Some Letters of Edmund Randolph Peaslee B.A., Dartmouth 1836, M.D., Yale 1840

The letters which are transcribed in part in this paper were written by Edmund Randolph Peaslee to Amasa Farrington Kinne in 1838-39-40. Through the kindness of Mrs. Charles J. Bartlett, of New Haven, they have been added recently to the collection of Yale Medical Memorabilia of the Yale Medical Library. The letters are important, not only as the correspondence of a medical student written during an interesting period in medical education, but also as a record of the early experience of a significant figure in the medical history of this country. The pattern of medical education in that day, at least in New England, appears to have been a happy combination of the apprentice and school systems, as will be seen in the advice of Dr. Dixi Crosby, "the very 'best course for a medical student is, to devote the whole of the 1st year to study at some place where he can have opportunity to dissect; the second in riding with a good practicing physician; and the third to lectures exclusively, and hospital practice." Peaslee's experience at the Yale School of Medicine also enriches his correspondence, for it occurred during a period of the school's ascendency to an important place among medical institutions in America. Under its original faculty the school had flourished almost from the start, the attendance of students showing a healthy increase from year to year. In 1824, following the death of Nathan Smith, his chair, which was not very dissimilar from the "settee" which he had previously occupied at Dartmouth, was divided into three parts. Eli Ives took Theory and Practice of Medicine; Thomas Hubbard, Principles and Practice of Surgery; and Timothy Beers, Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. William Tully was chosen to the chair vacated by Ives and its title changed to Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Medical classes also attended lectures on chemistry by Benjamin Silliman, along with college students, and Silliman also gave the medical students a separate course. When Hubbard died in 1838, Jonathan Knight was transferred to the chair of surgery. For the first 45 years of its existence the school was housed in a