History, character, and prospects: Daniel Drake and the life of the mind in the Ohio Valley, 1785-1852

This study attempts to contextualize the career of Daniel Drake (1785-1852), a physician, teacher, and institution-builder in the Ohio Valley, within the broader intellectual, social, and political trends of the region and of the Republic. Drake represented not only a newly emerging professional class, but also an articulate and empowered urban generation that sought to identify and to promote the interests of the West within the expanding market economy of the time. The regional identity that Drake propounded embraced the history, character, and future prospects of the West and its inhabitants. As the sectional crisis of the Union increased in the 1830's, Drake sought to avert a conflict by appealing to the example and the strength of the West in public utterances and in an attempt to foster a rail link between Charleston, South Carolina and Cincinnati.;Influenced by the high culture of Philadelphia, where he attended medical school, Drake also sought until his death to create a western capital of the arts and sciences in Cincinnati through the creation and maintenance of a medical school and affiliated teaching hospital. His vision of medical education united increasing scientific knowledge with a heightened sense of corporate and professional identity that paralleled his sense of regional identity.