ty, already of established reputation, was in operation. It
required only a school in medicine to make it complete in its several
departments. The trustees met in 1817 and added this to its
organization. Dr. Dudley was made its head and appointed to fill the
chairs of anatomy and surgery. A small class of students assembled in
the autumn. At the commencement exercises held the following spring, W.
L. Sutton was admitted to the doctorate--the first physician given that
distinction by an institution in the West. Troubles arose in the
faculty. Resignations were sent in and accepted. Dr. Richardson, one of
the corps, challenged Dr. Dudley. A meeting followed. Richardson left
the field with a pistol wound in his thigh which made him halt in his
gait for the rest of his life. The year following a second organization
was effected, which included the two belligerent teachers.

The history of the Medical Department of Transylvania University--its
rise, its success, its decline, its disappearance from the list of
medical colleges--would practically cover Dr. Dudley's career, and would
form a most interesting chapter in the development of medical teaching
in the Southwest. But it must suffice me here to say that Dr. Dudley
created the medical department of the institution and directed its
policy. Its students regarded him from the beginning as the foremost man
in the faculty. That he had colleagues whose mental endowments were
superior to his he himself at all times freely admitted. He is said to
have laid no claim to either oratorical power or professional erudition.
He was not a logician, he was not brilliant, and his deliverances were
spiced with neither humor nor wit. And yet, says one of his biographers,
in ability to enchain the students' attention, to impress them with the
value of his instructions and his greatness as a teacher, he bore off
the palm from all the gifted men who, at various periods, taught by his
side. A friend and once a colleague described his manner while lecturing
as singularly imposing and impressive. "He was magisterial, oracular,
conveying the idea always that the mind of the speaker was troubled with
no doubt. His deportment before his classes was such as further to
enhance his standing. He was always, in the presence of his students,
not the model teacher only, but the dignified, urbane gentleman;
conciliating regard by his gentleness, but repelling any approach to
familiarity; and never for the sake