George Wood Bayless, M.D. (1816-1873)

Ninth Dean 1865-1866

M.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1839

Dr. Bayless, a native of Washington, KY, attended Augusta College and in 1837 joined the first class of students at the Louisville Medical Institute, but graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine in 1839.  On returning to Louisville he studied under Daniel Drake, M.D. and soon became the Demonstrator of Anatomy.  He went to the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati as Professor of Anatomy, but returned to Louisville with an appointment as Professor of Physiology in 1857.  Though he was best known as an anatomist, he studied under Gross and Palmer and in 1865 was named Professor of Surgery.

He was interim Dean, from 1863-1865, during the Civil War imprisonment of Dean Joseph W. Benson.  In 1865, he began serving as the ninth Dean.

As was common in the United States at the time, legal restrictions interfered with needed cadavers for the medical school.  Bayless met these needs, as did most anatomists of his era, as a resurrections.

Bayless was considered a physician of high integrity and character.  His scientific attainments were widely known.  His premature death at age 57 was recognized with sorrow by hundreds of friends and pupils.