is school-age he clearly preferred
the out-door sports of his companions to the in-door tasks of his
teachers. On quitting school he crossed the Alleghanies and became an
office pupil of Dr. Humphreys, of Staunton, Va. After reading under this
preceptor for two years, he repaired to the University of Edinburgh. The
Scotch metropolis was then styled the "Modern Athens." It afforded
opportunities at that time for acquiring a medical education the best in
all the world. It was then to the medical profession what Leyden had
been in the days of Sir Thomas Browne, what Paris became when Velpeau
and Louis taught there. He entered the private class of John Bell, whose
forceful teachings and native eloquence made a lasting impression on
the mind of his youthful hearer. It has been said that McDowell
conceived the thought of ovariotomy from some suggestions thrown out by
this great man. The only distinction he is known to have won while in
Edinburgh was that of having been chosen by his classmates to carry the
colors of the college in a foot-race against a professional. In this it
appears he was an easy first. He came away without a diploma. But what
was of far greater value than a degree, he brought back the anatomical
and surgical knowledge which was to place him in the front of his
profession.

He returned to Kentucky in 1795, and settled among the people who had
known him from boyhood. His success was immediate, and yet Dr. Samuel
Brown, who knew him in Virginia, and was his classmate in Scotland, had
said, when asked of him: "Pish! he left home a gosling and came back a
goose." In a little while he commanded all the surgical operations of
importance for hundreds of miles around him, and this continued till,
some years later, Dudley returned from Europe to share with him the
empire in surgery.

In 1802, fully established in his profession, and with an income which
rendered him independent, he married Sarah, daughter of Governor Isaac
Shelby.

In 1809 he did his first ovariotomy. He believed the operation to be
without precedent in the annals of surgery, yet he kept no note of it or
of his subsequent work. He prepared no account of it until 1817. This
appeared in the Eclectic Repertory. It was so meagre and so startling
that surgeons hesitated to credit its truth. He had not mastered his
mother tongue. The paper was thought to bear internal evidence of its
author's having "relied upon his ledger for his dates and upon his