Medical School of Georgetown University, and in 1886 was given the chair of pathology. In 1889 the laboratory work and lectures on histology were given in charge of Dr. Blackburn, together with the chair of pathology. In 1898, owing to increased work, the chair was divided, and Dr. Blackburn was elected professor of morbid anatomy and special pathology, a position he occupied at the time of his death. In 1906 he was given the chair of morbid anatomy in the Medical Department of the George Washington University, of Washington, D. C.
Dr. Blackburn was a member of the American Medico-Psychological Association; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Philadelphia Pathological Society; and other medical and scientific societies.
A list of Dr. Blackburn's publications includes "Intracranial Tumors Among the Insane, 1902, Govt. Print. Office, 95 pp." and "Gross Morbid Anatomy of the Brain, 1908. Govt. Print. Office, 156 pp." Although the list comprises twenty-two captions, in which are included three books, it gives but a very faint idea of the amount of work and the activity displayed by the author during his life. At the time of his death he had performed considerably over two thousand autopsies, each one of which had been recorded with scrupulous care, and furnished material always valuable for reference. He had accumulated an immense amount of this material, a great deal of which he had studied over and had made extensive notes on, so that it might have been published had he lived. In this position, however, the Doctor was so modest and retiring that a great deal of his most excellent work never saw the press for that very reason.
Although Dr. Blackburn specialized in the gross pathology of the brain, he was unusually well-grounded in general pathology. He died June 18, 1911, in the Government Hospital for the Insane, which he had served so long, of pancreatic disease, his health having been undermined by a severe autopsy wound received sometime previously.
Blackburn, Luke Pryor (1816–1887)
A surgeon during the Civil War, Luke P. Blackburn was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, June 16, 1816, and graduated from Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentcuky, in 1834, the following year beginning practice in that city, but on the outbreak of cholera in Versailles he offered his services gratuitously to the sufferers and afterwards made that place his home.
In 1846 he removed to Natchez, Mississippi, which he effectually quarantined against the yellow-fever epidemic which occurred in New Orleans in 1848, and at his own expense built a hospital for the marines who were suffering from the fever, an act that aroused Congress to establish ten similar institutions. In 1854 he again protected Natchez from yellow fever by rigid quarantine. He visited the hospitals of England, Scotland, France and Germany in 1857, and on his return resumed practice in New Orleans.
He was made surgeon on the staff of the Confederate general, Sterling Price, at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was commissioned by the governor of Mississippi to proceed to Canada to superintend the furnishing of supplies by blockade runners, and in 1864, at the request of the governor-general of Canada, he visited the Bermuda Islands to look after the suffering citizens and soldeirs. In 1867 he returned to the United States and became a planter in Arkansas, later, in 1873, returning to Kentucky and resuming practice in Louisville, doing good service in the epidemics of 1875 and 1878 as an organizer of physicians and nurses. In 1879 he was elected governor of Kentucky.
Prior to his election as governor, the penitentiary became crowded to double its capacity. This he promised to relieve if elected and this he did by pardoning the lesser criminals until the number was reduced in keeping with the capacity of the penitentiary, a practice that forced his state to build another prison to accommodate its criminals.
His first wife was Ella Guest Boswell, by whom he had one son, Cary Blackburn, who afterwards became a practitioner in Louisville. His second wife was Julia M. Churchill, whom he married in 1857.
He died September 14, 1887.
Blackford, Benjamin (1834–1905)
Benjamin Blackford, army surgeon, the son of Dr. Thomas T. Blackford, of Luray and, later, of Lynchburg, Virginia, was born in Shenandoah County on September 8, 1834. His father removing to Lynchburg while he was a youth, he attended a private school in that town conducted by his uncle, William M. Blackford, then editor of the Lynchburg Virginian. Afterwards he obtained a clerkship in the post-office, and by hard work and close economy, saved enough
