Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/350

NAME DOWNER 328 DRAKE the retreating British, he "came to single com- bat" with a British soldier, according to Major General Health. (Memoirs, p. 14.) The sol- dier accosted him with, "you damned rebel," do you dare face?" He did dare, and as they approached each other, both fired and missed. A hand to hand conflict ensued. The soldier's gun being longer, and his acquaintance with the bayonet exercise being greater, it was go- ing hard with the doctor, when he bethought himself of reversing his musket. Stepping back a few paces he felled his antagonist by a blow on the head, the gun breaking in his hands. Then he finished him by running him through with his own bayonet. That night as the doc- tor related his experiences of the day, he re- marked, "It was not ten minutes before I got another shot." In December, 1775, Downer was surgeon to one of the regiments under Gen. Putnam at Charlestown while the militia were fortifying Lechmere Point. Soon after the evacuation of Boston by the British, he enlisted as surgeon to one of the first privateers fitted out in New England. It is said that he worked one of the guns on board the sloop Yankee when two sloops, loaded with rum and sugar, were captured. Later he was on board the Al- liance when she was captured at sea after fighting seven and a half hours and losing both her masts. He was severely wounded by grape-shot, receiving a compound fracture of the left arm, and was thrown into Portsea Prison near Portsmouth, England. He made his escape by tunneling and succeeded in reach- ing France. On two other occasions he was cap- tured by the British and was imprisoned in Dartmoor and Forten prisons but managed to effect his escape. His family, a wife and four children, had a hard time to get the means of existence during the three years he was away from home, for all this time, it is said, his wife received but one letter from him. On July 9, 1779, Downer was commissioned chief surgeon to the Penobscot expedition, with which he served three months, losing all his surgical in- struments, so the Massachusetts Legislature appropriated the sum of fifteen dollars to re- imburse him. This was the last of his services on sea or land in the cause for freedom. At the close of the Revolutionary War he resumed practice in Brookline, and was said to have had a large and lucrative following. He died in Brookline, April 4, 1806. Walter L. Burrace. Memoirs of Major-general Heath, Boston, 1798. The Downers of America, David R. Downer, Newark. 1900. Medical Men of the Revolution, J. M. Toner, Phila., 1876. Drake, Daniel (1785-1852). In a letter dated Louisville, Ky., December 15, 1847, Daniel Drake says: "My father, Isaac, was the youngest son of Nathaniel Drake and Dorothy Retna ; my mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Benjamin Shotwell and Elizabeth Bonney," and that is all he knew of his an- cestry. He himself was born in Essex County, New Jersey, on October 20, 1785. When he was two and a half, his father moved to May's Lick, Kentucky. Here he lived in a log cabin until fifteen years old, attending school from November until March of each winter. Of the ■ classics he knew nothing until he began to study medicine. In the fall of 1800 he went to Cincinnati and began to study under Dr. Goforth (q. v-). At that time a student was required not only to read his preceptor's books, but to fill prescrip- tions and attend the consulting-room, generally a diminutive drug store. Dr. Drake's first tasks were to read Quincy's "Dispensatory" and grind mercury for mercurial ointment. The latter, he said, was much the easier of the two. At the end of four years he re- ceived an autograph diploma from Goforth, signed as "Surgeon-general, First Division, Ohio Militia." It was the first diploma ever granted in the west, and Dr. Drake prized it above all others as an old-time memorial. In the autumn of 1805 he went to Philadel- phia to attend University lectures and in the following spring returned to Cincinnati, making the journey on horseback in about thirty days. The year 1806 was spent in Kentucky, and on the twenty-first of December, 1807, he mar- ried Harriet Sisson, granddaughter of Col. " Jared Mansfield, surveyor-general of the north- west territory. In September, 1809, they lost their first child, Harriet, and in 1816, a second, John Mans- field, born in 1813. Three more children were born, Charles D., Elizabeth M., and Harriet E. Mrs. Drake died September 30, 1825. Dr. Drake attended his second course of lectures in the University of Pennsylvania in 1815, graduating in 1816, and in 1817 held the chair of materia medica in Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. After the first session he returned to Cincinnati and in 1818 planned a college, medical school and hospital, and in 1819 visited Columbus, Ohio, to lay his plans before the Legislature. They were adopted at once, and charters granted for the Cincinnati College, for the Medical College of Ohio, and for the Commercial Hos- pital. By contract with the Secretary of the