The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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of which the students might keep out two volumes at a
time. The museum boasted preparations of plaster and wax.
All of this was available for $100 specie, with $20 additional
for graduation fee.
From this
Transylvania's heyday, however, had waned.
time on to its final session in 1856-57 internal factional
strife and external forces contributed to its decline. By
1836-37 the rise of Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and
other cities as commercial centers, following the development
of steamboat navigation, relegated Lexington to a
minor position in the West. Recognizing the importance
of location on a main thoroughfare, plus the additional
advantage of available anatomical "subjects" ( a "universal
repugnance [is] felt by the entire community against
disinterments," said Dr. L. P. Yandell, of Lexington), several
members of the Medical School faculty, instigated by
Dr. Charles Caldwell, almost succeeded in moving the
school to Louisville. A long and full investigation led, instead,
to the dismissal of Drs. Caldwell, Yandell, and Cooke,
and the dissolution and reorganization of the entire faculty.
The resulting instability, when added to the changing external
conditions and the rise of competing schools of
medicine all over the country, made inevitable the decline
of Transylvania. As Dr. Yandell wrote in a personal letter
May 12, 1838: "Dr. Dudley's fame may enable Transylvania
to vie with the Institute [Louisville] for a year or
two; but it cannot withstand everything."^*
But Dudley's personality and the deep-seated intrigue
which seems to have been social, professional, possibly political
and religious, as well as personal, had done their damage.
In 1837 Dr. James C. Cross, who was brought from
the Ohio Medical College, helped secure the services of Dr.
John Eberle for Transylvania, but after Eberle's death in
1838 the whole situation flared up again. Cross was ousted
in 1 844, and there ensued a pamphlet warfare which, aired
as it was in the newspapers, it would have been impossible
for any school to survive. Phrases and epithets such as
"arch traitor," "snarling emissaries of a bastard aristoc-