Kornhauser Health Sciences Library Daniel Drake collection

Drake was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Isaac Drake and Elizabeth Shotwell. He studied under William Goforth in Cincinnati from 1800 to 1805, and received the first medical diploma west of the Allegheny Mountains. He graduated from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania and established a medical practice in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1807. He mainly worked on the field of medicine but also advocated social reforms and contributed to geology, botany, and meteorology, and medical geology. He is considered a relevant figure in the history of medicine in the United States. In 1819 he helped organize the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati which later became the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center, where he served as a President. He secured a state appropriation for its support and that of a hospital. In 1827 he founded the Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, which he continued to edit until 1848. In 1846 he, William Maclay Awl and other members of the Ohio medical profession established the Ohio State Medical Society. He was a founding member of the Commercial Hospital and Lunatic Asylum in Ohio, and a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He was connected, either as a lecturer or professor, at different times, at the University of Louisville and Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. He was Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine at Transylvania University. In 1852, he rejoined the faculty at the Medical College of Ohio but died a few days after receiving his appointment.