David Wendel Yandell

David Wendel Yandell, M.D.

• Professor of the Science and Practice of Medicine, 1867-1868

Son of the well-known Lunsford Pitts Yandell Sr., who was a founder of the Louisville Medical Institute, David Wendel Yandell attended Centre College in Danville and graduated with an MD from the University of Louisville in 1846.

He studied further in Europe and returned to the University of Louisville in 1850 as a demonstrator of anatomy.

During the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army and became medical director of the Department of the West.

In 1867, he took the chair of the science and practice of medicine at the University of Louisville and, in 1869, the chair of clinical surgery.

In 1866, he and Theophilus Parvin founded The American Practitioner which became The American Practitioner and News in 1870. Yandell was editor-in-chief until his death.

Apart from his writing, he was best known as an artistic surgeon and an excellent teacher of clinical surgery. He was president of the American Medical Association and the American Surgical Association.

- Written by Daryll Anderson