University of Virginia Library

XVII. Successors to the First Professors, continued

In 1830, John Tayloe Lomax, the first professor of
law, was compelled, as he expressed it, "by justice to his
family," to accept a judgeship from the General Assembly,
as that office would afford him a more lucrative income.
"Nothing," he wrote Cabell, "would have induced me to
relinquish the scheme of utility which my labors for
four years has been consummating, had not the expense
of that period, and the future prospects, warned me that
my revenues could not but be less than what my family
were entitled to claim at my hands." He offered, in
January, when he first mentioned his intention of retiring,
to continue the discharge of his old duties until the close
of the session, should the Board permit him to attend
the terms of his circuit, which would only consume six
weeks altogether spread over the whole interval. This
proposal must have been assented to, for his successor,
Davis, apparently was not appointed until the ensuing
July. Madison acknowledged, in a letter to Cabell, that
it would be useless to try to obtain the services of Judge
Tucker, Philip P. Barbour, or some other lawyer of their
exalted standing, for the reason which had led Judge
Lomax to resign, would, in turn, discourage men like
these,—who were in possession either of a large practice
or of seats on the bench,—from accepting the same position.
The only candidate of prominence who seems to
have applied directly for the place was William Maxwell,
of Norfolk,—who, however, enjoyed a literary rather
than a legal reputation.

John A. G. Davis, who succeeded Lomax, was a native
of Middlesex, and a graduate of the College of William
and Mary. In 1824, having removed to Charlottesville,
he became a member of the bar of Albemarle, but for

some months also attended a course of scientific lectures
at the University. He soon married a great-niece of
Jefferson. Like most of the talented and aspiring young
men of that day, he had concentrated an important share
of his energies upon local politics. As secretary of the
convention which met in Charlottesville, in 1828, he won
Madison's commendation by the conspicuous ability with
which he discharged the duties of that position. At this
time, he was associated with Thomas W. Gilmer and
Nicholas P. Trist, in the editorship of the Advocate, a
local journal of recognized influence. He had also
served with efficiency as the secretary of the Board of
Visitors.

Like Gessner Harrison, Davis was elected to his professorship
at the start for a period of one session only,
but his incumbency was made permanent at the close of
his first term as a reward for the unmistakable aptitude
which he had shown for the demands of his exacting chair.
So steadily did he rise in the solid esteem of all, that,
at the time of his unhappy death by the pistol of a
masked student, he had come to be considered the most
useful member of the Faculty. Charles L. Mosby, an
early graduate of the University, and an astute lawyer,
gave the following reason for this advance: "Some of
the professors," he said, in a letter to Cocke written in
1844, "who probably had the largest and most varied
attainments in their respective departments, have been
the least valuable to the institution, from the fact that
they were personally unknown beyond the precincts, and
so made no good impression on the public mind by free
and familiar intercourse with the people. Professor
Davis was an exception. ... To dignity of character,
he happily united a certain freedom and familiarity of
manner which made him as acceptable to the public as

he was valuable to the University." This suavity of
tongue and demeanor was also dwelt upon in the resolution
adopted by the vestry of his church after his murder;
and that body also referred very feelingly to the serenity
of his temper, the gentleness of his disposition, his kindness
of heart, faith in friendship, firmness of mind and
purpose, solicitude for the wants of others, and promptness
in the discharge of duty.

It was said of Davis by a distinguished pupil that he
taught the science of jurisprudence as a code of principles,
and not as a code of precedents, in the manner of his
most prominent successor. In his view of his subjects,
constitutional law formed by far the most vital part of
the course. The Federalist and the Resolutions of
1798–99 were the great fountain-heads of his political
doctrine, and through his exposition of these classic texts,
his pupils learned to deny the supremacy of the Federal
courts when the latter sought to define the rights of the
States according to their own interpretation of the Constitution.
He was, in other words, a consistent and inflexible
disciple of Jefferson and Madison. His loss was
a heavy blow to the prosperity of the school, which was
not softened by the appointment of his temporary successor,
N. P. Howard. Mrs. Ward, who had charge of
one of the hotels, complained to the Board of Visitors
that, in consequence of Davis's death, sixteen of her
boarders, who attended his classes, had withdrawn from
the University.

Dunglison resigned at the close of the session 1832–3.
"I have many fears," he wrote Madison, "that this
mountain air, which is proverbial rheumatic, does not
agree with Mrs. Dunglison, and this dread makes me
disposed to embrace any offer which may be sufficiently
advantageous." He had acquired such reputation in his

profession, that, by 1830, he was receiving invitations to
enter the faculties of other institutions. During that
year, he was elected to a chair in the Medical School of
Cincinnati, but he refused to accept it on the ground
that the site of that town lay too far inland to be convenient
for any one either to go to it or to depart from
it. He was asked to select any chair in the Jefferson
Medical College, in Philadelphia, which he should prefer,
but this invitation he at first declined, because that institution,
he said, had been founded in a spirit of opposition
to the other colleges of the city, and not as the
result of any real demand for its creation in the urgent
needs of the community. He seems to have been disposed
to accept the chair of anatomy in the Medical
School in Baltimore; but he suffered his candidacy to
come to nothing without apparent regret. He finally
received with favor a call to the chair of materia medica,
therapeutics, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence in the
Faculty of the University of Maryland.[16] So high was
the esteem in which he was held that Madison was
anxious that the "door should be kept open for his return"
in case the new post should prove disappointing to
him. He did not sever the tie with the University at
once, but from the beginning of the session of 1833–4,
down to October 15, he delivered his regular lectures on
obstetrics. The thoroughness of his system of teaching
was illustrated in his course on materia medica, his principal
topic: he first discoursed at length on the virtues
and uses of the different articles, and then recapitulated
the whole lecture; or else he recapitulated, equally as
fully, at the end of the description of each article. In
addition, he examined his pupils once a week on the subjects
of that week's lectures,—not, as he said, to catechise
them, but to bring back again whatever might have
been forgotton.

Long, it will be recalled, boasted of the quickness and
readiness with which he moulded himself to the domestic
habits of the Virginians. Apparently, this did not go far
beyond the acquisition of a taste for the humble but
wholesome corn-cake. Dunglison, on the other hand,
went much further. He had been residing at the University
only four years when he bought a negro for his
own household service,—an act the more remarkable as
his wife was an Englishwoman, who could have had but
little tolerance for the institution of slavery. As the
price was small,—two hundred and forty dollars,—the
negro was probably under age; and after his purchase,
occupied perhaps the general status of an English apprentice.

Dunglison was succeeded by Alfred T. Magill. His
appointment had come about in a way that would hardly
have been thought by Jefferson to be sufficient justification
of it, or in harmony with the reputation which the
chair had acquired through its previous incumbent. A
member of the Board of Visitors had been pleased with a
prize essay by Magill on the subject of typhus fever, and
he sent it to Dr. Johnson, the professor of anatomy and
surgery, for him to pass final judgment upon its merits.
In writing of his favorable impression to Magill, Johnson
said, "I read your essay very attentively ... and so
entirely was I satisfied with your ability that I did not
hesitate, though you were personally unknown to me,
to urge your claim in the strongest language." Judge
Henry St. George Tucker, Magill's father-in-law, was
equally enthusiastic about the essay. "For style and
manner," he said to Cabell, "it is not inferior to anything

I have ever seen." Apparently, the genuine excellence
of this single casual production alone brought Magill the
appointment.

He had received his medical education in Philadelphia;
but his active practice had been restricted to the county
of Jefferson, where he resided; and it had been spread
over four years only. The Board of Visitors limited his
first appointment to a single session in order to test his
ability to fill the chair acceptably. His introductory lecture
was delivered to a packed audience, which had gathered
in curiosity to hear the new and untried professor.
"I must confess I was not a little alarmed and agitated,"
Magill modestly reported afterwards, "but I have reason
to believe that I acquitted myself tolerably well."
And this was the history of his incumbency of his chair.
He entered upon its duties with a very moderate preparation
in comparison with his predecessor, Dunglison, but
he soon displayed aptitude of a high order; and when
compelled, four years later, to seek relief from ill-health
in a temporary rest, he received a sympathetic letter from
the pupils in his classes, in which they dwelt with emphasis
on his excellence as a teacher. In addition to his
learning, he possessed an unusual charm of character.
"He is gentle in his manners and free from austerity,"
said his father-in-law, in recommending him to Cabell;
and this, with his fine native talents, pure and conscientious
spirit, and superior attainments, has caused his memory
to remain one of the most fragrant in the history of
the University. He withdrew in May, 1837, and died
in the course of the following month. His last act was to
lift himself up with great pain in his bed, so that a picture
might be taken of him for the solace of his children.
Of the stoutest Revolutionary stock, he endured the ravages
of his disease, consumption, with all the fortitude

of a dying soldier. "This affliction," he wrote to his
father, "has made me see more clearly than ever before
the inestimable value of our religion, and my belief
in it has been to me the source of unspeakable consolation."

Augustus L. Warner, of Baltimore, succeeded Dr.
Johnson in 1834 as professor of anatomy and surgery;
R. E. Griffith succeeded Dr. Magill. He withdrew in
1839, and in his turn was succeeded by Henry Howard
as professor of medicine.[17] The chair had been offered
first to Dr. Gross, and afterwards to Dr. Harrison, of
Philadelphia; but both, being agreeably situated already,
had declined it. So much delay was caused by the effort
to find an acceptable tenant for it that the medical students
openly threatened to desert the precincts in a body
if it was not filled forthwith. In June, 1837, James L.
Cabell was a candidate for the professorship of anatomy
and surgery, which had become vacant through Dr. Warner's
resignation. Cabell was a master of arts of the
University, and after leaving its lecture-rooms, had pursued
his medical studies in a hospital in Baltimore, which
enjoyed the distinction of being the only one in America
in which students were permitted to perform the surgical
operations. At the time of his election, he was walking

the hospitals of Paris. His term of service began with
the session of 1837–8.

Cabell was a nephew and protégé of Joseph L. Cabell,[18]
and in his case, the first sharp issue of nepotism, in the
history of the University, was raised. The criticism
aroused by his appointment had undoubted pertinency,
for the new professor was a very young man whose
capacity as surgeon or physician had not been proven in
actual practice. Indeed, at the hour of his selection, he
had not progressed beyond the stage of studentship himself,
and yet he became, almost on the threshold of his
service, one of the most valuable of all the teachers
embraced in the distinguished circle of the Faculty. At
the start, he seems to have felt some aversion to the particular
department in which he was called upon to lecture.
He was so thoroughly educated that he was fully competent
to instruct in more than one course. As a young
man, he had been the mathematical tutor in the Napton
Academy in Charlottesville; and on the professorship of
moral philosophy becoming vacant in 1846, by the resignation
of Tucker, he came forward as a candidate for
the place, with a very learned and influential backing.
When Dr. McGuffey, who was elected, died many years
afterwards, Dr. Cabell, in association with Dr. Witherspoon,
the chaplain, undertook the duties of the chair
until a successor to McGuffey was chosen. At one time,
he considered very seriously the plan of withdrawing

from the University and establishing a boarding school
of a high order for young ladies. His wife's health was
then infirm, and he thought that the change to the country
proposed would be likely to restore it. In 1847, he was
elected to a professorship in Richmond Medical College,
and actually sent in his resignation of the chair of anatomy
and surgery, which he then occupied in the University;
but so anxious were the Board of Visitors to
retain his services that the advertisement for his successor
was deferred for a period of two weeks in the hope
that he would, in the interval, be induced to alter his
purpose. The resignation was withdrawn, and until his
death, Cabell continued a member of the University
Faculty.

Not a professor in the institution was more esteemed
and valued than he, and there was not one more capable
of original work. In 1859, he published the Testimony
of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind, in which he
drew, in support of his conclusions, upon all the resources
of physiology, zoology, and comparative philology, so
far as they had been opened up by research and observation.
Many of the laws of biology, which were then
unknown, were stated in this remarkable volume, and instances
to illustrate them adduced, which, only a short
time afterwards, were brought forward by the great
English protagonists of the Doctrine of Evolution. The
central point of his thesis was, that, as the lower organisms
had shown the power to develop variety without the
intervention of supernatural agencies, man himself might
have reached his present form by the same process of
natural selection and elimination. Many of the most serious
objections to the theory which the English scientists
foresaw, and more or less successfully combated, Cabell
also anticipated, such as the difficulty of differentiating

species from variety, the supposed sterility of hybrids,
and the absence of indispensable links. The outburst of
the War of Secession not only diverted him from further
investigation in this new field, but also obscured his share
in revealing those biological facts which have given so
much celebrity to the names of Darwin and Huxley.

It might have been easily predicted of a man who could
produce such a work as this that he would not fail to keep
abreast of every great advance in his profession. It was
noticed that he received all the new theories with eager
but discriminating hospitality. Instead of rejecting, it
was said, the remarkable revelations of the microscope
and chemistry, when applied to biological studies, he accepted
them in a spirit of wise enthusiasm. The antiseptic
treatment of Lister found in him an earnest advocate
before its merits had been generally recognized.
He was then seventy years of age, a period of life not
always friendly to innovation in any province of human
affairs. But it was in preventive medicine that his principal
achievement lay. The great movement on this line
which has accomplished so much, began just about the
time that he was chosen a member of the University Faculty.
Its inauguration enlisted his interest at once.
His name is found in the small list of the earliest members
of the American Public Health Association, the first
organized effort to introduce a reform in the laws relating
to hygiene; he became the President of this body in
1879; and as chairman of its committee on legislation,
was chiefly instrumental in drafting the measures which
culminated in the establishment of the National Board of
Health, of which he was appointed the first executive.
He took the foremost part in the work of that Board, especially
as directed to the suppression of yellow fever
in the Southern States by revolutionizing the methods of

quarantine; and it was admitted by his colleagues that it
was due, in large degree, to his peculiar qualifications for
the post that so much success was won.

Of Cabell, it was said that he had the courage of a
lion, tempered with the tenderness of a woman. He was
a man of extraordinary personal independence of character,
and yet full of consideration for the sensibilities of
others; firm and decided in the expression of his own convictions,
yet tolerant of differences of opinion. In his
personal bearing, he showed all the finished courtesy of
the old school, made more impressive by his natural air of
distinction; but nevertheless, when occasion arose, no one
could give sharper tongue to disapproval.

"One winter's morning," says Dr. John C. Wise,
"when Cabell's class in surgery awaited him, scanning
and noting the neat clear syllabus of the coming lecture,
it grew weary, and some impatient spirit going outside,
gathered a huge mass of snow, and returning with it,
inaugurated a ball contest, that soon waxed fast and furious.
Window lights were broken in plenty; the syllabus
was hit; and long irregular lines coursed down the
board. All was riot and confusion, when, in a moment,
the forgotten majestic Cabell was on the platform. He
arranged his notes on his lectern, took from his pocket an
immaculate kerchief, glanced about him and seemed to
shiver; he then saw the wrecked glass, the disordered
floor, and alas, his ruined syllabus. In a moment, it was
all clear to him; his wrath swept him as a typhoon lashes
the China Sea, yet he controlled it, and in a voice of suppressed
emotion he flayed us! 'For boys, yes; but for
men engaged in the serious and dignified study of medicine
to engage at such a time and in such a place in sport
destroying the property of a school afflicted with the
direst poverty, such conduct is incomprehensible and unmanly!"

Needless to say, there was no repetition of the
offense."