Background
Joseph Buchanan was born on August 24, 1785 in Washington County, Virginia, the son of Andrew and Joanna Buchanan. His boyhood, spent in Tennessee, was marked by unusual hardships, poverty, and illness.
Joseph Buchanan was born on August 24, 1785 in Washington County, Virginia, the son of Andrew and Joanna Buchanan. His boyhood, spent in Tennessee, was marked by unusual hardships, poverty, and illness.
Despite the scantiest opportunities for education, in 1804 Joseph Buchanan entered Transylvania University.
Proficiency in mathematics and critical skepticism of mere authority compensated for his rusticity and diffidence. His empiricism early led him to experiment with devices for improving mills and for producing a color symphony from glasses of different chemical composition--"the music of light, " as he called it. Putting aside these experiments without perfecting them, he began the study of medicine, and in 1807, while at Port Gibson, Mississippi, wrote a volume on fever.
He took this with him to Philadelphia, but although Dr. Benjamin Rush is said to have spoken highly of the manuscript, Buchanan was too poor to publish it, or to remain for the medical lectures in Philadelphia. Hence, in 1808, he returned by foot to Lexington, Kentucky, determined to devote himself to the medical department of Transylvania University, which had only a nominal existence.
He was appointed by the trustees as professor of the institutes of medicine, and, in his twenty-fourth year, began the preparation of a course of introductory lectures for medical students. These lectures were published as the Philosophy of Human Nature. For his emphasis on matter rather than on mind and his attempt to construct a materialistic monism he has been called "the earliest native physiological psychologist". He appears later to have modified his views by postulating the spiritualization of matter, although he did not abandon his fundamental monism.
A true pioneer, Buchanan left to others the development of the medical school and went to Philadelphia to study the Pestalozzian system of education, in order to introduce it into Kentucky. While teaching and popularizing this method he prepared A Practical Grammar of the English Language.
Educational work could no more hold his undivided attention than medicine or philosophy, however, and after studying law, he delivered a course of lectures to a private law class, and entered the field of journalism. After association with the Lexington Reporter, the Frankfort Palladium, and the Western Spy and Literary Gazette, he edited at Louisville, from 1826 till his death, the Focus.
Although this journal was rather a literary and scientific than a controversial organ, it opposed Jackson and supported Clay. Buchanan's early interest in invention continued, and in 1821-22 he constructed a spiral boiler which, because of its superior lightness and efficiency, he hoped might be applied to aerial navigation.
In 1824-25 he applied his engine, which seems to have been a prototype of the exploding tubular boiler, to a wagon, with sufficient success, apparently, to astonish "a throng of spectators" in Louisville.
His manners were simple and amiable, and his spirit, though ardent and enthusiastic, was critical. Doubtless his great and varied mental powers were dissipated by desultory labors, and by his inability to concentrate on a single task.
An admirer remembers him for "slender form, massive head, and thoughtful, intellectual face".
He was married to Nancy Rodes Garth and inculcated in their son, Joseph Rodes Buchanan, many of his own interests.