed in the history of medicine. Still another famous
product of the year 1785 was Valentine Mott, that prince among the early
American surgeons, who, in 1818, ligated the innominate artery, and, as a
result of this bold stroke, rose to one of the highest ranks among the sur-
geons of his time. Thus we see that the year 1785 was particularly fertile
in the production of eminent medical talent in this country. Benjamin Rush,
who had not as yet reached the zenith of his fame, was in 1785, at the age
of 40, teaching chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. P. S. Physick,
John Hunter's favorite American pupil, generally referred to as the Patriarch
of American Surgery, graduated from the academic department of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania in 1785. It seems that the whole decade was a
fruitful one for American medicine. John Eberle, one of the founders of
Jefferson Medical College, and afterwards a distinguished teacher of practice
in the Medical College of Ohio, was born two years after Daniel Drake. The
following year (1788) saw the birth of William Gibson, that eminent American
physician who was a marvel of versatility and was conspicuous on this account
among his confreres on both sides of the Atlantic.
   Daniel Drake's people were among the poorest of the poor. When Isaac
Drake and those who depended on him, arrived in the thick forest where he
expected to wrest a home and an existence out of the clenched hands of the
wilderness, his fortune consisted of just one dollar, which was at that time
the price of a bushel of corn. Edward D. Mansfield, who was a cousin of
Daniel Drake's wife and for many years an honored citizen of Cincinnati,
wrote, in 1854, two years after Drake's death, a very readable biography of
Drake. In referring to those primitive days in the Kentucky forests where
young Daniel spent his childhood, Mansfield states that the first residence of
the family was in a "covered pen," built for sheep, on the ground of its owner.
The smallness of his estate may be gathered from the fact, that when a com-
pany of emigrants-five families-purchased a tract of fourteen hundred acres
of land, to be divided among them, according to their respective payments, his
share was only thirty-eight acres, which he subsequently increased to fifty.
There he resided six years, till in the autumn of 1794, he purchased another
farm of two hundred acres, to the neighborhood of which he removed. The
new farm was an unbroken forest which had to be cleared, and the log cabin
built. (Mansfield.)
   Of those early pioneer times in Kentucky, Drake has left a written record
so inimitably beautiful and characteristic that I may be permitted to quote from
it. In his declining years, from 1840 to shortly before his death, Drake, who
was then living in Louisville and teaching at the Louisville Medical Institute,
loved to dwell on the memories of the distant past, and in his reminiscential
                                     9

 













mood penned many letters to his children. In these letters he pictures the
conditions under which his childhood was spent, the hardships of early pioneer
times in Kentucky, the struggles for existence, the habits and customs of the
simple, God-fearing people in whose midst he grew up, their sorrows and
innocent pleasures. Charles D. Drake, a distinguished member of the bar in
Missouri, gathered these letters written by his father, Dr. Drake, and pub-
lished them in 1870 under the title: "PIONEER LIFE IN KENTUCKY. A series
of reminiscential letters from DANIEL DRAKE, M.D., of Cincinnati, to his chil-
dren." These letters, written in quaint and naive style, full of pathos and
humor, are well worth perusal.
   Drake informs us that he was the second child of his parents, the first one, a
daughter, having died in infancy. His father was operating a gristmill and
doing a little farming near Plainfield, N. J. The Drakes were not doing very
well and thought of moving to Virginia, but changed their minds in favor of
Kentucky, where a colony of Baptists, who originally hailed from Newv Jersey,
had settled and was prospering. About that time many farmers from Virginia
and Maryland were moving into Kentucky which, since its first settlement, in
1778, was attracting more attention than any other part of the Western
country. Old Mr. Drake decided to begin life over again, and, with all the
earthly belongings of the family crowded into one two-horse Jersey wagon,
which also accommodated the family, started out for his new home in Ken-
tucky. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Drake, young Daniel, then two
years and seven months old, his little sister, who was an infant at the breast,
and an unmarried sister of Mrs. Drake. The wagon was hauled by two horses
over the steep and rugged Allegheny mountains and thoughout an overland
journey of nearly four hundred miles. The remaining portion of the trip
was by boat. Among other New Jersey emigrants who came West at the
time when the Drakes settled in Kentucky, were a number of people whose
names became prominently identified with the history of Cincinnati, particu-
larly John S. Gano, who settled in Columbia, now a suburb of Cincinnati, and
Dr. Wm. Goforth, Gano's brother-in-law, who eventually became Daniel
Drake's preceptor.
   Daniel Drake's ancestors had been illiterate farmers, to fortune and to
fame unknown, but they were industrious, honest, temperate and pious. To
spring from such ancestry, as he often remarked, is high descent in the sight
of heaven, if not in the estimation of man. Both his grandfathers had lived
in the very midst of the battle scenes of the Colonies' struggle for freedom.
Daniel's father and mother were typical countryfolk, of the plain, good old-
fashioned Baptist type. Drake speaks of his father as a man of inflexible
righteousness, industrious, rather progressive, not without business ability,
and devoted to his family. The references to his mother are touching in the
extreme. Drake speaks of her tenderness and sweet disposition, the merry
twinkle in her eye, her unceasing care for her family. He humorously em-
phasizes the fact that he inherited two traits from his exemplary mother:
                                    10

 












the ease with which he could shed tears and the irresistible desire to fall asleep
in church.
    Daniel's childhood days, as already indicated, were spent in a log cabin
such as poor country people used to put up and occupy in the early pioneer
times of Kentucky. A log cabin, as the name implies, wvas "built of logs,
generally unhewn, with a puncheon floor below and a clapboard floor above, a
small square window without glass, a chimney of 'cats and clay,' and a
coarse roof. It consisted generally of one apartment, which served as sitting-
room, dining-room, and kitchen. Here the family lived in peace and content-
ment in a little world of their own, their only enemies being the elements of
Nature or perhaps the restless redskins that were receding before the advance
of civilization." Drake often tenderly referred to the sweet and pure family
life in that log cabin where everybody was poor and yet happy. They knew
nothing of the hate and envy, the troubles and tribulations of society, the
miserable smallness and perfidy of man in the larger towns and cities. And
the center of the happy family in that coarse log cabin was that personification
of goodness and sweetness, Daniel's mother, the thought of whom seemed to
grow in inspiration to the son as the years rolled on. Drake's example shows
the early and lasting effect of the association with a good mother on the char-
acter of a boy. Granting that heredity and environment make or break
character, it is an undeniable fact that the early maternal influence represents
the lion's share of what we include in environment, because of its early, deep,
and, therefore, lasting effect. That beautiful spirit of chivalry towards women
and, for that matter, towards men even if they were enemies, which wvas so
characteristic of Drake throughout his whole life, was the work of a good
mother. It seems that a boy who has the good fortune of having been reared
by the tender hand of a good mother, should always be a good man, if only
to pay back that early incurred debt of gratitude to the memory of her who
gave him life and character.
   Daniel received his first schooling at the hands of itinerant schoolmasters,
who would establish themselves in a conveniently-located log cabin and teach
the children of the nearby settlers the elements of reading and writing, with a
little arithmetic thrown in. These schoolmasters were by no means pedagogues
by vocation. They were tramps whose peripatetic tendencies would awaken
whenlever the first balmy breezes of Spring made it comfortable to roam
through the country. Sometimes a preacher without a flock would appear
among the settlers, remain for an indefinite period and divide his time between
administering spiritual advice to the grown people and teaching the young
folks how to read and write. Young Daniel must have been an apt scholar,
because at the age of seven he was a pretty fair reader. When he was nine
years old, his father moved to a larger place, and, being too poor to hire a
laborer and not being very robust himself, the father had to depend on the
assistance which the son might be able to render. Young Daniel was a strong
boy and only too glad to help his father. Instead of continuing his lessons he
                                     11

 














had to take a hand in clearing the forest and preparing a place for the new
cabin. Thus the next two years were given to hard labor, sharing his father's
work and troubles in every particular. After two years Daniel was able to
resume his studies under the guidance of an itinerant instructor who hailed
from Maryland and opened a regular school in the layslick district. We have
seen that Drake's early years were spent in close communion with Nature.
To his young and imaginative mind every little spot in the landscape was
invested with peculiar beauty and meaning, the song of every little bird in
the forest had its own melodious language. What to an ordinary observer
was barren and unattractive, was to him a source of ineffable interest and
delight, says S. D. Gross. "In the Spring and Summer the surface of the earth
was carpeted with richest verdure and strewn with myriads of wild flowers,
whose balmy fragrance seemed to ascend like sweet-scented incense to the
throne of the Almighty, while their gay raiment in its variety of color, and
rendered brighter and more radiant by the rays of the morning sun, delighted
the clear eye and unspoilt heart of the lad. The ancient elms and poplars
and other mighty denizens of the woodland had donned their richest garb,
while amid their majestic silence thousands of winged songsters were stirring
the heart with their tuneful lays." The impressions thus made on the boy's
mind (luring the formative period of his life, i. e., his early adolescence, were
the elements out of which the mind of the future man was constructed. Drake
was an eminent naturalist and became a great physician because of that fact.
He learned to love Nature early in life and tried to understand the things which
in the days of his childhood he had learnt to love. This is what made Drake a
student of Nature, and gave him such power as a man of affairs in the building
tup of the great West. With a keen and open eye and a heart full of love
for the beautiful things that abound in Nature's vast domain, he coupled an
inquiring mind that was not satisfied to wonder and marvel, but that approached
the problems and mysteries of the air, the soil, and the water with a desire
and a determination to solve the riddles and to know the truth. Thus we see
how the foundation to Drake's subsequent career of greatness was laid. His
greatest work outside of his strictly medical achievements was undoubtedly
that remarkable book about Cincinnati ("Picture of Cincinnati") which he
published when he was hardly thirty years of age. It was the logical evolution
of the elements of knowledge and discerning power which were brought out
in his early training as a country lad in old Kentucky.
   A brother of Drake's father, Cornelius Drake, had settled near the place
where the Drakes were living. He was a tavern-keeper and conducted a general
store. He was a prosperous business man, and in 1796 sent his son John, a
young man probably six years older than Daniel, to Dr. Wm. Goforth, who
was practicing medicine in Washington, Ky. Young John Drake remained
with Dr. Goforth three years, continuing his studies at the University of
Pennsylvania. John Drake was a good student and always spent his vacation
on his father's place. Daniel, his cousin, who was then about twelve or thir-
                                    12

 












teen years old, became greatly interested in the books of his cousin John and
made up his mind to become a doctor. With that zeal and determination which
was characteristic of him, he set about to make up for the defects in his edu-
cation. He devoted every spare moment to study, mostly by reading books
that-in some manner or other-he managed to secure. His father favored the
idea of Daniel becoming a doctor, and encouraged him in every imaginable
way. It was intended that John Drake should locate in Mayslick, and that
Daniel should study under him. Unfortunately for the plan, John Drake
died about the time of his graduation. His death was directly instrumental
in bringing Daniel Drake to Cincinnati. Had John Drake lived, Daniel would
have become a country doctor in Kentucky, and Cincinnati would have lost the
pioneer work of its most distinguished citizen.
    The early training of a mastermind like Drake's is of peculiar interest.
 It would seem that all the circumstances surrounding the lad during the first
 fifteen years of his life were unfavorable to anything but the most ordinary
 development of his mental powers. In spite of this the boy laid the founda-
 tion of a most extraordinary intellectual superstructure. Drake, in the full
 maturity of his mental prowess, was not what is ordinarily called a "bright
 man." To use such an expression in connection with Drake's intellect would
 be trivial and commonplace; I am almost tempted to say sacrilegious. Drake
 was a genius of the first magnitude and ranks with Humboldt and Agassiz.
 Yet his early advantages were meager in the extreme. But he had that God-
 given determination to work and win. When we think of the carefully system-
 atized courses of study that are nowadays mapped out for the college boys
 who are to be the doctors and scientists of the future, and then consider the
 motley mixture of books that constituted old Isaac Drake's library and gave
 to young Daniel all his preliminary education, we are forced to acknowledge
 the supremacy of the will in the struggle with Destiny. Young Drake believed
 in his own predestination as a superior man. His life shows that confidence
 and implicit belief in self is an invincible power which in man's fight against
 Fate itself spells Victory. This should be an inspiration to many a poor boy
 who is facing the world with no assets except his willingness to work and his
 determination to win. Drake's example should encourage every struggling
 beginner in medicine, and banish the evil spirits of faintness and despair from
 the youthful heart.
   Isaac Drake's library was neither large nor select. It consisted of a family
Bible, Rippon's Hymns, Watts' Hymns for Children, the Pilgrim's Progrcss,
an old Romance of the days of Knight Errantry, primers, with a plate repre-
senting 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, Aesop's Fables, the Life of
Franklin, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, the latter of which he
greatly prized. Once in awhile a number of-the Palladium, a newspaper pub-
lished at Washington, Ky., fell into the boy's hands, always affording him
much gratification.                 13

 












    Thus it will be seen, says S. D. Gross in his beautiful eulogy of Drake,
 that his Alma Mater was the forest, his teacher Nature, his classmates birds,
 squirrels 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 Mayslick, 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 Cincinnati was afterwards 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 hardly fifty miles from his doors
 (Lexington), his father was too poor to send him thither.
    If Daniel Drake's mental education has been meager and fragmentary,
 his heart, the legacy of a good ancestry, had acquired the culture that was so
 characteristic of the mature man. S. D. Gross, who even in Drake's life-
 time looked upon Drake as one of the greatest men in America, tells us that
 at no time in his long and eventful life did his sweet, childlike, warm tempera-
 ment show itself so beautifully as on the occasion of his visit to the old log
 cabin, almost fifty years after he had left it to go to Cincinnati to study medi-
 cine. "It was to this spot that the boy, now in the evening of his full and
 perfect manhood, turns his