^CKX^a "(ft.")} J BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE CHARLES CALDWELL, M.D. READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, By Appointment, January 19, 1855. BY B. II. COATES. ' Oa o ' ' IT c» tZjiU m*f^ PHILADELPHIA: T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 1 8 5 5. It is to be understood that the Society in no way holds itself answerable for any of the opinions expressed by its members; but leaves them, as a universal rule, to rest upon the responsi- bility of the writers. I BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. Those who retain impressions received from the personal appearance and manners of Dr. Cald- well, have, by the progress of time, become few among us. There are still some, however, who will recollect the tall, stately, imposing figure, the serious and commanding manner, the ready ora- tory, often too declamatory, and the extraordinary facility with which he supplied the most diversified literary requirements. Others will recall the gaye- ties and hospitalities of his family, their fashionable connexions, and their conspicuous position in so- ciety at the time. To the great mass, however, these things are of an age gone by; and the reputation of Dr. Cald- well is now a thing learned from books, or heard from a distance; and these will only demand what he has done for science, and for the illumination of his a^e. For them, the subject of this memo- 4 rial is to be judged from, his works alone. These works are copious, diversified, and scattered. Your reporter feels only too acutely the difficulty thus in his way, and the responsibility thus laid upon him ; and this, after the refusal of those so much better able to overcome the one, and worthily to bear the other. Charles Caldwell was born about the year 1772, on the waters of Moore's Creek, in what is now Caswell County, and was then a part of Orange County, in North Carolina. His family was Irish. His parents, soon after their marriage, emigrated from the north of Ireland to the district then known as the Three Lower Counties annexed to Pennsylvania, now the State of Delaware. After a residence here for eight or nine years, they re- moved to the situation we have first named. The subject of our commemoration came into the world the youngest of nine or ten children. The fatality which so often attends colonization, took effect among these; and, while still quite young, he found himself one of only three sur- vivors. The region inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell was a part of the primeval forest; human settle- ments were few and widely separated; the country 5 was still infested with ferocious beasts, including the American panther; the fiercer rage of the American Revolution passed over their heads; and it was not found practicable to send the child to school till his ninth year. He was then obliged to walk three miles to the school-house; a pictur- esque description of which, implying the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and in defiance of inconveniences, has been left by Dr. Caldwell among his manuscripts. Critical and cautiously reserved pens have ad- mitted that he very soon gave proof of a superior mind.1 On the authority of the late Hon. George W. Campbell, of Tennessee, and of Dr. James Blythe, both younger than himself, he is repre- sented as having been a lad of great energy and ambition; fond of his studies, and a proficient in them; and one destined, as was easily foreseen, to become a man of note.2 He studied perseveringly, both at school and at home; and made very rapid progress. Dr. Caldwell himself ascribes his rapid acquisitions to indefatigable application; alleg- ing that, "where superior endowments make one ' Dr. L. P. Yandell; Kentucky Medical Recorder, iii. 5, p. 129. * Ibid. p. 130. 1* 6 good scholar, superior industry makes one thou- sand." After one year had thus elapsed, his father left Caswell, and removed southwards to Cabarrus, then part of Mecklinburg County, not very far from the border of South Carolina. This district was more populous and improved than that which he left; but still much uncultivated. He describes the population as characterized by great mental stamina. The circumstances of early youth, which had contributed to form "and mould the character of an eminent intellect, have always been held worthy of record and attention. One year's school- ing here completed his English education. His father had promised him, from the earliest remem- brance of childhood, to give him, if attentive to his studies, the means to become a scholar; stipu- lating, at the same time, that he was to be taken from the school, and employed in labors not re- quiring learning, if his progress, at the end of three months, tried by a strict and severe test, did not appear to be of the very best description. His parent is described by him as a stern and earnest man, but of a kindly disposition, and of great uprightness and purity of morals. The son ac- cepted the challenge, and kept his position. 7 Of the circumstances which decided Dr. Cald- well in the choice of .a profession, statements have been at various times made verbally, and repeated. None other, of those which have reached me, have appeared so authentic as that given by Dr. Cald- well himself, in a most valuable and highly inte- resting manuscript, with the privilege of using which I have been favored by his son, the present Dr. Thomas Learning Caldwell, of Louisville, Ken- tucky ; and which has furnished most of the ma- terials used in the present sketch of the early years of the subject of our narrative. The father of the latter, being a religious man, and an elder of the Presbyterian Church, discovering, as he appre- hended, superior talents in his boy, determined to educate him for a clergyman of the denomination to which they both belonged. From his eleventh to his fourteenth year, Charles was kept at a Latin school, in a building constructed of logs, and situated in a magnificent grove of oaks, about a mile and a half from his home. He states that he became able to write in Latin " with comparative fluency and correctness," and made some progress in Greek. He succeeded in retaining the high estimation in which he had been held by his fellow-scholars. He was gratified by receiving, in 8 his career, the fall approbation of his excellent father; excepting in the cardinal point of devotion to an ecclesiastical life. Here Dr. Caldwell acknow- ledges that he disappointed and disobliged his pa- rent, much to his own regret and real sorroAV; but he declares that, without a sacrifice of his con- science, he could not comply with the paternal desire in this respect, and that such a sacrifice no consideration should induce him to make. By the end of his fourteenth year, it was be- lieved that he was not likely to improve further from attendance on any school then extant in North Carolina; and, early in his fifteenth, feeling that he could not ask his parent to support him in the study of a profession, after rejecting the one de- signed for him, he accepted an invitation to take charge of a very respectable and flourishing gram- mar school, in Iredell County, near the Brushy Mountains, and on the waters of Snow Creek. He there had several pupils from eight to nine years older than himself; but their respect and friend- ship for him were*unqualified, and assisted in pre- serving the decorum of the school. At Snow Creek, he studied several mathematical branches, includ- ing mechanical philosophy, under the direction of the Rev. James Hall. Of Mr. Hall, Dr. Caldwell 9 expresses an elevated estimate, for an apostle-like character, and for ability as a divine and a mathe- matician ; and avows the belief that this philoso- pher "constructed the first steamboat that ever passed through the water.'" Two years later, he was removed to another school, in Centre Congre- gation, in the same county; the success of which gave cause to the discontinuance of the former seminary ; and here he continued for two years longer. At this period, active exertions were on foot to establish the University of North Carolina. Mr. Caldwell was too young for a professorship, and too proud to fill a subordinate station; and, in conse- quence of this, he was induced to relinquish teach- ing, and to adopt another pursuit. His preference was for law, or the army; and a commission in the latter was offered to him. His father was now deceased; but had always entertained a strong disliker to his son's adoption of either of these modes of life. In consideration of this, the young aspirant resolved to devote his whole energies to the science and practice of medicine; thus yield- ing up two professions in posthumous obedience to ' Dr. T. L. Caldwell's MS., p. 11. 10 a parent's wishes, after refusing to adopt another at the earnest request of the latter, while living. In the spring of 1791, Dr. Caldwell entered the office of Dr. Harris, in Salisbury, North Carolina; his choice of this gentleman as a preceptor being mainly induced by the circumstance that Dr. Har- ris was fresh from the medical schools of Philadel- phia; and, in the autumn of 1792, the student himself repaired to the city he so highly estimated as a source of medical instruction. Dr. Caldwell pronounces the then Philadelphia faculty to have consisted of much the most dis- tinguished physicians in the United States; Doc- tors Shippen, Kuhn, Rush, Wistar, Samuel Powell Griffitts, and Hutchinson; and the teaching and advantages afforded by their school immeasurably inferior to those of the day at which he wrote, between 1849 and 1853. He devoted himself, with great assiduity, to study, and to attendance on lectures and on the Pennsylvania Hospital; and allowed only four and a half or five hours for sleep, meals, and the other wants of life. During the great epidemic of yellow fever, in 1793, he had and employed extensive opportunities for observa- tion in this terrible disease; and formed or founded some of the convictions for which he became after- 11 wards conspicuous. He passed examinations for graduation in medicine, " with ease and success," in the spring of 1794; his name was inserted in the list of graduates for 1795 ; but he did not take his diploma, and publish his thesis, till 1796. This delay arose from pecuniary loss. His career as an author opened with his translation of Blu- menbach's Physiology, in 1794; a career extend- ing to sixty years! The literary career of our fellow-member was by no means that quiet lapse of existence which takes place in a German university, or in the purlieus of one of our printing-offices. In the autumn of 1794, finding his health materially impaired by his application, he ac- cepted the office of surgeon to a brigade of volun- teers, which joined the expedition, under the command of General Washington, to suppress the whiskey insurrection. He crossed the Alleghany Mountains with his corps, made a bloodless cam- paign of nearly four months; and returned with his health fully re-established. In 1796, after receiving his diploma, he form- ally commenced practice as a physician. The epidemic yellow fever of 1797 first broke out in the vicinity of Dr. Caldwell's residence. Many 12 physicians, as is well known, fled from their posts, including most of those residing within the district affected by the pestilence. Such was not the case with Dr. Caldwell; and the young practitioner was soon deeply immersed in business. He had, as we have observed, previously witnessed and examined the disease in 1793. A vehement controversy arose on the questions, connected with each other, whe- ther the disease commenced among us in conse- quence of importation from a foreign country, or whether its origin were domestic, from heat, un- wholesome effluvia, and corruption of the air. Dr. Caldwell assumed the ground of the domestic ori- gin ; and freely combated the opinions, on this point, of those who believed in its origin by im- portation. The discussion was largely extended to the newspapers; from three to five of Dr. Cald- well's short pieces appearing every week. The therapeutics of Dr. Rush, on the other hand, met with his warm and steady support; as he alleges that he found them, by experience, to be the most successful. Numerous pens, according to Dr. Cald- well, were occupied with assaults, often violent, upon the friend and preceptor whom he thus vin- dicated.1 At a later period, we find Dr. Caldwell, ' Dr. T. L. Caldwell's MS. p. 12. % 13 who thus vindicated Dr. Rush in his practice, op- posing him in an important point of his pathology. It is well known that Dr. Eush, though early op- posed to the idea that the disease was imported, was, for a long time, a believer in its contagious character. This is not the proper occasion to ex- amine the evidence which goes to prove the mo- ment, or even the year, in which this eminent medical teacher shifted his ground on a point so important. The task has fallen into the abler, and amply competent hands of my friend, Dr. La Roche, now publishing on the subject. Dr. Cald- well, for a long time, preceded Dr. Eush in ad- hesion to the belief that yellow fever was not con- tagious ; and, for one interval, was almost alone in the opposition. To defend non-contagion, few of his intimates were then found but himself and Dr. Physick; and the eminent surgeon just named was unwilling to appear in print or publicly discuss the subject, apprehending, from such a course, a detriment to his private usefulness, which he did not feel called upon to incur. The effects of thesa two controversies, after a lapse of fifty years, have by no means terminated among our citizens. At length, Dr. Caldwell was himself stricken down by the pestilence; and was rescued from the 2 14 consequences of a severe attack, by the skill and care of his two distinguished friends, and by the indefatigable attentions of an attached fellow-stu- dent and physician, nearer his own age, who for several days and nights never left the sufferer's chamber, and to whose merits and early death the latter consecrated an oration and a poetical frag- ment.1 After about three weeks, Dr. Caldwell returned to the use of his pen; and, soon after, to practice in the epidemic. Through the fatal and terrible pestilence of 1798, and through that of 1799, the subject of our notice passed without injury; but he sustained a slight attack in that of 1801. It is necessary to remind the non-medical hearer that there is a large class of physicians who deny the liability of any single individual to be affected with this disease more than once. In 1803, the same circumstance 1 Eulogium before the Medical Society, by appointment, March 4,1799. Dr. Samuel Cooper, the subject of this address, was a native of the State of Delaware, who died young. He is remembered in science for an Experimental Thesis on Datura Stramonium, honorably noticed in Europe, and frequently quoted from; and at the Pennsylvania Hospital, for a small property left to maintain a coach and horses for the use of convalescents and the insane. 15 again occurred; forming Dr. Caldwell's third at- tack ; but he escaped in 1805. From 1797 dates the series of Dr. Caldwell's publications on yellow fever. In 1798 was formed the association called the Academy of Medicine. Its object was to establish definitively the origin of yellow fever and other pestilential maladies, and to settle the question of contagion in the first-mentioned disease. In this, it encroached upon the province, or emulated the labors, of the Philadelphia College of Physicians; and the members of the two bodies entered into a most vehement controversy upon the subject for the investigation of which the Academy was instituted. Among the active members of the Academy, besides Dr. Caldwell, we find the names of Drs. Eush, Physick, and Mease. Those of the College had, perhaps, in the totality, somewdiat the advantage in extent of learning, and thorough completeness of a systematic education chiefly conducted in the Old World; those of the Academy, in youth, novelty, boldness, and an alleged inde- pendence of European prepossession on a question best examined and decided in America. To one or two of them, their fellows have awarded the praise of genius. The Academy prepared and 16 published a large amount of matter in defence of the non-contagious character and domestic origin of our celebrated and calamitous pestilence. It was short-lived, and did not receive more than one of its semi-annual addresses; a contribution which was made by Dr. Caldwell.1 Between 1805 and 1807, Dr. Caldwell delivered the first course of clinical lectures in the Philadel- phia Almshouse; of the medical part of which we have now the continuation in the Blockley Hos- pital. Besides being a large contributor to the medical journals, he was the author of various eulogiums and other addresses. In the winter of 1810-11, he delivered a course of lectures on medical jurisprudence; which, with that simulta- neously read in New York by Dr. Stringham, were the first ever delivered in this country, and constitute the introduction to our fellow-citizens of that study, since recognized as so valuable and 1 This Academy of Medicine, now historical, is to be distin- guished from an association of the same name, which existed in Philadelphia in the year 1820; which was established through the exertions of Drs. Samuel Jackson and John Barnes, which had Dr. Chapman for its President, and some of whose labors have been repeatedly noticed upon the Continent of Europe. 17 necessary, and in many cases so well followed up. Dr. Caldwell's course was several times repeated. The value and desirable character of this branch had been pointed out by Dr. Eush, in one of his Sixteen Introductory Lectures; and, at a short interval after Dr. Caldwell's course, occur Judge Thomas Cooper's republications. Between 1800 and 1812, our author prepared a very large total mass of manuscript, still extant, and chiefly consisting of lectures and controversial matter. In 1815, a new department was created in the University of Pennsylvania, called the Physical Faculty; and in it, Dr. Caldwell was made Pro- fessor of Geology and the Philosophy of Natural History. In this capacity, he delivered three courses ; reckoning among his audience many clergymen, including the venerable and beloved Bishop White. A very large mass of matter, relating to these subjects, is still preserved. In addition to these labors, his literary correspondence had now become large. Soon after this period, Dr. Caldwell wTas seve- rally invited to take part in the formation of three medical schools; a new one in Philadelphia, one in New York, and one in Baltimore. These offers 18 he declined; believing the advantages presented by the projects insufficient to insure the degree of suc- cess to which he aspired. In 1819, the invitation to Transylvania University, at Lexington, Ken- tucky, was embraced by him with decision and great ardor, and he devoted himself to the labors of his station with an energy involving material pecuniary sacrifices, both prospective and present. His department was the Institutes of Medicine. " It is not too much to affirm," says Dr. Yandell, " that he was the father of the Western School of Medicine." He urged that the undertaking " would throw much light upon the diseases of the Missis- sippi Valley, and lead to a more rational and successful treatment of them." It would promote the study of the climate, and of its influence on diseases. His ardor was communicated to his col- leagues, considerably younger men, and to his pupils. In a few years, the class became large and influential, and the pride of the region found a gratification in the circumstance that it attracted pupils from the Atlantic States. Persevering and laborious writing, journeys to solicit assistance, and appeals to the legislature of Kentucky, were the means by which he raised funds for the pur- chase of a library and apparatus ; and he himself 19 visited Europe, to appropriate with care and justice the sum thus procured. The fine library and other collections possessed by the University are the evidence of his success. Your reporter is an incompetent judge of the merits of the causes which gave rise to the creation of a new school at Louisville, in the same State, and of the transfer of legislative patronage to it. It is understood that the most important among these were advantages of locality. Of the two cities, Lexington was metropolitan, and, as the residence of wealthy proprietors, steady in its habits and slow in its growth. Little was to be seen, amid its plentiful and hospitable ease, of a throng of unknown and perishing poor. Louis- ville was commercial, bustling, rapid in its in- crease, subject to fluctuations, and crowded with that laboring population which is attracted by trade. This gave facilities for anatomy and clinics not possessed by the capital. It is stated that Dr. Caldwell resisted the alteration till he had become convinced that it was inevitable; performed all the duties of a faithful officer and partisan; and, finally, when he perceived that it would certainly take place, and that the medical branch of the Lexington Institution would not be removed to 20 the other city, gave to the new college the same unwavering benefit of his skill, his industry, and his influence, which had previously been at the service of the older school. Thus, in countries which are the scene of violent changes in their form of government, a faithful general or other public officer adheres to his standard as long as the faintest shadow of hope continues to be at- tached to it; and then, when he " perceives that it is a revolution,"1 and that his resistance can be productive of no good result, no longer disturbs the peace and prolongs calamity by refusing his adhesion, but joins heart and hand in consolidat- ing the new institutions of what is still his coun- try. Although, as we have seen, not the origina- tor, and even long the opponent, he is pronounced by Dr. Yandell to have become entitled, by effective labor and personal influence, to be called also the founder of the new University of Louisville. His exertions and friendships were of great value in procuring the pecuniary grant from the State which was necessary for this new foundation; and his labors continued for a time to be eminently great and active as before. His literary industry 1 Phrase ascribed to Marshal Marmont, in 1830. 21 was persevering as ever; and his voluminous cor- respondence may be supposed to have rather in- creased than diminished. But the weight of seventy-seven years was in- compatible with the continuance of these long and heavy exertions. After about four years' service in the new school, the decaying philosopher felt the need of relaxation; and soon it was time to repose. To the University of Louisville he con- tinued attached till 1849. The institution retained and elevated its standing, and, in the face of a rivalry created by the establishment of analogous institutions at Cincinnati, Nashville, and elsewhere, it continued steadily to increase in material pros- perity and the throng of students. Its numbers reached four hundred. After he left it, these ad- vantages underwent a slow, but visible and pro- gressive decline. During the last four years of Dr. Caldwell's life, he continued in the enjoyment of uninterrupted health, an erect attitude, and the perfect use of his faculties. The termination was marked by the slow decay and gradual wearing out which are considered the indications of death by old age; and his last days, according to an affectionate female connexion, elapsed in almost total freedom 09 from suffering, and, in fact, from disease. The closing date was the 9th of July, 1853; exhibiting a duration of about eighty-one years. Dr. Caldwell was twice married. In 1799, he was united to Eliza, eldest daughter of Thomas Learning, Esq., of Philadelphia. By this lady he has left one son, the physician to whose kindness I have already had to acknowledge my indebted- ness for the most valuable materials. His second matrimonial connection was with Mrs. Barton, by parentage Warner, of Kentucky, and nearly related to a very distinguished family in the State of Dela- ware. This union was without offspring. In person, he was six feet two inches high, of a large, athletic conformation, and a very upright carriage. He had black hair, a piercing gaze, and an earnest and impressive countenance. He has been blamed for a pompous manner. He never be- came corpulent. With the exception of the yellow fever, he appears to have labored under very little disease during the course of his whole existence. Such is the rapid narrative of a life, the labors of which are among the largest masses ever con- tributed to literature and science within these United States. To describe the mission of such a mind, in its residence among men, is a task which 23 your reporter would probably never have under- taken without the sanction of your authority. The variety and extent of subjects treated of by the deceased, is truly surprising. He appears to have left near ten thousand pages of print; and a much larger amount of manuscript. We may al- most say " nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit." The imputation of presumption has sometimes been brought against our author, from the simple fact of his undertaking such a vast variety of sub- jects ; thus converting what has generally been a subject of praise and astonishment, into an occa- sion of blame. This has been done by savans who have not, perhaps, sufficiently reflected upon what were then the wants of the age. To take a just view of this, it is necessary to consider the situa- tion in which he found the intellectual affairs of his countrymen; and, in such an investigation, we may possibly be led to inferences very different from some of those we hear at the present day. The government had never patronized science; and this duty was thrown on the educated classes. An affectation of liberality of sentiment, with enlightened views in regard to the increase and diffusion of knowledge, was then in fashion. This was partlv inherited from the habits of English 24 gentry, traditional before the separation of the two nations; habits which were among the causes, accompaniment, and consequences of the forma- tion of the Eoyal Society. These pointed to the extension, by the exertions and discrimination of private individuals, of the sciences, mathematical, natural, and social or political, as contradistin- guished from the study of the classics, a labor principally reserved for colleges. Another cause of this influence on the minds of our countrymen, was the professions and brilliancy of the school of philosophers who preceded the French Eevolution. It was held, precisely as it now is, that the human understanding had taken a new start, that its actual progress far outstripped any former ex- ample, and that its growth was weighty with the most important changes and blessings to the human race. In this position of things, it was the pride of American, as of English gentlemen, believing themselves the best informed members of the community, to take as active a share as pos- sible in the promotion of such mighty, beneficial, and glorious results. The period, too, was not so very remote when men occasionally ascribed to individuals the character of what was called an universal genius. Neither, in fact, if we consider 25 the extraordinary variety of the accomplishments of some celebrated individuals in our own time, or the visible ambition of others, whose fame has not yet endured long enough to fill so wide a sphere, ought we to consider this claim so entirely aban- doned as a juster estimate of things, and a severer self-control would unquestionably dictate. To write so well, under every criticism, and on so great a variety of topics as was done by Dr. Caldwell, instead of a subject of condemnation, ought to be considered a rare honor, entitling him to the recollection and gratitude of his country- men. To introduce and defend so many branches of science, unpatronized by the State, is certainly a wonderful mass of achievements for any single head. He was always ready to welcome and sup- port new accessions to knowledge; and his eager- ness to protect them from the frown of preposses- sion, has led him into some of his contests. Thus he appears as the apologist of phrenology and mesmerism. Those who, engaged in the active pursuits of life, in quest of wealth or power, look back only to their college days for literature or science, and have not the time to consider the claims of new subjects of investigation—such men are apt to deem the mind so employed as of a wild 3 26 turn, and fond of novelty and eccentric specula- tion. They do not recognize the high moral obligation of him who judges it to be his duty to see to the maintenance and diffusion of the new sources of intelligence. From an early habituation, first, to discussion, and afterwards to the writing of eulogiums, further induced, it may be, by the popularity, over a large district of our country, including his native State, of an ornamented, and, as some think, an extrava- gant tone of eloquence, our fellow-member acquired great readiness in a style, declamatory, florid, metaphorical, and, perhaps, tending to exaggera- tion. In connection with this manner he became so generally known, that many seem to have ima- gined he could not escape from it. Yet this is not at all the case; his adoption of a diction locally so popular by no means incapacitating him from employing the dry manner, when, as in business or strict science, this was appropriate. Nor was, as has been imagined, his graver style the result of prolonged studies, or of age. In his translation of Blumenbach, and in that of Alibert on Intermit* tents, both works of early youth, a flowery style is hardly to be looked for, and, where we have ex-. amined, it is not found. His review of the work of 27 Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith, on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Race, in the Port Folio, 1814, is not only free from all extravagance, exaggeration, or unsuitable orna- ment, but has been praised by some of our best critics and naturalists; and is certainly a model of scientific discussion on that subject, lately submit- ted to so much controversy. Dr. Caldwell does not, properly speaking, take the opposite side to anything, but points out the fallacy and inappro- priateness of the modes of disquisition employed by the reverend author; and leaves what is beyond scientific proof in that doubt in which modesty, and a real knowledge of the methods of searching after natural truth, inevitably place it. As an- other example, a valuable and original essay on Physical Education, in a perfectly chaste and modest style, bears date at Boston, in 1834. In fact, like all men of great genius and learning, he had a variety of styles; and though the present commentator might, in some instances, have wished the employment of one considerably severer, the learned and eloquent writer possessed abundant power of judgment, selection, and adaptation. His range of diction included poetry; in which his versification and tone of thought certainly exhibit him to have been of the school, then in the flush 28 of its popularity, of Darwin and Hayley. We shall select our specimen, not from the Monody on Washington, but from the commemorative lines at the end of his eulogium on Dr. Samuel Cooper, of Delaware. Hail, hapless youth! if fame my voice could give, From age to age thy memory should live; Long as on high th' eternal mountains soar; Long as the surges lash the shelvy shore ; Long as, with gentle breath, the breezes sigh, Or cloud-wreath'd tempests howl along the sky; Long as the sun emits his golden light, Or pearly stars bedeck the throne of night; Long as o'er systems Nature's God commands, And bright Creation's beauteous order stands. The character of his published works, with the exception of his translations, seems inclined to controversy, or to original remarks, rather than to abstracts of the existing science of the times; and he has, hence, been sometimes fancied to possess a mental character prone rather to review and com- mentary than to profound, critically exact, and thoroughly accomplished knowledge in science. A desire for independence and original observa- tion and reflection, is a thing which your reporter has not prevailed on himself to consider as a sin. Dr. Caldwell was certainly always favorable to 29 American and independent inquiries: they were what the nation at that time most needed, to adapt the European knowledge, then largely introduced among us, to the occasions of a new country. Courses of lectures, however, on branches, in one or two instances not till then introduced into the United States, whether by this method or by authorship of books—medical jurisprudence, clini- cal medicine, and the philosophy of natural history, these, and thirty years of regular lectures on medicine in the two universities of Kentucky, sufficiently prove his willingness to compile and aid in diffusing the knowledge of the age. The introduction to his edition of Cullen's First Lines, is principally composed of a most earnest defence of what he calls classical medicine, against some of the views, and the manner of teaching, of Dr. Rush; much of whose physiologo-pathological ideas, arrangement, and definitions, he disap- proved, and considered to be at war with strict science. As, in his discussion of the subject of races, a large portion of what has been recently published will find a prototype, this latter piece of controversy holds a near analogy to parts of what took place between the promulgators and opponents of the physiological medicine of the late celebrated Professor Broussais. 30 Dr. Caldwell's familiarity with controversy has exposed him to keen animosities. Boldness, in him, amounted to a strong characteristic ; he may have been obnoxious to the charges of heat and vehemence, too great frequency of self-vindica- tion, and too great readiness to appeal to the pub- lic. It is certain that his overruling motive was love of truth, with a desire to benefit mankind, and a wish for a fame to be honestly earned by useful and laborious services. It is possible that, under the influence of these feelings, he may have been led too far, and that, accustomed so often to find himself the principal literary man of his com- pany, he may have sometimes proved deficient in that caution which is acquired by constant friction and collision with equals. In his youth, his studies were certainly very laborious and extensive; in his middle age, he was so incessantly engaged in active pursuits as to make his reading in a great measure uncertain, or incidental to his external labors; in the end of his days, he retired to his splendid library, and lived almost entirely among his books. He found so- ciety in the companionship of those minds which are the exclusive property of no age; and took less interest in the current of events around him. Philadelphia, in the first twenty years of this cen- 31 tury, and Kentucky, in the next thirty, were not great publishing localities; and a large mass of his writings remains in manuscript. In Philadelphia, where the niches were occupied, and where original publication was then limited, he left no great work, literary or material, behind him, to serve as a monument to his fame. In Kentucky, where he was supported, this was not the case; and import- ant institutions, promising to be of long duration, are closely and intimately connected with his memory. Some future day, the sons of the present people of his State will carve him in marble, and the form and features of their philosopher will be among the most cherished adornments and relics of their cities. FINIS. Messrs. Lippincott and Grambo have in the press, and expect to issue early in February, the Autobiography of Charles Caldwell, M.D., in near 500 pages, with a portrait.