Transfer to Louisville
In 1839, the college in Cincinnati folded. Drake had previously accepted the chair of pathological anatomy and clinical medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute, founded in 1833, and his influence caused Gross to accept a job at this school, refusing professorships from the University of Virginia and the University of Louisiana. Gross and his family took up residence at the Louisville Hotel in 1840, and shortly thereafter he established an office and residence on the east side of Fifth Street between Green (now Liberty) and Walnut Streets. The 1847 city directory listed his office and house on the north side of Walnut Street between Third and Fourth.
Soon after his arrival, in 1841 Gross set up a dog laboratory in the basement of the college building, which was then only two years old and described "as for beauty and convenience not surpassed by any similar edifice on the continent." $30,000 had been spent on the structure and $20,000 for the purchase of books, chemical apparatus and anatomical preparations in Europe by Dr. Joshua Flint, Gross' predecessor as Professor of Surgery. Lectures at the college began the first Monday in November and lasted until March. Dissecting rooms were opened the first of October to purchasers of advance tickets. Students were also freely admitted to the wards of the Louisville Marine Hospital, in existence from 1823. Gross also entered into private practice, which he conducted at St. Joseph Hospital, opened November 20, 1836, as St. Vincent's Infirmary and housed in an eponymous orphanage on Jefferson Street. In 1853, it moved to a rented building on the west side of Fourth Street between Chestnut and Broadway.
He remained in Louisville for sixteen years, except for a year spent on the faculty of the University of the City of New York. With Drake and his colleagues, Gross helped make the Louisville Medical Institute the most important medical center in the western United States. During Gross's time there, the institution attained a reputation equal to similar ones east of the Appalachian Mountains, and at the time of Gross's hiring, his fellow professors at Louisville had all attained national if not international fame in their respective fields.
Gross's tenure in Louisville, however, was not without controversy. His predecessor, Joshua Flint, had become famous as a surgeon in New England before coming to Louisville, and in 1850 Flint accepted a position as chief of surgery in the newly organized Kentucky School of Medicine, a move which began a bitter rivalry between that institution and the Louisville Medical Institute until the two schools were merged in 1908. Gross became very popular in social circles, however. He and his family were close friends with the Crittendens, Breckenridges, Wooleys, Prestons, Wickliffes, Pirtles, Ballards, Rowans, Guthries, and Prentices. Gross had even been a guest of Henry Clay at his estate, "Ashland," in Lexington. He was a member of the Unitarian Church and the St. George Lodge of Masons. In 1854, he also became a member of the American Philosophical Society. In August 1855, Gross, a close friend of John Barbee, the Mayor of Louisville, helped save the Catholic Cathedral on Fifth Street from an anti-foreign Know-Nothing Party mob that intended to burn it down in what was known as the Bloody Monday riot.
