Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, featured in the portrait below, was built-in in Lexington, Kentucky in 1805 and he received a medical degree from Transylvania Academy in 1825. Prior to moving to St. Louis in 1839 with the intention of founding his own medical school, McDowell served equally an anatomy professor at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and at the Medical Department of Cincinnati in Ohio.

Portrait of Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell

McDowell arrived in St. Louis with a reputation. He was a vivid anatomist, an enthusiastic teacher, and an entertaining public speaker. According to his students, he was very boisterous, opinionated, and feisty. He was as well notorious for having a persistent fiery temper. He was the kind of person who fabricated enemies hands, and he would regularly ridicule his adversaries in open messages he published in newspapers.

As recounted in James Wilson's biography of McDowell that was published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Guild (Volume 68, Outcome four, Oct 1970, pages 341-369), he stirred up trouble in St. Louis soon after his arrival when he learned that St. Louis University was planning to begin their own medical schoolhouse. McDowell was jealous and paranoid in nature, and he feared the formation of another medical schoolhouse would be detrimental to his own thousand plans. He delivered numerous inflammatory public speeches against Catholics and the Jesuits at St. Louis University in particular.

Drawing of Dr. McDowell's Medical College, a branch of Kemper College

McDowell joined the faculty of Kemper College (featured in the above drawing) in 1840, an Episcopalian schoolhouse that had opened in St. Louis in 1837, just three years before his tenure began. McDowell adult a medical school curriculum and began offering classes in the summer of 1840, which made the Medical Department at Kemper College the showtime medical schoolhouse in operation west of the Mississippi River. Yet, Kemper College struggled financially, and it went bankrupt five years later.

Nonetheless, McDowell strategically overcame this setback. Without whatsoever intermission to class education, he could realign his medical school with the University of Missouri in 1845, just months after Kemper College went bankrupt. Shortly thereafter, and largely at his own financial expense, McDowell began constructing a massive new building in downtown St. Louis to house his very own medical schoolhouse, which is featured in the drawing below.

Drawing of Missouri Medical College, St. Louis Missouri

McDowell's new building was utilized by University of Missouri medical students showtime in 1850. However, he formally severed ties with the university in 1857 to privatize his medical school under the new name of Missouri Medical College. McDowell'southward school included 1 of the largest anatomical museums in the country and one of the largest museums of natural history, both of which he curated himself.

Strangely, the new medical school also featured a massive drove of Revolutionary State of war-era weapons. As Estelle Brodman recounts in the article titled, "The Great Eccentric" (Washington University Mag, Book 51, Issue i, Pages 6-11), this armory included 1,400 muskets and 4 cannons he purchased for an expedition he had been organizing since he was a teenager. McDowell planned to lead a private ground forces to the Pacific coast to seize country in northern California. Despite years of hoarding gunpowder and enlisting his students to help continue his armory regularly maintained so he could one twenty-four hours gear up out on his journey to California, he never embarked on what would have been a strange only monumental expedition.

Dr. Outten (left) and Missouri Medical College and Christian Brothers College (right)

W.B. Outten'south account beneath of McDowell (taken from the Medical Fortnightly, Volume 33, Consequence half dozen, March 1906, pages 143-146) is peculiarly captivating. It demonstrates the kind of legendary reputation McDowell maintained throughout his lifetime. Dr. Outten, who is featured in the photograph above [LEFT] and who would subsequently go a prominent St. Louis physician himself, showtime met McDowell in 1859 when he was a teenage student at the Christian Brothers' Academy. At the time, the university was located next door to McDowell's schoolhouse in downtown St. Louis, as depicted in the drawing above [Right]. Outten claimed,

"We students looked upon Dr. McDowell as a dangerous and evil homo, and nosotros had been brought to believe that the dr. was in league in some mode with his Virtually Satanic Majesty, and if close search would be made nearly his premises there could have been found a direct passageway betwixt Dr. McDowell and the nether region of Hades."

The reason Dr. Outten recounted feeling so uneasy around McDowell, as did many other St. Louisans, was that McDowell was widely rumored to be a resurrectionist who frequently removed corpses from local cemeteries. At the time, there were very few legal means to procure cadavers for instructional purposes at his medical school, so he allegedly resorted to stealing them.

McDowell's connection to alleged nefarious activities in the urban center'due south cemeteries was not a well-kept secret. His school was regularly searched past family members who had discovered a loved ane's tomb was empty. On occasion, McDowell would personally give a tour of his school to these families to pacify their suspicions that he had stolen their relatives' bodies for dissection.

As Robert Schlueter details in his biography of McDowell in the Washington University Medical Alumni Quarterly (Volume 1, Issue 1, Oct 1937, pages 4-xiv), on more than one occasion, angry mobs forced their mode into the school in an attempt to catch McDowell crimson-handed when he was suspected of stealing a torso. Fearing for his life, he resorted to hiding within the schoolhouse in creative means to avert these mobs. On one occasion, he hid in a chimney. On some other occasion, he laid on a dissection tabular array and covered himself with a sheet to avoid detection.

December. 29, 1875 issue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat

While McDowell was never convicted of grave-robbing, one of his employees was caught in the deed of pilfering cemeteries – iii times! As described in the Dec. 29, 1875 consequence of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (page 4) featured above, Ernest Doepke, who McDowell paid to "manage his mortuary", was caught with a torso in his wagon that police identified as Gerhard Doll. Upon further investigation of Pickers Cemetery, where Mr. Doll had been interred the day before, more bodies were discovered missing. The World-Democrat journalists assailed Doepke for his lack of respect for the dead and criticized those medical schools (as far away as Indianapolis) that purchased these bodies from him since they were obtained in such a disgraceful manner.

Conversely, McDowell was far more conscientious with the bodies of his own deceased loved ones. When his teenaged-girl passed away unexpectedly, he created a custom tube-shaped coffin lined with copper. After placing her body in the cylindrical-shaped bury, he so filled the copper tube with alcohol and sealed it shut. Her coffin was so deposited in a vault on the grounds of his medical school for safekeeping, but it was later moved to a cave he purchased near Hannibal, Missouri.

As recounted by K. Patrick Ober in "The Body in the Cave" (Mark Twain Periodical, Volume 41, Issue ii, Fall 2003), a rumor that children had been secretly entering the cave, which is now known as Marking Twain Cave, and daring each other to open the copper tube to view the body would later serve as the inspiration for the grave robbing story in Twain's classic Tom Sawyer novel. Norman Rockwell illustrated this famous scene with Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher (beneath) in 1936.

Several additional copper tubes were crafted for McDowell's other family members. As Luke Ritter recounts in his slice titled, "Beefcake, Grave-Robbing, and Spiritualism in Antebellum St. Louis" (The Confluence, Leap/Summer 2012, pages 34-46), McDowell felt normal burying customs smothered the soul afterward ane'due south demise. Upon the death of his first wife, Amanda Drake McDowell, an alcohol-filled copper coffin was created to house her body, which was laid to rest inside one of the Cahokia Indian Mounds in Illinois. With the aid of a rudimentary telescope, McDowell could view her burying mound across the Mississippi River from the top of his medical schoolhouse. McDowell insisted that his body should be placed inside i of these custom copper tubes when he died too, and he had evidently made arrangements in advance to accept his coffin interred in Kentucky'south Mammoth Cave. Ultimately, these plans for his own body never came to fruition.

In his starting time address to his Missouri Medical College students in 1861, McDowell informed everyone he would be taking a sabbatical every bit Dean of the schoolhouse to offer his services to the Confederate Army. The school airtight before long later the outset of the Civil State of war, and McDowell fled the city to serve equally a medico in the confederate army. He was eventually promoted to Surgeon General of the Amalgamated Army of the West during the war.

As described in an earlier web log post, the Marriage Army used his school as a armed services prison for the duration of the war. When the fighting ceased in 1865, he was granted a pardon for his service with the confederate regular army past President Andrew Johnson. This pardon, which McDowell describes in the letter of the alphabet beneath [LEFT], immune him to return to St. Louis to resume his position equally Dean of the Missouri Medical College. Also featured below [RIGHT] is the announcement for the medical school's reopening after its suspension during the war.

Letter from J. N. McDowell, describing McDowell'southward pardon as a confederate (left) and Missouri Medical College Annunciation for the reopening (right)

In 1868, McDowell died suddenly at the age of 63, but his schoolhouse continued to operate for 31 years later on his decease earlier information technology was absorbed into Washington University's medical section in 1899. Despite his many eccentricities and off-putting temperament, McDowell was fondly remembered by his students as a remarkable teacher. He was revered by the medical community in St. Louis, and beyond, for many decades after his decease. In fact, members of the St. Louis Medical Club purchased a new gravestone in 1942 and held a special anniversary in Bellefontaine Cemetery to honor McDowell's retentiveness. A photograph of this occasion is below.

McDowell grave, 1942

There was an unexpected resurgence of curiosity into the life of McDowell in 2012 after the release of the cult motion picture Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, where he made an appearance as a blood supplier. Viewers were surprised to learn that the outlandish character in the movie was based on a existent person. For having such a fascinating life, the fable of Joseph Nash McDowell is probable to persist well into the 21st Century.