American Medical Biographies/Blackburn, Luke Pryor
Blackburn, Luke Pryor (1816–1887)
A surgeon during the Civil War, Luke P. Blackburn was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, June 16, 1816, and graduated from Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentcuky, in 1834, the following year beginning practice in that city, but on the outbreak of cholera in Versailles he offered his services gratuitously to the sufferers and afterwards made that place his home.
In 1846 he removed to Natchez, Mississippi, which he effectually quarantined against the yellow-fever epidemic which occurred in New Orleans in 1848, and at his own expense built a hospital for the marines who were suffering from the fever, an act that aroused Congress to establish ten similar institutions. In 1854 he again protected Natchez from yellow fever by rigid quarantine. He visited the hospitals of England, Scotland, France and Germany in 1857, and on his return resumed practice in New Orleans.
He was made surgeon on the staff of the Confederate general, Sterling Price, at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was commissioned by the governor of Mississippi to proceed to Canada to superintend the furnishing of supplies by blockade runners, and in 1864, at the request of the governor-general of Canada, he visited the Bermuda Islands to look after the suffering citizens and soldeirs. In 1867 he returned to the United States and became a planter in Arkansas, later, in 1873, returning to Kentucky and resuming practice in Louisville, doing good service in the epidemics of 1875 and 1878 as an organizer of physicians and nurses. In 1879 he was elected governor of Kentucky.
Prior to his election as governor, the penitentiary became crowded to double its capacity. This he promised to relieve if elected and this he did by pardoning the lesser criminals until the number was reduced in keeping with the capacity of the penitentiary, a practice that forced his state to build another prison to accommodate its criminals.
His first wife was Ella Guest Boswell, by whom he had one son, Cary Blackburn, who afterwards became a practitioner in Louisville. His second wife was Julia M. Churchill, whom he married in 1857.
He died September 14, 1887.