MC DOWELL 740 MC DOWELL Monument to Ephraim McDowell. Its dedication in Danville, Kv., on May 16, oration by Samuel D. Gross. Med. Record, N. Y., 1879, xv. Ridenbaugh, Mary Y. The Biography ot Ephraim McDowell, together with valuable scientifac treatises, etc., 8°, New York, 1890. Biographical sketch. Columbus Med. Jour., 1902. Heroes o£ Medicine, Ephraim McDowell. Pract., London, 1897, Iviii. Portrait. Lowder, VV. L. Ephraim McDowell, Med. and Surg. Monitor, Indianapolis, 1901, iv. The passing o£ the historic McDowell building at Danville, Ky. Physician and Surgeon, Detroit and Ann Arbor, 1902, xxiv. _ t, . McMurtry, L. S. Memorial address. Tr. South- ern Surgical and Gynecological Assoc, 1893, Phila., 1894, vi; also, Med. News, Phila., 1894, Ixiv. , Trans. Amer. Gynec. Soc, 1909, vol. xxxiv, McDowell Centennial No. Portrait. McDowell, Joseph Nash (1803-1868) A picturesque cliaracter, founder of a med- ical college, eloquent lecturer, Joseph Nash McDowell, nephew of Ephraiin McDowell (q. v.), was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1803, and received his literary and medical education at Transylvania University, taking his M. D. in 1825. Because of his proficiency in anatomy, he held the chair of anatomy in his alma mater for a year and then he became professor of anatomy in the Jefferson Med- ical College in Philadelphia for one session, when he returned to Lexington and married the playmate of his youth, Amanda Virginia Drake, sister of Daniel Drake. From 1835 to 1839, when the college went out of existence, he was professor of anatomy in the medical department of the Cincinnati Medical Col- lege, where he was associated with Dr. Drake, Dr. Gross, and other distinguished men. Arriving in St. Louis in 1840, he set to work with enthusiasm and unceasing industry to organize a faculty of medicine. He worked under the charter of the Kemper College and his college was then known as the Medical Department of the Kemper College, but was changed in name to "Missouri Medical Col- lege." Dr. McDowell soon became known through- out th.e West and Southwest. He was an unusually fluent and eloquent speaker, a nat- ural orator and possessed to a pre-eminent degree that rare and wonderful power of adapting himself to any and all kinds of audi- ences. He literally reveled in antithesis and climax, and as a vivid word-picturer few could equal him. A perfect master of invective and ridicule, never at a loss to entertain any com- pany he might be thrown into. Backed by a fund of inexhaustible anecdotes he made parable, anecdote and quaint comparison an effective means to stimulate and fix the memory of his students. It is said that in his medical lectures he had a story for almost every bone, muscle and nerve in the human body. He was proverbially improvident and careless. He always found it more difficult to keep than to get, for while fortune often indeed aided him, a lack of forethought as quickly undid him. It is said in his early years of residence in St. Louis he delivered a number of acrid lec- tures against Jesuitism, because, as it was claimed, the Jesuit Fathers of the St. Louis University had allowed a rival medical school (the St. Louis Medical College) to organize under the charter of their college. After the delivery of the lectures the doctor became so obsessed that his life was constantly in dan- ger, that he made and wore a brass breast- plate, and always thereafter carried arms. Dr. McDowell had so constructed his col- lege building as to be a formidable fortress, and his residence on the opposite corner was also planned to resist an assault. Any one who had ever seen this huge, octagon-shaped stone building could readily see that it had been built on such lines. He had early con- ceived a plan to go across the plains and capture upper California. With this in view, be bought from the United States Govern- ment, for $2.50 each, 1,400 discarded muskets, which were stored in his house and in the basement of the college. Through determina- tion, patience and diligence, he got hold of quantities of old brass, to make cannon. This proposed expedition to Upper California was to be accomplished by persuading his graduates and others to accompany him. It is said that several hundred graduates and young men had promised to go. Dr. McDowell himself once became very sick and believing himself upon the point of death, called Dr. Charles W. Stevens, his part- ner in the practice of medicine, and his son. Dr. Drake McDowell, to his bedside and made them take oath that, should he die, they would place his hody in an alcohoI-filled lead coffin, take it to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky and have it suspended from the roof of the cave. It is also related that he purchased a cave in Hannibal, Missouri, had it cleaned out and tidied up, and built walls of masonry and an iron gate at its entrance. He took a lead coffin containing the body of one of his chil- dren and suspended it from the roof of the cave. Some time after, evil-disposed and mischievous town loafers broke down this gate and opened the coffin. This made the doctor give up the idea of having such burial place for the dead. When he delivered his class valedictory, it was always an event dear to every medical student of the town, for such was his antipathy to the St. Louis Medical College, or Pope's
