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AEQUANIMITAS

With other Addresses to Medical
Students, Nurses and Prac-
titioners of Medicine

By
WILLIAM CSLER, " ' D., F.R.S

Professor of fai,in •;,..<, Johns Hopkins Lni'versiry^ Baltimore

JT JilAK.ISToN'^ SON a CO

PHILADELPHIA
1905

•t '

To
DANIEL C. OILMAN,

EX-PBESIDENT OP THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.

DEAR DB. OILMAN,

Please accept the dedication of this volume of addresses,
in memory of those happy days in 1889 when, under your guidance,
the Johns Hopkins Hospital was organized and opened ; and in
grateful recognition of your active and intelligent interest in medical
education.

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM OSLEE.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

1. AEQUANIMTTAS 1

II DOCTOR AND NTJBSE . . . . . .13

III TEACHER AND STUDENT 21

IV PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS AS DEPICTED IN PLATO . . 45
V THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE 77

VI THE ARMY SURGEON 103

VII TEACHING AND THINKING 121

VIII INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A VOCATION . . . .137

IX NURSE AND PATIENT 153

X BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN . . . 167

XI AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 197

XII BOOKS AND MEN 217

XIII MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . . . 227

XIV CHAUVINISM IN MEDICINE 277

XV SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY . 307

XVI THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE 327

XVII ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY 343

XVITI THE MASTER- WORT-- IN MEDICINE . . . .363

vii

AEQUANIMITAS

Thou must be like a promontory of the sea, against which, though
the waves beat continually, yet it both itself stands, and about it
are those swelling waves stilled and quieted.

MARCUS AUEELIUS.

I say : Fear not ! Life still
Leaves human effort scope.
But, since life teems with ill,
Nurse no extravagant hope ;
Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then despair f

MATTHEW ARNOLD, Empedodes on Etna.

I

AEQUANIMITAS1

TO many the frost of custom has made even these im-
posing annual ceremonies cold and lifeless. To you,
at least of those present, they should have the solemnity of
an ordinance — called as you are this day to a high dignity
and to so weighty an office and charge. You have chosen
your Genius, have passed beneath the Throne of Necessity,
and with the voices of the fatal sisters still in your ears,
will soon enter the plain of Forgett'ulness and drink of the
waters of its river. Ere you are driven all manner of
ways, like the souls in the tale of Er the Pamphylian,2 it is
.my duty to say a few words of encouragement and to bid
you, in the name of the Faculty, God-speed on your journey.

I could have the heart to spare you, poor, careworn
survivors of a hard struggle, so " lean and pale and leaden-
eye " with study ; " and my tender mercy constrains me
to consider but two of the score of elements which may
make or mar your lives — which may contribute to your
success, or help you in the days of failure.

In the first place, in the physician or surgeon no quality
tv,kes rank with imperturbability, and I propose for a few
mmu*?* to direct your attention to this essential bodily
virtue. Perhaps I may be able to give those of you, in

1 Valedictory Address, University of Pennsylvania, May 1, 1889

2 The Republic, Book.X.

3

AEQUANIMITAS

whom it has not developed during the critical scenes oi the
past month, a hint or two of its importance, possibly a
suggestion for its attainment. Imperturbability means
coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances,
calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments
of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness, or, to use an old
and expressive word, phlegm. It is the quality which is
* most appreciated by the laity though often misunderstood
by them ; and the physician who has the misfortune to be
without it, who betrays indecision and worry, and who
shows that he is flustered and flurried in ordinary emer-
gencies, loses rapidly the confidence of his patients.

In full development, as we see it in some of our older
colleagues, it has the nature of a divine gift, a blessing to
the possessor, a comfort to all who come in contact with
him. You should know it well, for there have been before
you for years several striking illustrations, whose example
has, I trust, made a deep impression. As imperturbability
is largely a bodily endowment, I regret to say that there
are those amongst you, who, owing to congenital defects,
may never be able to acquire it. Education, however,
will do much ; and with practice and experience the
majority of you may expect to attain to a fair measure.
The first essential is to have your nerves well in hand.
Even under the most serious circumstances, the physician
or surgeon who allows " his outward action to demon-
strate the native act and figure of his heart in complement
extern," who shows in his face the slightest alteration,
expressive of anxiety or fear, has not his medullary centres
under the highest control, and is liable to disaster at any
moment. I have spoken of this to yc,Y on ova-iy occasions,

4

AEQUANIMITAS

and have urged you to educate your nerve centres so that
not the slightest dilator or contractor influence shall pass to
the vessels of your face under any professional trial. Far
be it from me to urge you, ere Time has carved with his
hours those fair brows, to quench on all occasions the
blushes of ingenuous shame, but in dealing with your
patients emergencies demanding these should certainly
not arise, and at other times an inscrutable face may prove
a fortune. In a true and perfect form, imperturbability
is indissolubly associated with wide experience and an
intimate knowledge of the varied aspects of disease. With
such advantages he is so equipped that no eventuality
can disturb the mental equilibrium of the physician ; the
possibilities are always manifest, and the course of action
clear. From its very nature this precious quality is liable to
be misinterpreted, and the general accusation of hardness,
so often brought against the profession, has here its founda-
tion. Now a certain measure of insensibility is not only
an advantage, but a positive necessity in the exercise of a
calm judgment, and in carrying out delicate operations.
Keen sensibility is doubtless a virtue of high order, when
it does not interfere with steadiness of hand or coolness of
nerve ; but for the practitioner in his working-day world,
a callousness which thinks only of the good to be effected,
and goes ahead regardless of smaller considerations, is the
preferable quality.

Cultivate, then, gentlemen, such a judicious measure
of obfcuseness as will enable you to meet the exigencies of
practice with firmness and courage, without, at the same
time, hardening " the human heart by which we live."

In the second place, there is a mental equivalent to this

5

AEQUANIMITAS

bodily endowment, which is as important in our pilgrimage
as imperturbability. Let me recall to your minds an
incident related of that best of men and wisest of rulers,
Antoninus Pius, who, as he lay dying, in his home at Lorium
in Struria, summed up the philosophy of life in the watch-
word, Aequanimitas. As for him, about to pass flammantia
moenia mundi (the flaming rampart of the world), so foi
you, fresh from Clotho's spindle, a calm equanimity is the
desirable attitude. How difficult to attain, yet Low
necessary, in success as in failure ! Natural tempera-
ment has much to do with its development, but a clear
knowledge of our relation to our fellow-creatures and tc
the work of life is also indispensable. One of the firsi
essentials in securing a good-natured equanimity is not t<
expect too much of the people amongst whom you dwell.
" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers," and in matters
medical the ordinary citizen of to-day has not one whi
more sense than the old Romans, whom Lucian scourgec
for a credulity which made them fall easy victims to tLe
quacks of the time, such as the notorious Alexander, wlios<
exploits make one wish that his advent had been del a yet
some eighteen centuries. Deal gently then with clii^ le
liciously credulous old human nature in which we y.ik
and restrain your indignation, when you find your pe
parson has triturates of the 1000th potentiality ii hi
waistcoat pocket, or you discover accidentally a ca ^ o
Warner's Safe Cure in the bedroom of your best pa tie, c
It must needs be that offences of this kind come ; k -q>'
them, and do not be vexed.

Curious, odd compounds are these fellow-creature, a
whose mercy you will be; full of fa Is aad occenlii;iiie£

6

AEQUANIMITAS

of whims and fancies ; but the more closely we study their
little foibles of one sort and another in the inner life which
we see, the more surely is the conviction borne in upon us
of the likeness of their weaknesses to our own. The simi-
larity would be intolerable, if a happy egotism did not often
render us forgetful of it. Hence the need of an infinite
patience and of an ever-tender charity toward these fellow-
creatures ; have they not to exercise the same toward us ?
A distressing feature in the life which you are about to
enter, a feature which will press hardly upon the finer
spirits among you and ruffle their equanimity, is the un-
certainty which pertains not alone to our science and art,
but to the very hopes and fears which make us men. In
seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable, and
must be content with finding broken portions. You re-
member in the Egyptian story, how Typhon with his con-
spirators dealt with good Osiris ; how they took the virgin
Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and
scattered them to the four winds ; and, as Milton says,
" from that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such
as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis
made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down
gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them.
We have not yet found them all," * but each one of us may
pick up a fragment, perhaps two, and in moments when
mortality weighs less heavily upon the spirit, we can, as
in a vision, see the form divine, just as a great Naturalist,
A i Owen or a Leidy, can reconstruct an ideal creature
Irom a fossil fragment.

AEQUANIMITAS

It has been said that in prosperity OUT equanimity is
chiefly exercised in enabling us to bear with composure
the misfortunes of our neighbours. Now, while nothing
disturbs our mental placidity more sadly than straightened
means, and the lack of those things after which the Gentiles
seek, I would warn you against the trials of 'the day soon
to come to some of you — the day of large and successful
practice. Engrossed late and soon in professional cares,
getting and spending, you may so lay waste your powers
that you may find, too late, with hearts given away, that
there is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those
gentler influences which make life worth living.

It is sad to think that, for some of you, there is in store
disappointment, perhaps failure. You cannot hope, of
course, to escape from the cares and anxieties incident to
professional life. Stand up bravely, even against the
worst. Your very hopes may have passed on out of sight,
as did all that was near and dear to the Patriarch at the
Jabbok ford, and, like him, you may be left to struggle
in the night alone. Well for you, if you wrestle on, for in
persistency lies victory, and with the morning may come
the wished-for blessing. But not always ; there is a struggle
with defeat which some of you will have to bear, and it
will be well for you in that day to have cultivated a cheer-
ful equanimity. Remember, too, that sometimes " from
our desolation only does the better life begin." Even with
disaster ahead and ruin imminent, it is better to face them'
with a smile, and with the head erect, than to crouch a
their approach. And, if the fight is for principle an
justice, even when failure seems certain, where many have
failed before, cling to your ideal, and, like Childe Roland

8

AEQUANIMITAS

before the dark tower, set the slug-horn to your lips,
blow the challenge, and calmly await the conflict.

It has been said that " in patience ye shall win your
souls," and what is this patience but an equanimity which
enables you to rise superior to the trials of life ? Sowing
as you shall do beside all waters, I can but wish that you
may reap the promised blessing of quietness and of assur-
ance forever, until

Within this life,

Though lifted o'er its strife;

you may, in the growing winters, glean a little of that
wisdom which is pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and
good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

The past is always with us, never to be escaped ; it
alone is enduring ; but, amidst the changes and chances
which succeed one another so rapidly in this life, we are
apt to live too much for the present and too much in the
future. On such an occasion as the present, when the
Alma Mater is in festal array, when we joy in her growing
prosperity, it is good to hark back to the olden days and
gratefully to recall the men whose labours in the past
have made the present possible.

The great possession of any University is its great names.
It is not the " pride, pomp and circumstance " of an insti-
tution which bring honour, not its wealth, nor the number
of its* schools, not the students who throng its halls, but
the mew who have trodden in its service the thorny road
through toil, even through hate, to the serene abode of
Fame, climbing "like stars to their appointed height."
These bring glory, and it should thrill the heart of every
alumnus of this school, of every teacher in its faculty,

AEQUANIMITAS

as it does mine this day, reverently and thankfully to
recall such names amongst its founders as Morgan, Shippen,
and Rush, and such men amongst their successors as
Wistar, Physick, Barton, and Wood.

Gentlemen of the Faculty— Noblesse oblige.

And the sad reality of the past teaches us to-day in the
freshness of sorrow at the loss of friends and colleagues,
" hid in death's dateless night." We miss from our midst
one of your best known instructors, by whose lessons you
have profited, and whose example has stimulated many.
An earnest teacher, a faithful worker, a loyal son of this
University, a good and kindly friend, Edward Bruen
has left behind him, amid regrets at a career untimely
closed, the memory of a well-spent life.

We mourn to-day, also, with our sister college, the
grievous loss which she has sustained in the death of one
of her most distinguished teachers, a man who bore with
honour an honoured name, and who added lustre to the
profession of this city. Such men as Samuel W. Gross
can ill be spared. Let us be thankful for the example
of a courage which could fight and win ; and let us emulate
the zeal, energy, and industry which characterized bin
career.

Personally I mourn the loss of a preceptor, dear to me/
as a father, the man from whom more than any other I
received inspiration, and to whose example and precept
I owe the position which enables me to address you to-
day. There are those present who will feel it no exag-
geration when I say that to have known Palmer Hov. ar i
was, in the deepest and truest sense of the piirase, a liberal
education —

10

AEQUANIMITAS

Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being working in mine own;

The footsteps of his life in mine.

While preaching to you a doctrine of equanimity, I am,
myself, a castaway. Recking not my own rede, I illustrate
the inconsistency which so readily besets us. One might
have thought that in the premier school of America, in
this Civitas Hippocratica, with associations so dear to a
lover of his profession, with colleagues so distinguished,
and with students so considerate, one might have thought,
I say, that the Hercules Pillars of a man's ambition had
here been reached. But it has not been so ordained, and
to-day I sever my connexion with this University. More
than once, gentlemen, in a life rich in the priceless blessings
of friends, I have been placed in positions in which no
words could express the feelings of my heart, and so it is
with me now. The keenest sentiments of gratitude well
up from my innermost being at the thought of the kind-
liness and goodness which have followed me at every step
during the past five years. A stranger — I cannot say an
alien — among you, I have been made to feel at home —
more you could not have done. Could I say more ?
Whatever the future may have in store of success or of
trials, nothing can blot the memory of the happy days
I have spent in this city, and nothing can quench the pride
I shall always feel at having been associated, even for a
time, with a Faculty so notable in the past, so distinguished
in the present, as that from which I now part.

Gentlemen, — Farewell, and take with you into the struggle
the watchword of the good old Roman— Aeguanimitas.

11 *

II
DOCTOR AND NURSE

13

There are men and classes of men that stand above the common
herd : the soldier, the sailor, and the shepherd not infrequently ;
the artist rarely ; rarelier still, the clergyman ; the physician almost
as a rule. He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization ; and
when that stage of man is done with, and only to be marvelled
at in history, he will be thought to have shared as little as any in
the defects of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtues
of the race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who
practise an art, never to those who drive a trade ; discretion, tested
by a hundred secrets ; tact, tried hi a thousand embarrassments ;
and what are more important, Heraclean cheerfulness and courage.
So that he brings air and cheer into the sick room, and often enough,
though not so often as he wishes, brings healing.

ROBEET Loms STEVENSON, Preface to Underwoods.

Think not Silence the wisdom of Fools, but, if rightly tinu.xl
the honour of wise Men, who have not the Infirmity, but the Virnu
of Taciturnity, and speak not out of the abundance, but the well
weighed thoughts of their Hearts. Such Silence may be Elot^ ; ncc
and speak thy worth above tho power rf Words.

SIB THOMAS BUOW:JE.

14

II

DOCTOR AND NURSE1

S are individuals — doctors and nurses, for ex-
ample—whose very existence is a constant reminder
ir frailties ; and considering the notoriously irritating
icter of such people, I often wonder that the world
» so gently with them; The presence of the parson
-•sts dim possibilities, not the grim realities conjured
/y the names of the persons just mentioned; the
:r never worries us— in this way, and we can imagine
e future a social condition in which neither divinity
iw shall have a place— when all shall be friends and
one a priest, when the meek shall possess the earth ;
>-e cannot picture a time when Birth and Life and
:i shall be separated from that " grizzly troop " which
oad so much and which is ever associated in our minds
" physician and nurse."

Yes, but mercifully for us in a vague and

way. Like schoolboys we play among the shadows
jy the turrets of the temple of oblivion, towards

we travel, regardless of what awaits us in the vale

-•oneath. Suffering and disease are ever before

it life is very pleasant ; and the motto oi the world,

well, is " forward with the dance." Fondly imagin-

1 Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1891.
15

DOCTOR AND NURSE

ing that we are in a happy valley, we deal with oursf
as the King did with the Gautama, and hide away e^
thing that suggests our fate. Perhaps we are wise,
knows ? Mercifully, the tragedy of life, though see-
not realized. It is so close that we lose all sense c
proportions. And better so ; for, as George Eliot
said, "if we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordy
human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow, 01
squirrel's heart beat, aind we should die of that roar \*
lies on the other side of silence."

With many, however, it is a wilful blindness, a so
fool's paradise, not destroyed by a thought, but by
stern exigencies of life, when the " ministers, pf hi
fate " drag us, or — worse still — those near and dear t
upon the stage. Then, we become acutely conscioi
the great drama of human suffering, and of those inevi
stage accessories— doctor and nurse.

If, Members of the Graduating Class, the medical
fession, composed chiefly of men, has absorbed a 1
share of attention and regard, you have, at lease
satisfaction of feeling that yours is the older, and, as (
the more honourable calling. In one oi the lost
of Solomon, a touching picture is given of Eve', the
early grandmother, bending over the little Enoch,
showing Mahala how to soothe his sufferings and to
his pains. Woman, "the link among the days," a?
trained in a bitter school, has, in success .ve genera'
played the part of Mahala to the little Enoch, of }
to the wounded Lancelot. It seems a far cry fro '
plain of Mesopotamia and the lists of Camolot to T
Hopkins Hospital, but the spirit which makes this

16

DOCTOR AND NURSE

possible is the same, tempered through the ages, by the
benign influence of Christianity. Among the ancients,
many had risen to the idea of forgiveness of enemies, of
patience under wrong doing, and even of the brotherhood
of man ; but the spirit of Love only received its incarna-
tion with the ever memorable reply to the ever memor-
able question, Who is my neighbour ? — a reply which has
changed the attitude of the world. Nowhere in ancient
history, sacred or profane, do we find pictures of devoted
heroism in women such as dot the annals of the Catholic
Church, or such as can be paralleled in our own century.
Tender maternal affection, touching filial piety were
there ; but the spirit abroad was that of Deborah not
Rizpah, of Jael not Dorcas.

In the gradual division of labour, by which civilization
has emerged from barbarism, the doctor and the nurse
have been evolved, as useful accessories in the incessant
warfare in which man is engaged. The history of the
race is a grim record of passions and ambitions, of weak-
nesses and vanities, a record, too often, of barbaric in-
humanity, and even to-day, when philosophers would
bave us believe his thoughts had widened, he is ready as
Df old to shut the gates of mercy, and to let loose the dogs
af war. It was in one of these attacks of race-mania that
your profession, until then unsettled and ill-defined,
book, under Florence Nightingale — ever blessed be her
aame — its modern position.

Individually, man, the unit, the microcosm, is fast bound
ji chains of atavism, inheriting legacies of feeble will and
strong desires, taints of blood and. brain. What wonder,
}hen, that many, sore let and hindered in running the

AE. 17 c

DOCTOR AND NURSE

race, fall by the way, and need a shelter in which to
recruit or to die, a hospital, in which there shall be no harsh
comments on conduct, but only, so far as is possible,
love and peace and rest ? Here, we learn to scan gently
our brother man, judging not, asking no questions, but
meting out to all alike a hospitality worthy of the Hotel
Dieu, and deeming ourselves honoured in being allowed
to act as its dispensers. Here, too, are daily before our
eyes the problems which have ever perplexed the human
mind ; problems not presented in the dead abstract of
books, but in the living concrete of some poor fellow in
his last round, fighting a brave fight, but sadly weighted,
and going to his account " unhousell'd, disappointed,
unanel'd, no reckoning made." As we whisper to each
other over his bed that the battle is decided and Euthanasia
alone remains, have I not heard in reply to that muttered
proverb, so often on the lips of the physician, " the fathers
have eaten sour grapes," your answer, in clear accents —
the comforting words of the prayer of Stephen ?

But our work would be much restricted were it not
for man's outside adversary — Nature, the great Moloch,
which exacts a frightful tax of human blood, spar-
ing neither young nor old ; taking the child from the
cradle, the mother from her babe, and the father from
the family. Is it strange that man, unable to dis-
sociate a personal element from such work, has incarnated
an evil principle — the devil ? If we have now so far
outgrown this idea as to hesitate to suggest, in seasons of
epidemic peril, that " it is for our sins we suffer " — when
we know the drainage is bad ; if we no longer mock the
heart prostrate in the grief of loss with the words " whom

18

DOCTOR AND NURSE

the Lord loveth He chasteneth " — when we know the milk
should have been sterilized — if, I say, we have, in a measure,
become emancipated from such teachings, we have not
yet risen to a true conception of Nature. Cruel, in the
sense of being inexorable, she may be called, but we can
no more upbraid her great laws than we can the lesser
laws of the state, which are a terror only to evildoers.
The pity is that we do not know them all ; in our ignor-
ance we err daily, and pay a blood penalty. Fortunately
it is now a great and growing function of the medical pro-
fession to search out the laws about epidemics, and these
outside enemies of man, and to teach to you, the public —
dull, stupid pupils you are, too, as a rule — the ways of
Nature, that you may walk therein and prosper.

It would be interesting, Members of the Graduating
Class, to cast your horoscopes. To do so collectively
you would not like ; to do so individually — I dare not ;
but it is safe to predict certain things of you, as a whole.
You will be better women for the life which you have led
here. But what I mean by " better women " is that the
eyes of your souls have been opened, the range of your
sympathies has been widened, and your characters have
been moulded by the events in which you have been
participators during the past two years.

Practically there should be for each of you a busy, useful,
and happy life ; more you cannot expect ; a greater bles-
sing the world cannot bestow. Busy you will certainly
be, as the demand is great, both in private and public,
for women with your training. Useful your lives must be,
as you will care for those who cannot care for themselves,
and who need about them, in the day of tribulation, gentle

19

.iOR AND NURSE

.onder hearts. And happy lives shall be yours,
^e busy and useful ; having been initiated into the
great secret — that ^happiness lies in the absorption in
some vocation winch satisfies the soul ; that we have here
to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, life.
And, finally, remember what we are — useful super-
numeraries in the battle, simply stage accessories in the
drama, playing minor, but essential, parts at the exits and
entrances, or picking up, here and there, a strutter, who
may have tripped upon the stage. You have been much
by the dark river — so near to us all — and have seen so
many embark, that the dread of the old boatman has
almost disappeared, and

When the Angel of the darker Drink

At last shall find you by the river brink,

And offering his cup, invite your soul

Forth to your lips to quaff — you shall not shrink:

your passport shall be the blessing of Him in whose foot-
steps you have trodden, unto whose sick you have minis-
tered, and for whose children you have cared.

20

Ill

*

TEACHER AND STUDENT

A University consists, and has ever consisted, in demand and
supply, in wants which it alone can satisfy and which it does satisfy,
in the communication of knowledge, and the relation and bond
which exists between the teacher and the taught. Its constituting,
animating principle is this moral attraction of one class of persons
to another ; which is prior in its nature, nay commonly in its history,
to any other tie whatever ; so that, where this is wanting, a Uni-
versity is alive only in name, and has lost its true essence, whatever
be the advantages, whether of position or of affluence, with which
the civil power or private benefactors contrive to encircle it.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which education
starts a man will determine his future life.

PLATO, Republic, iv. — Jowett's Translation.

22

Ill
TEACHER AND STUDENT1

TRULY it may be said to-day that in the methods of
teaching medicine the old order changeth, giving
place to new, and to this revolution let me briefly refer,
since it has an immediate bearing on the main point I wish
to make in the first portion of my address. The medical
schools of the country have been either independent, Uni-
versity, or State Institutions. The first class, by far the
most numerous, have in title University affiliations, but
are actually devoid of organic union with seats of learning.
Necessary as these bodies have been in the past, it is a
cause for sincere congratulation that the number is steadily
diminishing. Admirable in certain respects — adorned too
in many instances by the names of men who bore the bur-
den and heat of the day of small things, and have passed to
their rest amid our honoured dead — the truth must be
acknowledged that the lamentable state of medical
education in this country twenty years ago was the direct
result of the inherent viciousness of a system they fostered.
Something in the scheme gradually deadened in the pro-
fessors all sense of the responsibility until they professed
to teach (mark the word), in less than two years, one of

1 University of Minnesota, 1892.
23

TEACHER AND STUDENT

the most difficult arts in the world to acquire. Fellow
teachers in medicine, believe me that when fifty or sixty
years hence some historian traces the development of the
profession in this country, he will dwell on the notable
achievements, on the great discoveries, and on the un-
wearied devotion of its members, but he will pass judg-
ment— yes, severe judgment — on the absence of the sense
of responsibility which permitted a criminal laxity in
medical education unknown before in our annals. But
an awakening has come, and there is sounding the knell
of doom for the medical college, responsible neither to the
public nor the profession.

The schools with close university connexions have been
the most progressive and thorough in this country. The
revolution referred to began some twenty years ago with
the appearance of the President of a well-known University
at a meeting of its medical faculty with a peremptory com-
mand to set their house in order.1 Universities which
teach only the Liberal Arts remain to-day, as in the middle
ages, Scholae minores, lacking the technical faculties which
make the Scholse ma j ores. The advantages of this most
natural union are manifold and reciprocal. The profes-
sors in a University medical school have not that inde-
pendence of which I have spoken, but are under an
influence which tends constantly to keep them at a high
level : they are urged by emulation with the other faculties
to improve the standard of work, and so are given a
strong stimulus to further development.

To anyone who has watched the growth of the new

i See Holmes on President Eliot in Life and Letters of O. W*
Holmes, 1896, ii. 187, 188, 190.

24

TEACHER AND STUDENT

ideas in education it is evident that the most solid advances
in methods of teaching, the improved equipment, clinical
and laboratory, and the kindlier spirit of generous rivalry —
which has replaced the former debased method of counting
heads as a test of merit — all these advantages have come
from a tightening of the bonds between the medical school
and the University.

And lastly there are the State schools, of which this
college is one of the few examples. It has been a char-
acteristic of American Institutions to foster private
industries and to permit private corporations to meet any
demands on the part of the public. This idea carried to
extreme allowed the unrestricted manufacture — note the
term — of doctors, quite regardless of the qualifications
usually thought necessary in civilized communities — of
physicians who may never have been inside a hospital
ward, and who had, after graduation, to learn medicine
somewhat in the fashion of the Chinese doctors who re-
cognized the course of the arteries of the body, by noting
just where the blood spurted when the acupuncture needle
was inserted. So far as I know, State authorities have
never interfered with any legally instituted medical school,
however poorly equipped for its work, however lax the
qualifications for license. Not only has this policy of
non-intervention been carried to excess, but in many
States a few physicians in any town could get a charter
for a school without giving guarantees that laboratory or
clinical facilities would be available. This anomalous
condition is rapidly changing, owing partly to a revival
of loyalty to higher ideals within the medical profession,
and partly to a growing appreciation in the public of the

25

TEACHER AND STUDENT

value of physicians thoroughly educated in modera
methods. A practical acknowledgment of this is found
in the recognition in three States at least of medicine as
one of the technical branches to be taught in the University
supported by the people at large.

But it is a secondary matter, after all, whether a school
is under State or University control, whether the endow-
ments are great or small, the equipments palatial or
humble ; the fate of an institution rests not on these ;
the inherent, vital element, which transcends all material
interests, which may give to a school glory and renown
in their absence, and lacking which, all the " pride, pomp
and circumstance " are vain — this vitalizing element, I
say, lies in the men who work in its halls, and in the ideals
which they cherish and teach. There is a passage in one
of John Henry Newman's Historical Sketches which ex-
presses this feeling in terse and beautiful language : " I
say then, that the personal influence of the teacher is
able in some sort to dispense with an academical system,
but that system cannot in any way dispense with personal
influence. With influence there is life, without it there
is none ; if influence is deprived of its due position, it will
not by those means be got rid of, it will only break out
irregularly, dangerously. An academical system without
the personal influence of teachers upon pupils, is an Arctic
winter ; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron
University, and nothing else."

Naturally from this standpoint the selection of teachers
is the function of highest importance in the Regents of
a University. Owing to local conditions the choice of men
for certain of the chairs is restricted to residents in the

26

TEACHER AND STUDENT

University town, as the salaries in most schools of this
country have to be supplemented by outside work. But
in all departments this principle should be acknowledged
and acted upon by trustees and faculties, and supported
by public opinion — that the very best men available
should receive appointments. It is gratifying to note the
broad liberality displayed by American colleges in welcom-
ing from all parts teachers who may have shown any
special fitness, emulating in this respect the liberality of
the Athenians, in whose porticoes and lecture halls the
stranger was greeted as a citizen and judged by his mental
gifts alone. Not the least by any means of the object
lessons taught by a great University is that literature
and science know no country, and, as has been well said,
acknowledge " no sovereignty but that of the mind, and
no nobility but that of genius." But it is difficult in this
matter to guide public opinion, and the Regents have
often to combat a provincialism which is as fatal to the
highest development of a University as is the shibboleth
of a sectarian institution.

II

To paraphrase the words of Matthew Arnold, the
function of the teacher is to teach and to propagate the
best that is known and taught in the world. To teach
the current knowledge of the subject he professes — sifting,
analyzing, assorting, laying down principles. To pro-
pagate : i.e., to multiply, facts on which to base principles
— experimenting, searching, testing. The best that is
known and taught in the world — nothing less can satisfy
a teacher worthy of the name, and upon us of the medical

27

TEACHER AND STUDENT

faculties lies a bounden duty in this respect, since our Art,
co-ordinate with human suffering, is cosmopolitan.

There are two aspects in which we may view the teacher
— as a worker and instructor in science, and as practitioner
and professor of the art ; and these correspond to the
natural division of the faculty into the medical school
proper and the hospital.

In this eminently practical country the teacher of
science has not yet received full recognition, owing in
part to the great expense connected with his work, and
in part to carelessness or ignorance in the public as to
the real strength of a nation. To equip and main-
tain separate Laboratories in Anatomy, Physiology,
Chemistry (physiological and pharmacological), Patho-
logy and Hygiene, and to employ skilled teachers, who
shall spend all their time in study and instruction,
require a capital not to-day at the command of any medical
school in the land. There are fortunate ones with two or
three departments well organized, not one with all. In
contrast, Bavaria, a kingdom of the German Empire,
with an area less than this State, and a population of five
and a half millions, supports in its three University towns
flourishing medical schools with extensive laboratories,
many of which are presided over by men of world-wide
reputation, the steps of whose doors are worn in many
cases by students who have crossed the Atlantic ; seeking
the wisdom of methods and the virtue of inspiration not
easily accessible at home. But there were professors in
Bavarian medical schools before Marquette and Joliet
had launched their canoes on the great stream which the
intrepid La Salle had discovered, before Du Lhut met

28

TEACHER AND STUDENT

Father Hennepin below the falls of St. Anthony ; and
justice compels us to acknowledge that while winning ail
empire from the back-woods the people of this land had
more urgent needs than laboratories of research. All
has now changed. In this State, for example, the phe-
nomenal growth of which has repeated the growth of
the nation, the wilderness has been made to blossom as
the rose, and the evidences of wealth and prosperity on
every side almost constrain one to break out into the now
old song, " Happy is that people that is in such a case."

But in the enormous development of material interests
there is danger lest we miss altogether the secret of a
nation's life, the true test of which is to be found in its
intellectual and moral standards. There is no more potent
antidote to the corroding influence of mammon than the
presence in a community of a body of men devoted to
science, living for investigation and caring nothing for
the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. We forget that
the measure of the value of a nation to the world is neither
the bushel nor the barrel, but mind ; and that wheat and
pork, though useful and necessary, are but dross in com-
parison with those intellectual products which alone are
impershable. The kindly fruits of the earth are easily
grown ; the finer fruits of the mind are of slower develop-
ment and require prolonged culture.

Each one of the scientific branches to which I have
referred has been so specialized that even to teach it
takes more time than can be given by a single Professor,
while the laboratory classes also demand skilled assistance.
The aim of a school should be to have these depart-
ments in the charge of men who have, first, enthusiasm

29

TEACHER AND STUDENT

that deep love of a subject, that desire to teach and extend
it without which all instruction becomes cold and lifeless ;
secondly, a full personal knowledge of the branch taught ;
not a second-hand information derived from books, but
the living experience derived from experimental and
practical work in the best laboratories. This type of
instructor is fortunately not rare in American schools.
The well-grounded students who have pursued their
studies in England and on the Continent have added depth
and breadth to our professional scholarship, and their
critical faculties have been sharpened to discern what is
best in the world of medicine. It is particularly in these
branches that we need teachers of wide learning, whose
standards of work are the highest known, and whose
methods are those of the masters in Israel. Thirdly, men
are required who have a sense of obligation, that feeling
which impels a teacher to be also a contributor, and to add
to the stores from which he so freely draws. And precisely
here is the necessity to know the best that is taught in
this branch, the world over. The investigator, to be suc-
cessful, must start abreast of the knowledge of the day,
and he differs from the teacher, who, living in the present,
expounds only what is current, in that his thoughts must
be in the future, and his ways and work in advance of the
day in which he lives. Thus, unless a bacteriologist has
studied methods thoroughly, and is familiar with the ex-
traordinarily complex flora associated with healthy and
diseased conditions, and keeps in touch with every labor-
atory of research at home and abroad, he will in attempting
original work, find himself exploring ground already well-
known, and will probably burden an already over-laden

30

TEACHER AND STUDENT

literature with faulty and crude observations. To avoid
mistakes, he must know what is going on in the laboratories
of England, France and Germany, as well as in those of his
own country, and he must receive and read six or ten
journals devoted to the subject. The same need for wide
and accurate study holds good in all branches.

Thoroughly equipped laboratories, in charge of men,
thoroughly equipped as teachers and investigators, is the
most pressing want to-day in the medical schools of this
country.

The teacher as a professor and practitioner of his art
is more favoured than his brother, of whom I have been
speaking ; he is more common, too, and less interesting ;
though in the eyes of " the fool multitude who choose by
show " more important. And from the standpoint of
medicine as an art for the prevention and cure of disease,
the man who translates the hieroglyphics of science into
the plain language of healing is certainly the more useful.
He is more favoured inasmuch as the laboratory in
which he works, the hospital, is a necessity in every centre
of population. The same obligation rests on him to
know and to teach the best that is known and taught
in the world — on the surgeon the obligation to know
thoroughly the scientific principles on which his art is
based, to be a master in the technique of his handicraft,
ever studying, modifying, improving ; — on the physician,
the obligation to study the natural history of diseases
and the means for their prevention, to know the true
value of regimen, diet and drugs in their treatment, ever
testing, devising, thinking ; — and upon both, to teach
to their students habits of reliance, and to be to them

31

TEACHER AND STUDENT

examples of gentleness, forbearance and courtesy in dealing
with their suffering brethren.

I would fain dwell upon many other points in the rela-
tiou of the hospital to the medical school — on the necessity
of ample, full and prolonged clinical instruction, and on
the importance of bringing the student and the patient
into close contact, not through the cloudy knowledge of
the amphitheatre, but by means of the accurate, critical
knowledge of the wards ; on the propriety of encouraging
the younger men as instructors and helpers in ward work ;
and on the duty of hospital physicians and surgeons to
contribute to the advance of their art — but I pass on with
an allusion to a very delicate matter in college faculties.

From one who, like themselves, has passed la crise
de quarante ans, the seniors present will pardon a few plain
remarks upon the disadvantages to a school of having too
many men of mature, not to say riper, years. Insensibly,
in the fifth and sixth decades, there begins to creep over
most of us a change, noted physically among other ways
the silvering of the hair and that lessening of elasticity,
which impels a man to open rather than to vault a five-
barred gate. It comes to all sooner or later ; to some it is
only too painfully evident, to others it comes unconsciously,
with no pace perceived. And with most of us this physical
change has its mental equivalent, not necessarily accom-
panied by loss of the powers of application or of judg-
ment ; on the contrary, often the mind grows clearer
and the memory more retentive, but the change is seen
in a weakened receptivity and in an inability to adapt
oneself to an altered intellectual environment. It is this
loss of mental elasticity which makes men over forty so

32

TEACHER AND STUDENT

slow to receive new truths. Harvey complained in his
day that few men above this critical age seemed able to
accept the doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and in
our own time it is interesting to note how the theory of
the bacterial origin of certain diseases has had, as other
truths, to grow to acceptance with the generation in which
it was announced. The only safeguard in the teacher
against this lamentable condition is to live in, and with
the third decade, in company with the younger, more
receptive and progressive minds.

There is no sadder picture than the Professor who has
outgrown his usefulness, and, the only one unconscious
of the fact, insists, with a praiseworthy zeal, upon the
performance of duties for which the circumstances of the
time have rendered him unfit. When a man nor wax
nor honey can bring home, he should, in the interests of
an institution, be dissolved from the hive to give more
labourers room ; though it is not every teacher who will
echo the sentiment —

Let me not live . . .
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain.

As we travel farther from the East, our salvation lies
in keeping our faces toward the rising sun, and in letting
the fates drag us, like Cacus his oxen, backward into the
cave of oblivion;

III

Students of Medicine, Apprentices of the Guild, with
whom are the promises, and in whom centre our hopes
AE. 33 D

TEACHER AND STUDENT

— let me congratulate you on the choice of calling
which offers a combination of intellectual and moral
interests found in no other profession, and not met with
at all in the common pursuits of life — a combination which,
in the words of Sir James Paget, " offers the most com-
plete and constant union of those three qualities which
have the greatest charm for pure and active minds — novelty,
utility, and charity," But I am not here to laud our
profession ; your presence here on these benches is a
guarantee that such praise is superfluous. Rather allow
me, in the time remaining at my disposal, to talk of the
influences which may make you good students — now in
the days of your pupilage, and hereafter when you enter
upon the more serious duties of life.

In the first place, acquire early the Art of Detachment,
by which I mean the faculty of isolating yourselves from
the pursuits and pleasures incident to youth. By nature
man is the incarnation of idleness, which quality alone,
amid the ruined remnants of Edenic characters, remains in
all its primitive intensity. Occasionally we do find an
individual who takes to toil as others to pleasure, but the
majority of us have to wrestle hard with the original Adam,
and find it no easy matter to scorn delights and live
laborious days. Of special importance is this gift to those
of you who reside for the first time in a large city, the
many attractions of which offer a serious obstacle to its
acquisition. The discipline necessary to secure this art
brings in its train habits of self-control and forms a valu-
able introduction to the sterner realities of life.

I need scarcely warn you against too close attention to
your studies. I have yet to meet a medical student,

34

TEACHER AND STUDENT

the hey-day in whose blood had been quite tamed in his
college days ; but if you think I have placed too much
stress upon isolation in putting the Art of Detachment
first in order amongst the desiderata let me temper the
hard saying by telling you how with " labors assiduous
due pleasures to mix." Ask of any active business man
or a leader in a profession the secret which enables him
to accomplish much work, and he will reply in one word,
system; or as I shall term it, the Virtue of Method, the
harness without which only the horses of genius travel.
There are two aspects of this subject ; the first relates to
the orderly arrangement of your work, which is to some
extent enforced by the roster of demonstrations and
lectures, but this you would do well to supplement in private
study by a schedule in which each hour finds its allotted
duty. Thus faithfully followed day by day system may
become at last engrained in the most shiftless nature, and
at the end of a semester a youth of moderate ability may
find himself far in advance of the student who works
spasmodically, and trusts to cramming. Priceless as this
virtue is now in the time of your probation, it becomes in
the practising physician an incalculable blessing. The
incessant and irregular demands upon a busy doctor make
it very difficult to retain, but the public in this matter
can be educated, and the men who practise with system,
allotting a definite time of the day to certain work, accom-
plish much more and have at any rate a little leisure ;
whiL those who are unmethodical never catch up with
the day's duties and worry themselves, their confreres,
and theii patients.

The other aspect of method has a deeper significance,

35

TEACHER AND STUDENT

hard for you to reach, not consoling when attained, since
it lays bare our weaknesses. The practice of medicine is
an art, based on science. Working with science, in science,
for science, it has not reached, perhaps never will, the
dignity of a complete science, with exact laws, like astron-
omy or engineering. Is there then no science of medicine ?
Yes, but in parts only, such as anatomy and physiology,
and the extraordinary development of these branches
during the present century has been due to the culti-
vation of method, by which we have reached some degree
of exactness, some certainty of truth. Thus we can weigh
the secretions in the balance and measure the work of the
heart in foot-pounds. The deep secrets of generation
have been revealed and the sesame of evolution has given
us fairy tales of science more enchanting than the Arabian
Nights' entertainment. With this great increase in our
knowledge of the laws governing the processes of life, has
been a corresponding, not less remarkable, advance in all
that relates to life in disorder, that is, disease. The
mysteries of heredity are less mysterious, the operating-
room has been twice over robbed of its terrors ; the laws
of epidemics are known, and the miracle of the threshing
floor of Araunah the Jebusite, may be repeated in any
town out of Bumbledom. All this change has come about
by the observation of facts, by their classification, and
by the founding upon them of general laws. Emulating
the persistence and care of Darwin, we must collect facts
with open-minded watchfulness, unbiased by crotchets
or notions ; fact on fact, instance on instance, oxpervment
on experiment, facts which fitly joined together ,by some
master who grasps the idea of their relationship may estab-

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TEACHER AND STUDENT

lish a general principle. But in the practice of medicine,
where our strength should be lies our great weakness.
Our study is man, as the subject of accidents or diseases.
Were he always, inside and outside, cast in the same mould,
instead of differing from his fellow man as much in consti-
tution and in his reaction to stimulus as in feature, we
should ere this have reached some settled principles in our
art. And not only are the reactions themselves variable,
but we, the doctors, are so fallible, ever beset with the
common and fatal facility of reaching conclusions from
superficial observations, and constantly misled by the
ease with which our minds fall into the rust of one or two
experiences.

And thirdly add to the Virtue of Method, the Quality
of Thoroughness, an element of such importance that I had
thought of making it the only subject of my remarks.
Unfortunately, in the present arrangement of the curri-
culum, few of you as students can hope to obtain more
than a measure of it, but all can learn its value now, and
ultimately with patience become living examples of its
benefit. Let me tell you briefly what it means. A
knowledge of the fundamental sciences upon which our
art is based — chemistry, anatomy, and physiology — not
a smattering, but a full and deep acquaintance, not with
all the facts, that is impossible, but with the great principles
based upon them. You should, as students, become
familiar with the methods by which advances in knowledge
are made, and in the laboratory see clearly the paths the
great masters have trodden, though you yourselves cannot
walk therein. With a good preliminary training and a
due apportioning of time you can reach in these three essen-

37

TEACHER AND STUDENT

tial studies a degree of accuracy which is the true prepara-
tion for your life duties. It means such a knowledge of
diseases and of the emergencies of life and of the means
for their alleviation, that you are safe and trustworthy
guides for your fellowmen. You cannot of course in
the brief years of pupilage so grasp the details of the various
branches that you can surely recognize and successfully
treat all cases. But here if you have mastered certain
principles is at any rate one benefit of thoroughness —
you will avoid the sloughs of charlatanism. Napoleon,
according to Sainte Beuve, one day said when somebody
was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan, " Charlatan
as much as you please, but where is there not charlatan-
ism ? " Now, thoroughness is the sole preventive of this
widespread malady, which in medicine is not met with
only outside of the profession. Matthew Arnold, who
quotes the above from Sainte Beuve, defines charlatanism
as the " confusing or obliterating the distinctions between
excellent and inferior, sound and unsound, or only half
sound, true and untrue or half true." The higher the
standard of education in a profession the less marked will
be the charlatanism, whereas no greater incentive to its
development can be found than in sending out from our
colleges men who have not had mental training sufficient
to enable them to judge between the excellent and the
inferior, the sound and the unsound, the true and the half
true. And if we of the household are not free from the
seductions of this vice, what of the people among whom
we work ? From the days of the sage of Endor, even the
rulers have loved to dabble in it, while the public of all
ages have ever revelled in its methods — to-day, as in the

38

TEACHER AND STUDENT

time of the Father of Medicine, one of whose contempor-
aries (Plato) thus sketches the world old trait : " And
what a delightful life they lead ! they are always doctoring
and increasing and complicating their disorders and always
fancying they will be cured by any nostrum which anybody
advises them to try."

The Art of Detachment, the Virtue of Method, and the
Quality of Thoroughness may make you students, in the
true sense of the word, successful practitioners, or even
great investigators ; but your characters may still lack that
which can alone give permanence to powers — the Grace of
Humility. As the divine Italian at the very entrance to
Purgatory was led by his gentle Master to the banks of
the island and girt with a rush, indicating thereby that he
had cast off all pride and self-conceit, and was prepared
for his perilous ascent to the realms above, so should you,
now at the outset of your journey take the reed of humility
in your hands, in token that you appreciate the length of
the way, the difficulties to be overcome, and the fallibility
of the faculties upon which you depend.

In these days of aggressive self-assertion, when the
stress of competition is so keen and the desire to make the
most of oneself so universal, it may seem a little old-
fashioned to preach the necessity of this virtue, but I insist
for its own sake, and for the sake of what it brings, that a
due humility should take the place of honour on the list.
For its own sake, since with it comes not only a reverence
for truth, but also a proper estimation of the difficulties
encountered in our search for it. More perhaps than any
other professional man, the doctor has a curious — shall
I say morbid ? — sensitiveness to (what he regards) per-

39

TEACHER AND STUDENT

sonal error. In a way this is right ; but it is too often
accompanied by a cocksureness of opinion which, if en-
couraged, leads him to so lively a conceit that the mere
suggestion of mistake under any circumstances is regarded
as a reflection on his honour, a reflection equally resented
whether of lay or of professional origin. Start out with
the conviction that absolute truth is hard to reach in
matters relating to our fellow creatures, healthy or diseased,
that slips in observation are inevitable even with the best
trained faculties, that errors in judgment must occur in
the practice of an art which consists largely in balancing
probabilities ; — start, I say, with this attitude of mind,
and mistakes will be acknowledged and regretted ; but
instead of a slow process of self-deception, with ever in-
creasing inability to recognize truth, you will draw from
your errors the very lessons which may enable you to avoid
their repetition.

And, for the sake of what it brings, this grace of humility
is a precious gift. When to the sessions of sweet silent
thought you summon up the remembrance of your own
imperfections, the faults of your brothers will seem less
grievous, and, in the quaint language of Sir Thomas
Browne, you wilT " allow one eye for what is laudable in
them." The wrangling and unseemly disputes which
have too often disgraced our profession arise, in a great
majority of cases, on the one hand, from this morbid sen-
sitiveness to the confession of error, and, on the other,
from a lack of brotherly consideration, and a convenient
forgetfulness of our own failings. Take to heart the words
of the son of Sirach, winged words to the sensitive souls
of the sons of Esculapius : " Admonish a friend, it may

40

TEACHER AND STUDENT

be he has not done it ; and if he have done it, that he do it
no more. Admonish thy friend, it may be he hath not
said it ; and if he have, that he speak it not again. Ad-
monish a friend, for many times it is a slander, and believe
not every tale." Yes, many times it is a slander, and be-
lieve not every tale.

The truth that lowliness is young ambition's ladder
is hard to grasp, and when accepted harder to maintain.
It is so difficult to be still amidst bustle, to be quiet amidst
noise ; yet, " es bttdet ein Talent sick in der StiUe " alone,
in the calm life necessary to continuous work for a high
purpose. The spirit abroad at present in this country
is not favourable to this Teutonic view, which galls the
quick apprehension and dampens the enthusiasm of the
young American. All the same, it is true, and irksome
at first though the discipline may be, there will come a time
when the very fetters in which you chafed shall be a strong
defence, and your chains a robe of glory.

Sitting in Lincoln Cathedral and gazing at one of the
loveliest of human works — for such the angel Choir has
been said to be — there arose within me, obliterating for
the moment the thousand heraldries and twilight saints and
dim emblazonings, a strong sense of reverence for the minds
which had conceived and the hands which had executed
such things of beauty. What manner of men were they
who could, in those (to us) dark days, build such trans-
cendent monuments ? What was the secret of their art ?
By what spirit were they moved ? Absorbed in thought,
I did not hear the beginning of the music, and then, as a
response to my reverie and arousing me from it, rang out
the clear voice of the boy leading the antiphon, " That thy

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TEACHER AND STUDENT

power, thy glory and mightiness of thy kingdom might
be known unto men." Here was the answer. Moving in
a world not realized, these men sought, however feebly,
to express in glorious structures their conceptions of the
beauty of holiness, and these works, our wonder, are but
the outward and visible signs of the ideals which animated
them.

To us in very different days life offers nearly the same
problems, but the conditions have changed, and, as has
happened before in the world's history, great material
prosperity has weakened the influence of ideals, and blurred
the eternal difference between means and end. Still,
the ideal State, the ideal Life, the ideal Church — what they
are and how best to realize them — such dreams continue to
haunt the minds of men, and who can doubt that their con-
templation greatly assists the upward progress of our race ?
We, too, as a profession, have cherished standards, some
of which, in words sadly disproportionate to my subject,
I have attempted to portray.

My message is chiefly to you, Students of Medicine, since
with the ideals entertained now your future is indissolubly
bound. The choice lies open, the paths are plain before
you. Always seek your own interests, make of a high and
sacred calling a sordid business, regard your fellow creatures
as so many tools of trade, and, if your heart's desire is for
riches, they may be yours ; but you will have bartered away
the birthright of a noble heritage, traduced the physician's
well-deserved title of the Friend of Man, and falsified
the best traditions of an ancient and honourable Guild.
On the other hand, I have tried to indicate some of the
ideals which you may reasonably cherish. No matter

42

TEACHER AND STUDENT

though they are paradoxical in comparison with the
ordinary conditions in which you work, they will have, if
encouraged, an ennobling influence, even if it be for you
only to say with Rabbi Ben Ezra, " what I aspired to be
and was not, comforts me." And though this course
does not necessarily bring position or renown, consistently
followed it will at any rate give to your youth an exhilarating
zeal and a cheerfulness which will enable you to surmount
all obstacles — to your maturity a serene judgment of
men and things, and that broad charity without which
all else is nought — to your old age that greatest of blessings,
peace of mind, a realization, maybe, of the prayer of
Socrates for the beauty in the inward soul and for unity
of the outer and the inner man ; perhaps, of the promise of
St. Bernard, " pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine

IV

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS AS
DEPICTED IN PLATO

45

* - To one small people ... it was given to create the principle
of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind
forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek
in its origin." •

MAINE. Quoted in Greek Thinkers by Gomperz.

From the lifeless background of an unprogressive world — Egypt
Syria, frozen Scythia— a world in which the unconscious social
aggregate had been everything, the conscious individual, his
capacity and rights, almost nothing, the Greek had stepped forth,
like the young prince in the fable, to set things going.

WALTER PATEE, Plato and Platonism.

These (years of vague, restless speculation) had now lasted long
enough, and it was time for the Meisterjdhre of quiet, methodical
research to succeed if science was to acquire steady and sedentary
habits instead of losing itself in a maze of phantasies, revolving
in idle circles. It is the undying glory of the medical school of
Cos that it introduced this innovation in the domain of its art, and
thus exercised the mo t beneficial influence on the whole intellectual
life of mankind. " Fiction to the right ! Reality to the left ! "
was the battle-cry of this school in the war they were the first to
wage against the excesses and defects of the nature-philosophy.
Nor could it have found any more suitable champions, for the
serious and noble calling of the physician, which brings him every
day and every hour in close communion with nature, in the exer-
cise of which mistakes in theory engender the most fatal practical
consequences, has served in all ages as a nursery of the most genuine
and incorruptible sense of truth. The best physicians must be
the best observers, but the man who sees keenly, who hears clearly,
and whose senses, powerful at the start, are sharpened and refined
by constant exercise, will only in exceptional instances be a visionary
or a dreamer.

GOMPEBZ, Greek Thinkers, vol i.

IV

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS AS
DEPICTED IN PLATO i

OUR Historical Club had under consideration last
winter the subject of Greek Medicine. After in-
troductory remarks and a description of the JEsculapian
temples and worship by Dr. Welch, we proceeded to a
systematic study of the Hippocratic writings, taking up
in order, as found in them, medicine, hygiene, surgery,
and gynaecology. Among much of interest which we
gleaned, not the least important was the knowledge that
as an art, medicine had made, even before Hippocrates,
great progress, as much almost as was possible without a
basis in the sciences of anatomy and physiology. Minds
inquisitive, acute, and independent had been studying the
problems of nature and of man ; and several among the
pre-Socratic philosophers had been distinguished physi-
cians, notably, Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus.
Unfortunately we know but little of their views, or even
of the subjects in medicine on which they wrote. In the
case of Democritus, however, Diogenes Laertius has pre-
served a list of his medical writings, which intensifies the

i Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical Club, 1893.
47

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

regret at the loss of the works of this great man, the title
of one of whpse essays, " On Those who are Attacked with
Cough after Illness" indicates a critical observation of
disease, which Daremberg seems unwilling to allow to the,
pre-Hippocratic philosopher-physicians.

We gathered also that in the golden age of Gfreece,
medicine had, as to-day, a triple relationship, with science,
with gymnastics, and with theology. We can imagine an
Athenian father of the early fourth century worried about
the enfeebled health of one of his growing lads, Asking the
advice of Hippocrates about a suspicious cough, or sending
him to the palaestra of Taureas for a systematic course in
gymnastics ; or, as Socrates advised, " when human skill
was exhausted," asking the assistance of the divine Apollo,
through his son, the " hero-physician," ^Esculapius, at his
temple in Epidaurus or at Athens itself. Could the Greek
live over his parental troubles at the end of the nineteenth
century, he would get a more exact diagnosis and a more
rational treatment ; but he might travel far to find so
eminent a " professor " of gymnastic as Miccus for his boy,
and in Christian science or faith-healing he would find our
bastard substitute for the stately and gracious worship of
the ^Esculapian temple.1

From the Hippocratic writings alone we have a very

1 For an account of " ^sculapius at Epidaurus and Athens,"
chapter vi. of Dyer's Gods of Greece (Macmillan, 1891), a chapter
which contains also an excellent discussion on the relation of secular
to priestly medicine. In Chapter III of Pater's delightful story
Marius the Epicurean, is a description of one of the Roman^'sculapia,
and an account of the method of procedure in the " cv -e," the
ridiculous aspects of which are so graphically described in the
" Plutus " of Aristophanes.

48

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

imperfect knowledge of the state of medicine in the most
brilliant period of Grecian history ; and many details re-
lating to the character and to the life of physicians are
gleaned only from secular authors. So much of the daily
life of a civilized community relates to problems of health
and disease that the great writers of every age of necessity
throw an important side-light, not only on the opinions of
the people on these questions, but often on the condition of
special knowledge in various branches. Thus a consider-
^able literature already illustrates the medical knowledge
of Shakespeare, from whose doctors, apothecaries, and
mad-iolk much may be gathered as to the state of the pro-
fession in the latter part of the sixteenth century. So also
the satire of Moliere, malicious though it be, has preserved
for us phases of medical life in the seventeenth century,
for which we scan in vain the strictly medical writings
of that period ; and writers of our times, like George Eliot,
have told for future generations in a character such as
Lydgate, the little every-day details of the struggles and
aspirations of the profession of the nineteenth century, of
which we find no account whatever in the files of the Lancet*

We are fortunate in having had preserved the writings
of the two most famous of the Greek philosophers — the
great idealist, Plato, whose " contemplation of all time and
all existence " was more searching than that of his pre-
decessors, fuller than that of any of his disciples, and the
great realist, Aristotle, to whose memory every department
of knowledge still pays homage, and who has swayed the
master-minds of twenty-two centuries. From the writings
of both much may be gathered about Greek physic and
/ physicians ; but I propose in this essay to restrict myself

AE. 49 E

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

to what I have culled from the Dialogues of Plato. I
shall first speak of his physiological and pathological specu-
lations ; then I shall refer to the many interesting allusions
to, and analogies drawn from, medicine and physicians ;
and, lastly, I shall try to estimate from the Dialogues
the social standing of the Greek doctor, and shall speak on
other points which bear upon the general condition of the
profession. The quotations are made in every instance
from Professor Jowett's translation, the third edition, 1892.1

I

To our enlightened minds the anatomy and physiology
of Plato are crude and imperfect ; as much or even more
so than those of Hippocrates. In the Timceus he con-
ceived the elements to be made up of bodies in the form of
triangles, the different varieties and combinations of which
accounted for the existence of the four elementary bodies of
Empedocles — fire, earth, water, and air. The differences
in the elementary bodies are due to differences in the size
and arrangement of the elementary triangles, which, like
the atoms of the atomist, are too small to be visible. Mar-
row had the most perfect of the elementary triangles, and
from it bone, flesh, and the other structures of the body
were made. " God took such of the primary triangles as
were straight and smooth, and were adapted by their
perfection to produce fire and water, and air and earth ;
these, I say, he separated from their kinds, and mingling
them in due proportions with one another, made the mar-

1 The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English by B. Jowett,
M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford. At the Clarendon Press,
first edition, 1871 ; third edition, 1892.

50

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

row out of them to be a universal seed of the whole race of
mankind ; and in this seed he then planted and enclosed
the souls, and in the original distribution gave to the mar-
row as many and various forms as the different kinds of
souls were hereafter to receive. That which, like a field,
was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way/
and called that portion of the marrow brain, intending
that, when an animal was perfected, the vessel containing
this substance should be the head ; but that which was
intended to contain the remaining and mortal part of the
soul he distributed into figures at once round and elon-
gated, and he called them all by the name ' marrow ' ; and
to these, as to anchors, fastening the bonds of the whole
soul, he proceeded to fashion around them the entire frame-
work of our body, constructing for the marrow, first of aH,
a complete covering of bone." 1

The account of the structure of bone and flesh, and oi
functions of respiration, digestion, and circulation is un-
intelligible to our modern notions. Plato knew that the
blood was in constant motion ; in speaking of inspiration and
expiration, and the network of fire which interpenetrates
the body, he says : " For when the respiration is going in
and out, and the fire, which is fast bound within, follows
it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters the belly
and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and
dividing them into small portions, and guiding them
through the passages where it goes, pumps them as from a
fountain into the channels of the veins, and makes the
stream of the veins -flow through the body as through a con-
duit" 2 A complete circulation was unknown ; but Plato
, iii. 493. » Ibid, iii.' 601.

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

understood fully that the blood was the source of nourish-
ment,— "the liquid itself we call blood, which nourishes
the flesh and the whole body, whence all parts are watered
and empty spaces filled." In the young, the triangles,
or in modern parlance we would say the atoms, are new,
and are compared to the keel of a vessel just off the stocks.
They are locked firmly together, but form a soft and deli-
cate mass freshly made of marrow and nourished on milk.
The process of digestion is described as a struggle between
the triangles out of which the meats and drinks are com-
posed, and those of the bodily frame ; and as the former
are older and weaker the newer triangles of the body cut
them up, and in this way the animal grows great, being
nourished by a multitude of similar particles. The triangles
are in constant fluctuation and change, and in the " Sym-
posium " Socrates makes Diotima say, " A man is called
the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses be-
tween youth and age, and in which every animal is said to
have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual pro-
cess of loss and reparation — hair, flesh, bones, and the
whole body are always changing." 2

The description of senility, euthanasia, and death is
worth quoting : " But when the roots of the triangles are
loosened by having undergone many conflicts with many
things in the course of time, they are no longer able to cut
or assimilate the food which enters, but are themselves
easily divided by the bodies which come in from without.
In this way every animal is overcome and decays, and this
affection is called old age. And at last, when the bonds by
which the triangles of the marrow are united no longer

1 Dialogues, iii. 503. * Ibid. i. 578.

62

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

hold, and are parted by the strain of existence, they in
turn loosen the bonds of the soul, and she, obtaining a
natural release, flies away with joy. For that which takes
place according to nature is pleasant, but that which is
contrary to nature is painful. 4nd thus death, if caused
by disease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent ;
but that sort of death which comes with old age and fulfils
the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths, and is accom-
panied with pleasure rather than with pain." l

The mode of origin and the nature of disease, as de-
scribed in the Timceus, are in keeping with this primitive
and imperfect science. The diseases of the body arise
when anyone of the four elements is out of place, or when
the blood, sinews and flesh are produced in a wrong order.
Much influence is attributed to the various kinds of bile.
The worst of all diseases, he thinks, are those of the spinal
marrow, in which the whole course of the body is reversed.
Other diseases are produced by disorders of respiration ;
as by phlegm " when detained within by reason of the air
bubbles." This, if mingled with black bile and dispersed
about the courses of the head produces epilepsy, attacks
of which during sleep, he says, are not so severe, but when
it assails those who are awake it is hard to be got rid of,
and " being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly
called sacred " morbus sacer. Of other disorders, excess
of fire causes a continuous fever ; of air, quotidian fever j
of water, which is a more sluggish element than either fire
or air, tertian fever ; of earth, the most sluggish element
of the four, is only purged away in a four-fold period, that
is in a quartan fever.2

1 Dialogues, iii. 503-4. a Ibid. iii. 607-8.

53

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

The psychology of Plato, in contrast to his anatomy
and physiology, has a strangely modern savour, and the
three-fold divisions of the mind into reason, spirit and
appetite, represents very much the mental types recog-
nized by students of the present day. The rational, im-
mortal principle of the soul " the golden cord of reason "
dwells in the brain, " and inasmuch as we are a plant not
of earthly but of heavenly growth, raises us from earth to
our kindred who are in heaven." The mortal soul con-
sists of two parts ; the one with which man " loves and
hungers and thirsts, and feels the flutterings of any other
desire," is placed between the midriff and the boundary
of the navel ; the other, passion or spirit, is situated in
the breast between the midriff and the neck, " in order
that it might be under the rule of reason and might join
with it in controlling and restraining the desires when
they are no longer willing of their own accord to obey the
word of command issuing from the citadel."

No more graphic picture of the struggle between the
rational and appetitive parts of the soul has ever been
given than in the comparison of man in the Phcedrus to a
charioteer driving a pair of winged horses, one of which is
noble and of noble breed ; the other ignoble and of ignoble
breed, so that " the driving of them of necessity gives a
great deal of trouble to him."

The comparison of the mind of man in the Thecetetus
to a block of wax, " which is of different sizes in different
men ; harder, moister, and having more or less of purity
in one than another, and in some of an intermediate
quality," is one of the happiest of Plato's conceptions.

i Dialogues, in. 491-2. a Ibid. i. 452..

54

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

This wax tablet is a gift of Memory, the mother of the
Muses ; " and when we wish to remember anything which
we have seen, or heard or thought in OUT own minds, we
hold the wax to the perceptions and thoughts, and in that
material receive the impression of them as from the seal
of a ring ; and that we remember and know what is im-
printed as long as the image lasts ; but when the image-
is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget and do not
know." l

Another especially fortunate comparison is that of the
mind to an aviary which is gradually occupied by different
kinds of birds, which correspond to the varieties of know-
ledge. When we were children the aviary was empty,
and as we grow up we go about " catching " the various
kinds of knowledge.2

Plato recognized, in the Timceus, two kinds of mental
disease, to wit, madness and ignorance. He has the notion
advocated by advanced psychologists to-day, that much
of the prevalent vice is due to an ill disposition of the body,
and is involuntary ; "for no man is voluntarily bad ; but
the bad become bad by reason of ill disposition of the body
and bad education, things which are hateful to every man
and happen to him against his will." 3 A fuller discussion
of the theorem that madness and the want of sense are
the same is found in the Alctbiades (II.) ; which is not, how-
ever, one of the genuine Dialogues. The different kinds
of want of sense are very graphically described :

Socrates. In like manner men differ in regard to want of sense.
Those who are most out of their wits we call " madmen," while we
term those who are less far gone " stupid," or " idiotic," or if we

i Ihahgues, iv. 254-5- • Ibid. iv. 262. a ibid. iii. 509.
65

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

prefer gentle language, describe them as " romantic " or " simple-
minded," or again as " innocent," or " inexperienced," or " foolish."
You may even find other names if you seek for them, but by all of
them lack of sense is intended. They only differ as one art appears
to us to differ from another, or one disease from another.

There is a shrewd remark in the Republic "that the
most gifted minds, when they are ill-educated, become
pre-eminenetly bad. Do not great crimes and the spirit
of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by
education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak
natures are scarcely capable of any very great good or very
great evil." '

In the Phcedrus there is recognized a form of madness
" which is a divine gift and a source of the chief est blessings
granted to man." Of this there are four kinds — prophecy,
inspiration, poetry and love. That indefinable something
which makes the poet as contrasted with th rhymster
and which is above and beyond all art, is well characterized
in the following sentence : " But he who, having no touch
of the Muse's madness in his soul, comes to the door and
thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art-
he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted. The sane man
disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with
a madman." 2 Certain crimes, too, are definitely recog-
nized as manifestations of insanity ; in the Laws the in-
curable criminal is thus addressed : " Oh, sir, the impulse
which moves you to rob temples is not an ordinary human
malady, nor yet a visitation of heaven, but a madness

1 Dialogues, iii. 189.

2 Ibid. i. 450-1 ; " Not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by
a sort of inspiration and genius."— Apology.

56

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

which is begotten in man from ancient and unexpiated
crimes of his race." In the Laws, too, it is stated that
there are many sorts of madness, some arising out of
disease, and others originating in an evil and passionate
temperament, and are increased by bad education. Re-
specting the care of the insane, it is stated that a madman
shall not be at large in the city, but his relations shall keep
him at home in any way they can, or if not, certain fines
are mentioned.1

The greatest aid in the prevention of disease is to pre-
serve the due proportion of mind and body, " for there is
no proportion or disproportion more productive of health
and disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul
and body." In the double nature of the living being if
there is in this compound an impassioned soul more power-
ful than the body, " that soul, I say, convulses and fills
with disorders the whole inner nature of man ; and when
eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study,
causes wasting ; or again, when teaching or disputing in
private or in public, and considerations and controversies
arise, inflames and dissolves the composite form of man
and introduces rheums ; and the nature of this pheno-
menon is not understood by most professors of medicine,
who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause," . ; .
Body and mind should both be equally exercised to pro-
tect against this disproportion, and " we should not move
the body without the soul or the soul without the body.
In this way they will be on their guard against each other,
and be healthy and well balanced." He urges the mathe-

1 Dialogues, v. 236, 323, 324.
57

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

matician to practise gymnastic, and the gymnast to culti-
vate music and philosophy.1

The modes of treatment advised are simple, and it is
evident that Plato had not much faith in medicines. Pro-
fessor Jowett's commentary is here worth quoting : " Plato
is still the enemy of the purgative treatment of physicians,
which, except in extreme cases, no man of sense will ever
adopt. For, as he adds, with an insight into the truth,
1 every disease is akin to the nature of the living being and
is only irritated by stimulants.' He is of opinion that
nature should be left to herself, and is inclined to think
that physicians are in vain (cp. Laws, VI. 761 C., where he
says that warm baths would be more beneficial to the
limbs of the aged rustic than the prescriptions of a not
overwise doctor). If he seems to be extreme in his con-
demnation of medicine and to rely too much on diet and
exercise, he might appeal to nearly all the best physicians
of our own age in support of his opinions, who often speak
to their patients of the worthlessness of drugs. For we
ourselves are sceptical about medicine, and very unwilling
to submit to the purgative treatment of physicians. May
we not claim for Plato an anticipation of modern ideas as
about some questions of astronomy and physics, so also
about medicine ? As in the Charmides (156, 7) he tells us
that the body cannot be cured without the soul, so in the
Timceus he strongly asserts the sympathy of soul and
body ; any defect of either is the occasion of the greatest
discord and disproportion in the other. Here too may be
a presentiment that in the medicine of the future the in-
terdependence of mind and body will be more fully recog-

1 Dialogues, iii. 510-1.
58

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

nized, and that the influence of the one over the other
may be exerted in a manner which is not now thought
possible." *

The effect of the purgative method to which Plato was
so opposed is probably referred to in the following passage.
" When a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop
and takes medicine, is he not quite aware that soon and
for many days afterwards, he will be in a state of body
which he would rather die than accept as a permanent
condition of his life ? "

It is somewhat remarkable that nowhere in the Dialogues
is any reference made to the method of healing at the
iEsculapian temples. The comments upon physic and
physicians are made without allusion to these institutions.
Hippocrates and other practitioners at Athens were pro-
bably secular Asclepiads, but as Dyer remarks, " in spite
of the severance the doctors kept in touch with the wor-
ship of ^Esculapius, and the priests in his temples did not
scorn such secular knowledge as they could gain from lay
practitioners.2

II

So much for the general conception of the structure and
functions of the body, in order and disorder, as conceived
by Plato. Were nothing more to be gleaned, the thoughts
on these questions of one of the greatest minds of what
was intellectually the most brilliant period of the race,
would be of interest, but scattered throughout his writings
are innumerably little obiter dicta, which indicate a pro-
found knowledge of that side of human nature which turns
1 Dialogues, iii. 413. 2 The Gods of Greece.

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

uppermost when the machinery is out of gear. There are,
in addition, many charming analogies drawn from medicine,
and many acute suggestions, some of which have a modern
flavour. The noble pilot and the wise physician who, as
Nestor remarks, " is worth many another man," furnish
some of the most striking illustrations of the Dialogues.

One of the most admirable definitions of the Art of
Medicine I selected as a rubric with which to grace my
text-book, " And I said of medicine, that this is an Art
which considers the constitution of the patient, and has
principles of action and reasons in each case." Or, again,
the comprehensive view taken in the statement, " There
is one science of medicine which is concerned with the
inspection of health equally in all times, present, past and
future."

Plato gives a delicious account of the origin of the
modern medicine, as contrasted with the art of the guild
of Asclepius. 1

Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a
wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just
because by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been
describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their
bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius
to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh ;
is not this, too, a disgrace ?

Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and new-fangled
names to diseases.

Yes, I said, and I do not believe there were any such diseases in
the days of Asclepius ; and this I infer from the circumstance that
the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks
a posset of Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal and
grated cheese, which are certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of
Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel

1 Dialogues, iii. 93.
60

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his
case.

Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given
to a person in his condition.

Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former
days, as is commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the^guild of
Asclepius did not practise our present system of medicine, which
may be said to educate diseases. But Herodicus, being a trainer,
and himself of a sickly constitution, by a combination of training
and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and chiefly .himself,
and secondly the rest of the world.

How was that ? he said.

By the invention of lingering death ; for he had a mortal disease
which he perpetually tended, and as recovery was out of the ques-
tion, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian ; he could do
nothing but attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment
whenever he departed in anything from his usual regimen, and so
dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old age.

A rare reward of his skill !

He goes on to say that Asclepius did not instruct his
descendants in valetudinarian arts because he knew that
in well-ordered states individuals with occupations had
no time to be ill. If a carpenter falls sick, he asks the
doctor for a "rough and ready cure— an emetic, or a
purge, or a cautery, or the knife— these are his remedies."
Should any one prescribe for him a course of dietetics
and tell him to swathe and swaddle his head, and all that
sort of thing, he says, " he sees no good in a life spent in
nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employ-
ment ; and therefore bidding good-bye to this sort of
physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets
well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution
fails, he dies and has no more trouble."

He is more in earnest in another place (Gorgias) in an

1 Dialogues, iii. 93-4.
61

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

account of the relations of the arts of medicine and gym.
nasties : " The soul and the body being two, have two
arts corresponding to them : there is the art of politics
attending on the soul ; and another art attending on the
body, of which I know no specific name, but which may
be described as having two divisions, one of them gym-
nastic, and the other medicine. And in politics there is
a legislative part, which answers to gymnastic, as justice
does to medicine ; and the two parts run into one another,
justice having to do with the same subject as legislation,
and medicine with the same subject as gymnastic, but
with a difference. . . . Cookery simulates the disguise of
medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for
the body ; and if the physician and the cook had to enter
into a competition in which children were the judges, or
men who had no more sense than children, as to which of
them best understands the goodness or badness of food,
the physician would be starved to death." *

And later in the same dialogue Socrates claims to be the
only true politician of his time who speaks, not with any
view of pleasing, but for the good of the State, and is un-
willing to practise the graces of rhetoric — and so would
make a bad figure in a court of justice. He says : " I
shall be tried just as a physician would be tried in a court
of little boys at the indictment of the cook. What would
he reply under such circumstances, if some one were to
accuse him, saying, ' 0 my boys, many evil things has
this man done to you ; he is the death of you, especially of
the younger ones among you, cutting and burning and
starving and suffocating you, until you know not what to

1 Dialogues, ii. 345-6.
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AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

do ; he gives you the bitterest potions, and compels you
to hunger and fast ? How unlike the variety of meats
and sweets on which I feasted for you.' What do you
suppose that the physician would be able to reply when he
found himself in such a predicament ? If he told the
truth he could only say : ' All these evil things, my boys
I did for your health,' and then would there not just be a
clamour among a jury like that ? How they would cry
out ! " *

The principle of continuity, of uniformity, so staking
in ancient physics was transferred to the body, which, like
the world, was conceived as a whole. Several striking
passages illustrative of this are to be found. Thus to the
question of Socrates, " Do you think that you can know
the nature of the soul intelligently without knowing the
nature of the whole ? " Phsedrus replies, " Hippocrates,
the Asclepiad, says that the nature even of the body can
only be understood as a whole." 2 The importance of
treating the whole and not the part is insisted upon. In
the case of a patient who comes to them with bad eyes
the saying is " that they cannot cure his eyes by them-
selves, but that if his eyes are to be cured his head must be
treated " : and then again they say " that to think of
curing the head alone and not the rest of the body also is
the height of folly."

Charmides had been complaining of a headache, and
Critias had asked Socrates to make believe that he could
cure him of it. He said that he had a charm, which he
had learnt, when serving with the army, of one of the
physicians of the Thracian king, Zamolxis. This physi-

' Dialogues, ii. 415. 3 Ibid. i. 479.

63

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

cian had told Socrates that the cure of the part should not
be attempted without treatment of the whole, and also
that no attempt should be made to cure the body without
the soul, " and, therefore, if the head and body are to be
well you must begin by curing the soul ; that is the first
thing. . . . And he who taught me the cure and the charm
added a special direction, ' Let no one,' he said, ' persuade
you to cure the head until he has first given you his soul to
be cured. For this,' he said, ' is the great error of our day
in the treatment of the human body, that physicians sepa-
rate the soul from the body.' ' The charms to which he
referred were fair words by which temperance was im-
planted in the soul.1

Though a contemporary, Hippocrates is only once again
referred to in the Dialogues — where the young Hippocrates,
son of Apollodorus, who has come to Protagoras, " that
almighty wise man," as Socrates terms him in another
place, to learn the science and knowledge of human life,
is asked by Socrates, " If you were going to Hippocrates
of Cos, the Asclepiad, and were about to give him your
money, and some one had said to you, ' You are paying
money to your namesake, Hippocrates, 0 Hippocrates ;
tell me, what is he that you give him money ? ' how
would you have answered ? " "I should say," he replied,
" that I gave money to him as a physician." " And what
will he make of you ? " "A physician,' he said 2 — a
paragraph which would indicate that Hippocrates was in
the habit of taking pupils and teaching them the art of
medicine ; and in the Euthydemus, with reference to the
education of physicians, Socrates says, " that he would

1 Dialogues, i. 11-13. 2 Ibid. i. 131-2.

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AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

send such to those who profess the art, and to those who
demand payment for teaching the art, and profess to
teach it to any one who will come and learn."

We get a glimpse of the method of diagnosis, derived
doubtless from personal observation, possibly of the great
Hippocrates himself, whose critical knowledge of pulmo-
nary complaints we daily recognize in the use of his name
in association with the clubbed fingers of phthisis, and
with the succussion splash of pneumo-thorax. " Suppose
some one, who is inquiring into the health or some other
bodily quality of another : he looks at his face and at the
tips of his fingers, and then he says, * Uncover your chest
and back to me that I may have a better view.' " And then
Socrates says to Protagoras, " Uncover your mind to me ;
reveal your opinion, etc." 1

One of the most celebrated medical passages is that in
which Socrates professes the art of a midwife practising on
the souls of men when they are in labour, and diagnosing
their condition, whether pregnant with the truth or with
with some "darling folly." The entire section, though
long, must be quoted. Socrates is in one of his " little
difficulties " and wishes to know of the young Theaetetus,
who has been presented to him as a paragon of learning,
and whose progress in the path of knowledge has been sure
and smooth — " flowing on silently like a river of oil " —
what is knowledge ? Theaetetus is soon entangled and
cannot shake off a feeling of anxiety.

Thecet. I can assure you, Socrates, that I have tried very often,
when the report of questions asked by you was brought to me ;
but I can neither persuade myself that I have any answer to give,

1 Dialogues, i. 176.
AE, 65

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

nor hear of any one who answers as you would have him ; and I
cannot shake off a feeling of anxiety.

Soc. These are the pangs of labour, my dear Thesetetus ; you
have something within you which you are bringing to the birth.

Thecet. I do not know, Socrates ; I only say what I feel.

Soc. And did you never hear, simpleton, that I am the son of
a midwife, brave and burly, whose name was Phsenarete ?

Thecet. Yes, I have.

Soc. And that I myself practise midwifery ?

Thecct. No, never.

Soc. Let me tell you that I do though, my friend ; but you
must not reveal the secret, as the world in general have not found
me out ; and therefore they only say of me, that I am the strangest
of mortals, and drive men to their wits' end. Did you ever hear
that too ?

Thecet. Yes.

Soc. Shall I tell you the reason ?

Thecet. By all means.

Soc. Bear hi mind the whole business of the midwives, and then
you will see my meaning better. No woman, as you are probably
aware, who is still able to conceive and bear, attends other women,
but only those who are past bearing.

Thecet. Yes, I know.

Soc. The reason of this is said to bft that Artemis — the goddess
of childbirth — is not a mother, and she honours those who are like
herself ; but she could not allow the barren to be midwives, because
human nature cannot know the mystery of an art without ex-
perience ; and therefore she assigned this office to those who are
too old to bear.

Thecet. I dare say.

Soc. And I dare say, too, or rather I am absolutely certain,
that the midwives know better than others who is pregnant and
who is not ?

Thecet. Very true.

Soc. And by the use of potions and incantations they are able
to arouse the pangs and to soothe them at will ; they can make
those bear who have a difficulty in bearing, and if they think fit,
they can smother the embryo in the womb.

Thecet. They can.

Soc. Did you ever remark that they are also most cunning
matchmakers, and have a thorough knowledge of what unions are
likely to produce a brave brood ?

66

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

Thectt. No, never.

Soc. Then let me tell you that this is their greatest pride, more
than cutting the umbilical cord. And if you reflect, you will see
that the same art which cultivates and gathers in the fruits of the
earth, will be most likely to know in what soils the several plants
or seeds should be deposited.

Thecet. Yes, the same art.

Soc. And do you suppose that with women the case is otherwise.

Thecet. I should think not.

Soc. Certainly not ; but midwives are respectable women and
have a character to lose, and they avoid this department of their
profession, because they are afraid of being called procuresses,
which is a name given to those who join together man and woman
in an unlawful and unscientific way ; and yet the true midwife is
also the true and only matchmaker.

Theast. Clearly.

Soc. Such are the midwives, whose task is a very important
one, but not so important as mine ; for women do not bring into
the world at one time real children, and at another time counter-
feits which are with difficulty distinguished from them ; if they
did, then the discernment of the true and false birth would be the
crowning achievement of the art of midwifery — you would think
so?

Theast. Indeed I should.

Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs ;
but differs in that I attend men and not women, and I look after
their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies :
and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the
thought which the mind of the young man is bringing to the birth,
is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the midwives,
I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me,
that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them
myself, is very just ; the reason is, that the god compels me to be
a midwife, but forbids me to bring forth. And therefore I am not
myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the inven-
tion or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me
profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards,
as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all
make astonishing progress ; and this in the opinion of others as
well as their own. It is quite clear that they had never learned
anything from me ; the many fine discoveries to which they cling
are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their

67

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

delivery. And the proof of my words is, that many of them in
their ignorance, either in their self-conceit despising me, or falling
under the influence of others, have gone away too soon ; and have
not only lost the children of whom I had previously delivered them
by an ill bringing up, but have stifled whatever else they had in
them by evil communications, being fonder of lies and shams than
of the truth ; and they have at last ended by seeing themselves,
as others see them, to be great fools. Aristeides, the son of Lysi-
machus, is one of them,- and there are many others. The truants
often return to me, and beg that I would consort with them again
— they are ready to go to me on their knees — and then, if
my familiar allows, which is not always the case, I receive them
and they begin to grow again. Dire are the pangs which my art
is able to arouse and to allay in those who consort with me, just
like the pangs of women in childbirth ; night and day they are full
of perplexity and travail which is even worse than that of the
women. So much for them. And there are others, Thesetetus,
who come to me apparently having nothing in them ; and as I
know that they have no need of my art, I coax them into marrying
some one, and by the grace of God I can generally tell who is likely
to do them good. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus,
and many to other inspired sages. I tell you this long story, friend
Thesetetus, because I suspect, as indeed you seem to think yourself,
that you are in labour — great with some conception. Come
then to me, who am a midwife's son and myself a midwife, and try
to answer the questions which I will ask you. And if I abstract
and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that
the con eption which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not
quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when
their first children are taken from them. For I have actually
known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of
a darling folly ; they did not perceive that I acted from good will,
not knowing that no god is the enemy of man — that was not within
the range of their ideas ; neither am I their enemy in all this, but
it would be wrong in me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth.
Once more, then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question, " What ia
knowledge ? " and do not say that you cannot tell ; but quit your-
self like a man, and by the help of God you will be able to tell.1

Socrates proceeds to determine whether the intellectual

1 Dialogues, iv. 201-4.
68

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

babe brought forth by Theaetetus is a wind-egg or a real
and genuine birth. " This then is the child, however he
may turn out, which you and I have with difficulty brought
into the world, and now that he is born we must run round
the hearth with him and see whether he is worth rearing
or only a wind-egg and a sham. Is he to be reared in any
case and not exposed ? or will you bear to see him rejected
and not get into a passion if I take away your first-born ? "
The conclusion is " that you have brought forth wind, and
that the offspring of your brain are not worth bringing up.'*
And the dialogue ends as it began with a reference to the
midwife : " The office of a midwife I, like my mother, have
received from God ; she delivered women, and I deliver
men ; but they must be young and noble and fair."

Ill

From the writings of Plato we may gather many details
about the status of physicians in his time. It is very
evident that the profession was far advanced and had been
progressively developing for a long period before Hippo-
crates, whom we erroneously, yet with a certain propriety,
call the Father of Medicine. The little by-play between
Socrates and Euthydemus suggests an advanced condition
of medical literature : " Of course, you who have so many
books are going in for being a doctor," says Socrates, and
then he adds, " there are so many books on medicine, you
know." As Dyer remarks, whatever the quality of these
books may have been, their number must have been great
to give point to this chaff.

It may be clearly gathered from the writings of Plato
that two sorts of physicians (apart altogether from quacka

69

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

and the ^Esculapian guild) existed in Athens, the private
practitioner, and the State-physician. The latter, though
the smaller numerically, representing apparently the most
distinguished class. From a reference in one of the dia-
logues (Gorgias) they evidently were elected by public
assembly, — "when the assembly meets to elect a physi-
cian." 1 The office was apparently yearly, for in the
Statesman is the remark, " when the year of office has
expired, the pilot or physician has to come before a court
of review " to answer any charges that may be made against
him: In the same dialogue occurs the remark, " and if
anyone who is in a private station has the art to advise
one of the public physicians, must he not be called a physi-
cian ? " 2 Apparently a physician must have been in
practice for some time and attained great eminence before
he was deemed worthy of the post of State-physician.
" If you and I were physicians, and were advising one
another that we were competent to practise as state-physi-
cians, should I not ask you, and would you not ask me,
Well, but how about Socrates himself, has he good health ?
And was any one else ever known to be cured by him
whether slave or freeman ? " 3

A reference to the two sorts of doctors is also found in
the Republic ; " Now you know that when patients do
not require medicine, but have only to be put under a
regimen, the inferior sort of practitioner is deemed to be
good enough ; but when medicine has to be given, then
the doctor should be more of a man."

The office of State-physician was in existence fully two

i Dialogues, ii. 335. 2 Ibid. iv. 453, 502. 3 Ibid. ii. 407.

4 Ibid. iii. 153.

70

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

generations before this time, for Democedes held this post
at Athens in the second half of the sixth century at a salary
of £406, and, very much as a modern professor might be,
he was seduced away by the offer of a great increase in
salary by Poly crates, the tyrant of Samos. It is evident,
too, from the Laws, that the doctors had assistants, often
among the slaves.

For of doctors, as I may remind you, some have a* gentler, others
a ruder method of cure ; and as children ask the doctor to be gentle
with them, so we will ask the legislator to cure our disorders with
the gentlest remedies. What I mean to say is, that besides doctors
there are doctors' servants, who are also styled doctors.

Cle. Very true.

(Eih. And whether they are slaves or freemen makes no differ-
ence ; they acquire their knowledge of medicine by obeying and
observing their masters ; empirically and not according to the
natural way of learning, as the manner of freemen «is, who have
learned scientifically themselves the art which they impart scien-
tifically to their pupils. You are aware that there are these two
classes of doctors ?

Cle. To be sure.

(Eih. And did you ever observe that there are two classes of
patients in states, slaves and freemen ; and the slave doctors run
about and cure the slaves, or wait for them in the dispensaries —
practitioners of this sort never talk to their patients individually,
or let them talk about their own individual complaints ? The
slave-doctor prescribes what mere experience suggests, as if he had
exact knowledge ; and when he has given his orders, like a tyrant,
he rushes off with equal assurance to some other servant who is ill ;
and so he relieves the master of the house of the care of his invalid
slaves. But the other doctor, who is a freeman, attends and
practises upon freemen ; and he carries his inquiries far back, and
goes into the nature of the disorder ; he enters into discourse with
the patient and with his friends, and is at once getting information
from the sick man, and also instructing him as far as he is able, and
he will not prescribe for him until he has first convinced him ;
at last, when he has brought the patient more and more under his
persuasive influences and set him on the road to health, he attempts

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PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

to effect a cure. Now which is the better way of proceeding in a
physician and in a trainer ? Is he the better who accomplishes
his ends in a double way, or he who works in one way, and that the
ruder and inferior ? *

This idea of first convincing a patient by argument is
also mentioned in the Gorgias, and would appear indeed
to have furnished occupation for some of the numerous
sophists of that period. Gorgias, lauding the virtues of
rhetoric and claiming that she holds under her sway all
the inferior art, says : " Let me offer you a striking ex-
ample of this. On several occasions I have been with my
brother Herodicus, or some other physician, to see one of
his patients, who would not allow the physician to give
him medicine or apply the knife or hot iron to him ; and
I have persuaded him to do for me what he would not do
for the physician just by the use of rhetoric. And I say
that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city,
and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly
as to which of them should be elected state-physician, the
physician would have no chance ; but he who could speak
would be chosen if he wished." 2 In another place (Laws)
Plato satirizes this custom : " For of this you may be very
sure, that if one of those empirical physicians, who practise
medicine without science, were to come upon the gentle-
man physician talking to his gentleman patient, and using
the language almost of philosophy — beginning at the
beginning of the disease, and discoursing about the whole
nature of the body, he would burst into a hearty laugh —
he would say what most of those who are called doctors
always have at their tongue's end : foolish fellow, he would

1 Dialogues, v. 103-4. 2 Ibid. ii. 336.

72

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

say, you are not healing the sick man, but you are educa-
ting him ; and he does not want to be made a doctor, but
to get well." *

Of the personal qualifications of the physician not much
is said ; but in the Republic (III. 408) there is an original,
and to us not very agreeable, idea : " Now the most skilful
physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have
combined with a knowledge of their art, the greatest ex-
perience of disease ; they had better not be in robust
health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their
own'person. For the body, as I conceive, is not the in-
strument with which they cure the body ; in that case we
could not allow them ever to be or to have been sickly ;
but they cure the body with the mind, and the mind which
has become and is sick can cure nothing." 2

Some idea of the estimate which Plato put on the physi-
cian may be gathered from the mystical account in the
Phcedrus of the nature of the soul and of life in the upper
world. We are but animated failures — the residua of the
souls above, which have attained a vision of truth, but
have fallen " hence beneath the double load of forgetful-
ness and vice." There are nine grades of human existence
into which these souls may pass, from that of a philosopher
or artist to that of a tyrant. The physician or lover of
gymnastic toils comes in the fourth class.3

But if Plato assigns the physician a place in the middle
tier in his mystery, he welcomes him socially into the
most select and aristocratic circle of Athens. In that
most festive of all festal occasions, at the house of Agathon;
described in the Symposium, Eryximachus, a physician

1 Dialogues, v. 240. * Ibid. iii. 96. 3 ibid. i. 454.

73

PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

and the son of one, is a chief speaker, and in his praise of
love says, " from medicine I will begin that I may do
honour to my art." We find him, too, on the side of tem-
perance and sobriety : " The weak heads like myself,
Aristodemus, Phaedrus, and others who never can drink,
are fortunate in finding that the stronger ones are not in a
drinking mood. (I do not include Socrates, who is able
either to drink or to abstain, and will not mind, which-
ever we do.) Well, as none of the company seem disposed
to drink much, I may be forgiven for saying, as a physician,
that drinking deep is a bad practice, which I never follow,
if I can help, and certainly do not recommend to another,
least of all to any one who still feels the effect of yester-
day's carouse." The prescriptions for hiccough, given by
Eryximachus, give verisimilitude to the dialogue. When
the turn of Aristophanes came he had eaten too much and
had the hiccough, and he said to Eryximachus, " You
ought either to stop my hiccough or speak in my turn."
Eryximachus recommended him to hold his breath, or if
that failed to gargle with a little water, and if the hic-
cough still continued, to tickle his nose with something
and sneeze, adding, " if you sneeze once or twice even the
most violent hiccough is sure to go." 1

Upon the medical symptoms narrated in that memo-
rable scene, unparalleled in literature, after Socrates had
drank the poison in prison, it is unnecessary to dwell ;
but I may refer to one aspect as indicating the reverence
felt for the representative of the great Healer. Denied
his wish (by the warning of the jailor, who says that there is
only sufficient poison) to offer a libation to a god, Socrates'

1 Dialogues, i. 546, 555, 556.

74

AS DEPICTED IN PLATO

dying words were, " Crito, we owe a cock to ^Esculapius."
" The meaning of this solemnly smilhig farewell of Socrates
would seem to be," according to Dyer, " that to ^Escula-
pius, a god who always is prescribing potions and whose
power is manifest in their effects, was due that most wel-
come and sovereign remedy which cured all the pains and
ended all the woes of Socrates — the hemlock, which cured
him of life which is death, and gave him the glorious reali-
ties of hereafter. For this great boon of awakening into
real life Socrates owed ^Esculapius a thankoffering. This
offering of a cock to ^Esculapius was plainly intended for
him as the awakener of the dead to life everlasting."

And permit me to conclude this already too long account
with the eulogium of Professor Jowett — words worthy of
the master, worthy of his great interpreter to this genera-
tion :

" More than two thousand two hundred years have
passed away since he returned to the place of Apollo and
the Muses. Yet the echo of his words continues to be
heard among men, because of all philosophers he has the
most melodious voice. He is the inspired prophet or
teacher who can never die, the only one in whom the out-
ward form adequately represents the fair soul within ; in
whom the thoughts of all who went before him are reflected
and of all who come after him are partly anticipated.
Other teachers of philosophy are dried up and withered —
after a few centuries they have become dust ; but he is
fresh and blooming, and is always begetting new ideas in
the minds of men. They are one-sided and abstract ;
but he has many sides of wisdom. Nor is he always con-
sistent with himself, because he is always moving onward,

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PHYSIC AND PHYSICIANS

and knows that there are many more things in philosophy
than can be expressed in words, and that truth is greater
than consistency. He who approaches him in the most
reverent spirit shall reap most of the fruits of his wisdom ;
he who reads him by the light of ancient commentators
will have the least understanding of him.

" We may see him with the eye of the mind in the groves
of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, or in the
streets of Athens, alone or walking with Socrates, full of
these thoughts which have since become the common
possession of mankind. Or we may compare him to a
statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no
longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of
the God himself. Or we may once more imagine him
following in another state of being the great company of
heaven which he beheld of old in a vision (Phcedrus, 248).
So, ' partly trifling but with a degree of seriousness ' (Sym-
posium, 197, E), we linger around the memory of a world
which has passed away (Phwdrus, 250, C)."

76

V
THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE

77

Knowledge conies, but wisdom lingers.

Locksley Hall, TENNYSON.

Who loves not knowledge ? Who shall rail
Against her beauty ? May she mix
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix

Her pillars ? Let her work prevail.

In Memoriam, CXIV, TENNYSON

78

THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE1

I

IN the continual remembrance of a glorious past indi-
viduals and nations find their noblest inspiration, and
if to-day this inspiration, so valuable for its own sake, so
important in its associations, is weakened, is it not because
in the strong dominance of the individual, so characteristic
of a democracy, we have lost the sense of continuity ? As
we read in Roman history of the ceremonies commemorative
of the departed, and of the scrupulous care with which,
even at such private festivals as the Ambarvalia, the dead
were invoked and remembered, we appreciate, though
feebly, the part which this sense of continuity played in
the lives of their successors — an ennobling, influence,
through which the cold routine of the present received a
glow of energy from " the touch divine of noble natures
tone." In our modern lives no equivalent to this feeling
exists, and the sweet and gracious sense of an ever-present
immortality, recognized so keenly and so closely in the
religion of Numa, has lost all value to us. We are even
impatient of those who would recall the past, and who

1 Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University
of Pennsylvania, 1894.

79

THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE

would insist upon the importance of its recognition as a
factor in our lives, impatient as we are of everything save
the present with its prospects, the future with its possi-
bilities. Year by year the memory of the men who made
this institution fades from out the circle of the hills, and
the shadow of oblivion falls de°~ deeper over their

forms, until a portrp1'* le alone, remains

to link th^ "* -^ oe forgotten seems

i*" -~v a, sense of melancholy do we

«ue daily life of three thousand students
. ^achers is passed heedless of the fame, careless of the
renown of these men ; and in the second state sublime it
must sadden the " circle of the wise," as they cast their
eyes below, to look down on festivals in which they play
no part, on gatherings in which their names are neither
invoked nor blessed. But ours the loss, since to us, distant
in humanity, the need is ever present to cherish the me-
mories of the men who in days of trial and hardship laid
on broad lines the foundations of the old colonial colleges.

To-day, through the liberality of General Wistar, we
dedicate a fitting monument to one of the mighty dead of
the University — Caspar Wistar. The tribute of deeds
has already been paid to him in this splendid structure,
to all in the stately group of academic buildings which you
now see adorning the campus— the tribute of words remains,
to be able to offer which I regard a very special honour.

But as this is an Institute of Anatomy, our tribute to-
day may be justly restricted, in its details at least, to a
eulogy upon the men who have taught the subject in this
University. About the professorship of anatomy cluster
memories which give it precedence of all others, and in the

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eeptemviri of the old school the chairs were arranged, with
that of anatomy in the centre, with those of physiology,
chemistry, and materia medica on the left, and with those
of practice, surgery, and obstetrics on the right. With the
revival of learning anatomy brought life and liberty to the
healing art, and throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries the great names of the profession,
with but one or two exceptions, are those of the great anat-
omists. The University of Pennsylvania has had an extra-
ordinary experience in the occupancy of this important
chair. In the century and a quarter which ended with the
death of Leidy, six names appear on the faculty roll as
professors of this branch. Dorsey, however, only delivered
the introductory lecture to the course, and was seized the
same evening with his fatal illness ; and in the next year
Physick was transferred from the chair of surgery, with
Homer as his adjunct. In reality, therefore, only four
men have taught anatomy in this school since its foundation.
Physick' s name must ever be associated with the chair of
surgery. We do not know the faculty exigencies which
led to the transfer, but we can readily surmise that the
youthfulness of Horner, who was only twenty-six, and the
opportunity of niching for surgery so strong a man as Gibson
from the Faculty of the University of Maryland, then a
stout rival, must have been among the most weighty con-
siderations.

If in the average length of the period of each incumbency
the chair of anatomy in the University is remarkable, much
more so is it for the quality of the men who followed each
other at such long intervals. It is easy to praise the
Athenians among the Athenians, but where is the school

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in this country which can show such a succession of names
in this branch : Shippen, the first teacher of anatomy ;
Wistar, the author of the first text-book of anatomy ;
Horner, the first contributor to human anatomy in this
country ; and Leidy, one of the greatest comparative
anatomists of his generation ? Of European schools,
Edinburgh alone presents a parallel picture, as during the
same period only four men have held the chair. The long-
evity and tenacity of the three Monros have become pro-
verbial ; in succession they held the chair of anatomy for
126 years. Shortly before the foundation of this school
Monro secundus had succeeded his father, and taught un-
interruptedly for fifty years. His son, Monro tertius, held
the chair for nearly the same length of time, and the re-
mainder of the period has been covered by the occupancy
of John Goodsir, and his successor, Sir William Turner,
the present incumbent.

To one feature in the history of anatomy in this school
I must refer in passing. Shippen was a warm personal
friend and house-pupil of John Hunter. Physick not only
had the same advantages, but became in addition his house-
surgeon at St. George's Hospital. Both had enjoyed the
intimate companionship of the most remarkable observer
of nature since Aristotle, of a man with wider and more
scientific conceptions and sympathies than had ever before
been united in a member of our profession, and whose funda-
mental notions of disease are only now becoming prevalent.
Can we doubt that from this source was derived the power-
ful inspiration which sustained these young men. One
of them, on his return from England, at once began the
first anatomical classes which were held in the colonies ;

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the other entered upon that career so notable and so honour-
able, which led to the just title of the Father of American
Surgery. It is pleasant to think that direct from John
Hunter came the influence which made anatomy so strong
in this school, and that zeal in the acquisition of specimens
which ultimately led to the splendid collections of the
Wistar-Horner Museum.

William Shippen the younger shares with John Morgan
the honour of establishing medical instruction in this city.
When students in England they had discussed plans, but it
was Morgan who seems to have had the ear of the trustees,
and who broached a definite scheme in his celebrated
"Discourse," delivered in May, 1765. It was not until
the autumn of the year that Shippen signified to the board
his willingness to accept a professorship of anatomy and
surgery. He had enjoyed, as I have mentioned, the friend-
ship of John Hunter, and had studied also with his cele-
brated brother, William. Associated with him as fellow-
pupil was William Hewson, who subsequently became so
famous as an anatomist and physiologist, and as the dis-
coverer of the leucocytes of the blood, and whose descend-
dants have been so prominent in the profession of this city.
No wonder, then, with such an education, that Shippen,
on his return in 1762, in his twenty-sixth year, should have
begun a course of lectures in anatomy, the introductory
to which was delivered in the State House on November 16.
To him belongs the great merit of having made a beginning,
and of having brought from the Hunters methods and
traditions which long held sway in this school. Wistar
in his eulogium pays a warm tribute to his skill as a lecturer
and as a demonstrator, and to the faithfulness with which

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he taught the subject for more than forty years. Apart
from his connection with this institution he served as
Director-General of the Military Hospitals from 1777 to
1781, and was the second president of the College of Phy-
sicians.

In the history of the profession of this country Caspar
Wistar holds an unique position. He is its Avicenna, its
Mead, its Fothergill, the very embodiment of the physician
who, to paraphrase the words of Armstrong, used by Wistar
in his Edinburgh Graduation Thesis, " Sought the cheerful
haunts of men, and mingled with the bustling crowd."
He taught anatomy in this school as adjunct and professor
for twenty-six years. From the records of his contem-
poraries we learn that he was a brilliant teacher, " the
idol of his class," as one of his eulogists says. As an anat-
omist he will be remembered as the author of the first
American Text-Book on Anatomy, a work which was
exceedingly popular, and ran through several editions.
His interest in the subject was not, however, of the " knife
and fork " kind, for he was an early student of mammalian
palaeontology, in the development of which one of his
successors was to be a chief promoter. But Wistar's
claim to remembrance rests less upon his writings than
upon the impress which remains to this day of his methods
of teaching anatomy. Speaking of these, Horner, who
was his adjunct and intimate associate, in a letter dated
February 1, 1818, says, " In reviewing the several parti-
culars of his course of instruction, it is difficult to say in
what part his chief merit consisted ; he undertook every-
thing with so much zeal, and such a conscientious desire
to benefit those who came to be instructed by him, that

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he seldom failed of giving the most complete satisfaction.
There were, however, some parts of his course pecvdiar to
himself. These were the addition of models on a very
large scale to illustrate small parts of the human structure ;
and the division of the general class into a number of sub-
classes, each of which he supplied with a box of bones, in
order that they might become thoroughly acquainted
with the human skeleton, a subject which is acknow-
ledged by all to be at the very foundation of anatomical
knowledge. The idea of the former mode of instruction
was acted on for the first time about fifteen years ago."
We have no knowledge of a collection of specimens by
Shippen, though it is hard to believe that he could have
dwelt in John Hunter's house and remained free from the
insatiable hunger for specimens which characterized his
master. But the establishment of a museum as an impor-
tant adjunct to the medical school was due to Wistar,
whose collections formed the nucleus of the splended array
which you will inspect to-day. The trustees, in accepting
the gift on the death of Dr. Wistar, agreed that it should
be styled the Wistar Museum, and now, after the lapse
of seventy -six years, the collection has found an appro-
priate home in an Institute of Anatomy which bears his
honoured name.

But Wistar has established a wider claim to remem-
brance. Genial and hospitable, he reigned supreme in
society by virtue of exceptional qualities of heart and
head, and became, in the language of Charles Caldwell,
" the sensorium commune of a large circle of friends."
About no other name in our ranks cluster such memories
of good fellowship and good cheer, and it stands to-day in

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this city a synonym for esprit and social intercourse.
Year by year his face, printed on the invitations to the
" Wistar Parties " (still an important function of winter
life in Philadelphia) perpetuates the message of his life,
" Go seek the cheerful haunts of men."

How different was the young prosector and adjunct who
next taught the subject ! Horner was naturally reserved
and diffident, and throughout his life those obstinate ques-
tionings which in doubt and suffering have so often wrung
the heart of man were ever present. Fightings within and
fears without harassed his gentle and sensitive soul, on
which mortality weighed heavily, and to which the four
last things were more real than the materials in which he
worked. He has left us a journal intime, in which he found,
as did Amiel, of whom he was a sort of medical prototype,
" a safe shelter wherein his questionings of fate and the
future, the voice of grief, of self-examination and confession,
the soul's cry for inward peace, might make themselves
freely heard." Listen to him : "I have risen early in
the morning, ere yet the watchman had cried the last hour
of his vigil, and in undisturbed solitude giving my whole
heart and understanding to my Maker, prayed fervently
that I might be enlightened on this momentous subject,
that I might be freed from the errors of an excited imagina-
tion, from the allurements of personal friendship, from
the prejudices of education, and that I might, under the
influence of Divine grace, be permitted to settle this ques-
tion in its true merits." How familiar is the cry, the great
and exceeding bitter cry of the strong soul in the toils and
doubtful of the victory ! Horner, however, was one of
those on whom both blessings rested. Facing the spectres

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of the mind, he laid them, and reached the desired haven.
In spite of feeble bodily health and fits of depression, he
carried on his anatomical studies with zeal, and as an ori-
ginal worker and author brought much reputation to the
University. Particularly he enriched the museum with
many valuable preparations, and his name will ever be
associated with that of Wistar in the anatomical collection
which bears their names.

But what shall I say of Leidy, the man in whom the
leaven of science wrought with labour and travail for so
many years ? The written record survives, scarcely
equalled in variety and extent by any naturalist, but how
meagre is the picture of the man as known to his friends.
The traits which made his life of such value — the patient
spirit, the kindly disposition, the sustained zeal — we shall
not see again incarnate. The memory of them alone re-
mains. As the echoes of the eulogies upon his life have
scarcely died away, I need not recount to this audience his
ways and work, but upon one aspect of his character I may
dwell for a moment, as illustrating an influence of science
which has attracted much attention and aroused discussion.
So far as the facts of sense were concerned, there was not
a trace of Pyrrhonism in his composition, but in all that
relates to the ultra-rational no more consistent disciple of
the great sceptic ever lived. There was in him, too, that
delightful " ataraxia," that imperturbability which is the
distinguishing feature of the Pyrrhonist, in the truest sense
of the word. A striking parallel exists between Leidy
and Darwin in this respect, and it is an interesting fact
that the two men of this century who have lived in closest
intercourse with nature should have found full satisfaction

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in their studies and in their domestic affections. In the
autobiographical section of the life of Charles Darwin,
edited by his son Francis, in which are laid bare with such
charming frankness the inner thoughts of the great natura-
list, we find that he, too, had reached in suprasensuous
affairs that state of mental imperturbability in which, to
borrow the quaint expression of Sir Thomas Browne, they
stretched not his pia mater. But while acknowledging
that in science scepticism is advisable, Darwin says that
he was not himself very sceptical. Of these two men, alike
in this point, and with minds distinctly of the Aristotelian
type, Darwin yet retained amid an overwhelming accumula-
tion of facts — and here was his great superiority — an extra-
ordinary power of generalizing principles from them. Defi-
cient as was this quality in Leidy, he did not, on the other
hand, experience " the curious and lamentable loss of the
higher aesthetic taste " which Darwin mourned, and which
may have been due in part to protracted ill health, and to
an absolute necessity of devoting all his powers to collecting
facts in support of his great theory.

When I think of Leidy's simple life, of his devotion to
the study of nature, of the closeness of his communion with
her for so many years, there recur to my mind time and
again the lines, —

He is made one with nature : there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ;
He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may more

Which has withdrawn his being to its own,

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II

Turning from the men to the subject in which they worked,
from the past to the present, let us take a hasty glance at
some of the developments of human anatomy and biology.
Truth has been well called the daughter of Time, and even
in anatomy, which is a science in a state of fact, the point
of view changes with successive generations. The following
story, told by Sir Robert Christison, of Barclay, one of the
leading anatomists of the early part of this century, illus-
trates the old attitude of mind still met with among " bread
and butter " teachers of the subject. Barclay spoke to
his class as follows : " Gentlemen, while carrying on your
work in the dissecting-room, beware of making anatomical
discoveries ; and above all beware of rushing with them
into print. Our precursors have left us little to discover.
You may, perhaps, fall in with a supernumerary muscle or
tendon, a slight deviation or extra branchlet of an artery,
or, perhaps, a minute stray twig of a nerve — that will be
all. But beware ! Publish the fact, and ten chances to
one you will have it shown that you have been forestalled
long ago. Anatomy may be likened to a harvest-field.
First come the reapers, who, entering upon untrodden
ground, cut down great store of corn from all sides of them.
These are the early anatomists of modern Europe, such as
Vesalius, Fallopius, Malpighi, and Harvey: Then come
the gleaners, who gather up ears enough from the bare
ridges to make a few loaves of bread. Such were the
anatomists of last century — Valsalva, Cotunnius, Haller,-
Winslow, Vicq d'Azyr, Camper, Hunter, and the two
Monros. Last of all come the geese, who still contrive to
pick up a few grains scattered here and there among the

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stubble, and waddle home in the evening, poor things,
cackling with joy because of their succeess. Gentlemen,
we are the geese." Yes, geese they were, gleaning amid
the stubble of a restricted field, when the broad acres of
biology were open before them. Those were the days
when anatomy meant a knowledge of the human frame
alone ; and yet the way had been opened to the larger view
by the work of John Hunter, whose comprehensive mind
grasped as proper subjects of study for the anatomist all
the manifestations of life in order and disorder.

The determination of structure with a view to the dis-
covery of function has been the foundation of progress.
The meaning may not always have been for " him who
runs to read ; " often, indeed, it has been at the time far
from clear ; and yet a knowledge in full detail of the form
and relations must precede a correct physiology. The
extraordinary development of all the physical sciences,
and the corresponding refinement of means of research,
have contributed most largely to the enlightenment of the
" geese " of Barclay's witticism. Take the progress in any
one department which has a practical aspect, such as, in
the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. Read,
for example, in the third edition of Wistar's Anatomy,
edited by Horner in 1825, the description of the convolu-
tions of the brain, on which to-day a whole army of special
students are at work, medical, surgical, and anthropological,
and the functions of which are the objective point of physio-
logical and psychological research — the whole subject is
thus disposed of : " The surface of the brain resembles that
of the mass of the small intestine, or of a convoluted, cylin-
drical tube ; it is, therefore, said to be convoluted. The

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fissures between these convolutions do not extend very
deep into the substance of the brain." The knowledge of
function correlated with this meagre picture of structure
is best expressed, perhaps, in Shakespearian diction, " that
when the brains were out, the man would die." The
laborious, careful establishment of structure by the first
two generations in this century led to those brilliant dis-
coveries in the functions of the nervous system which have
not only revolutionized medicine, but have almost enabled
psychologists to dispense with metaphysics altogether.
It is particularly interesting to note the widespread depend-
ence of many departments on accurate anatomical know-
ledge. The new cerebral anatomy, particularly the study
of the surface of the brain, so summarily dismissed in a
few lines by Wistar, made plain the path for Hitzig and
Fritsch, the careful dissection of cases of disease of the
brain prepared the way for Hughlings Jackson ; and gra-
dually a new phrenology on a scientific basis has replaced
the crude notions of Gall and Spurzheim ; so that with the
present generation, little by little, there has been established
on a solid structure of anatomy, the localization of many
of the functions of the brain. Excite with a rough touch,
from within or from without, a small region of that mysteri-
ous surface, and my lips may move, but not in the articu-
late expression of thought, and I may see, but I cannot
read the page before me ; touch here and sight is gone,
and there again and hearing fails. One by one the centres
may be touched which preside over the muscles, and they
may, singly or together, lose their power. All these func-
tions may go without the loss of consciousness. Touch
with the slow finger of Time the nutrition of that thin

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layer, and backward by slow degrees creep the intellectual
faculties, back to childish simplicity, back to infantile
silliness, back to the oblivion of the womb.

To this new cerebral physiology, which has thus grad-
ually developed with increasing knowledge of structure,
the study of cases of disease has contributed enormously,
and to-day the diagnosis of affections of the nervous system
has reached an astonishing degree of accuracy. The inter-
dependence and sequence of knowledge in various branches
of science is nowhere better shown than in this very subject.
The facts obtained by precise anatomical investigation,
from experiments on animals in the laboratory, from the
study of nature's experiments upon us in disease, slowly
and painfully acquired by many minds in many lands,
have brought order out of the chaos of fifty years ago. In a
practical age this vast change has wrought a corresponding
alteration in our ideas of what may or may not be done in
the condition of perverted health which we call disease, and
we not only know better what to do, but also what to leave
undone. The localization of centres in the surface of the
brain has rendered it possible to make, with a considerable
degree of certainty, the diagnosis of focal disease, and
Macewen and Horsley have supplemented the new cerebral
physiology and pathology by a new cerebro-spinal surgery,
the achievements of which are scarcely credible.

But this is not all ; in addition to the determination of
the centres of sight, hearing, speech, and motor activities,
we are gradually reaching a knowledge of the physical
basis of mental phenomena. The correlation of intelli-
gence and brain weight, of mental endowment and in-
creased convolution of the brain surface, was recognized

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even by the gleaners of Barclay's story ; but within the
past twenty-five years the minute anatomy of the organ
has been subjected to extensive study by methods of ever-
increasing delicacy, which have laid bare its complex
mechanism. The pyramidal cells of the cerebral grey
matter constitute the anatomical basis of thought, and
with the development, association, and complex connection
of these psychical cells, as they have been termed, the
psychical functions are correlated. How far these mechan-
ical conceptions have been carried, may be gathered from
the recent Croonian Lecture before the Royal Society, in
which Ramon y Cajal based the action and the degree, and
the development of intelligence upon the complexity of
the cell mechanism and its associations. Even the physical
basis of moody madness has not evaded demonstration.
Researches upon the finer structure of the cerebral cortex
lead to the conclusion that imbecility, mental derange-
ment, and the various forms of insanity are but symptoms
of diseased conditions of the pyramidal cells, and not separ-
ate affections of an indefinable entity, the mind. Still
further ; there is a school of anthropologists which strives
to associate moral derangement with physical abnormali-
ties, particularly of the brain, and urges a belief in a cri-
minal psychosis, in which men are " villains by necessity,
fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers
by spherical predominance." This remarkable revolution
in our knowledge of brain functions has resulted directly
from the careful and accurate study by Barclay's " geese,"
of the anatomy of the nervous system. Truly the gleaming
of the grapes of Ephraim has been better than the vintage
of Abi-ezer.

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The study of structure, however, as the basis of vital
phenomena, the strict province of anatomy, forms but a
small part of the wide subject of biology, which deals with
the multiform manifestations of life, and seeks to know
the laws governing the growth, development, and actions
of living things. John Hunter, the master of Shippen
and Physick, was the first great biologist of the moderns,
not alone because of his extraordinary powers of observa-
tion and the comprehensive sweep of his intellect, but
chiefly because he first looked at life as a whole, and studied
all of its manifestations, in order and disorder, in health
and in disease. He first, in the words of Buckle, " deter-
mined to contemplate nature as a vast and united whole,
exhibiting, indeed, at different times, different appearances,
but preserving amidst every change, a principle of uniform
and uninterrupted order, admitting of no division, under-
going no disturbance, and presenting no real irregularity,
albeit to the common eye irregularities abound on every
side." We of the medical profession may take no little
pride in the thought that there have never been wanting
men in our ranks who have trodden in the footsteps of this
great man ; not only such giants as Owen, Huxley, and
Leidy, but in a more humble way many of the most diligent
students of biology have been physicians. From John
Hunter to Charles Darwin enormous progress was made in
every department of zoology and botany, and not only in
the accumulation of facts relating to structure, but in the
knowledge of function, so that the conception of the phe-
nomena of living matter was progressively widened. Then
with the Origin of Species came the awakening, and the
theory of evolution has not only changed the entire aspect

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of biology, but has revolutionized every department of
human thought.

Even the theory itself has come within the law ; and to
those of us whose biology is ten years old, the new concep-
tions are, perhaps, a little bewildering. The recent litera-
ture shows, however, a remarkable fertility and strength.
Around the nature of cell-organization the battle wages
most fiercely, and here again the knowledge of structure is
sought eagerly as the basis of explanation of the vital
phenomena. So radical have been the changes in this
direction that a new and complicated terminology has
sprung up, and the simple, undiiferentiated bit of proto-
plasm has now its cytosome, cytolymph, caryosome, chro-
mosome, with their somacules and biophores. These
accurate studies in the vital units have led to material
modifications in the theory of descent. Weismann's views,
particularly on the immortality of the unicellular organisms!
and of the reproductive cells of the higher forms, and on
the transmission or non-transmission of acquired characters,
have been based directly upon studies of cell-structure and
cell-fission.

In no way has biological science so widened the thoughts
of_men as in its application to social problems. That
throughout the ages, in the gradual evolution of life, one
unceasing purpose runs; that progress comes through
unceasing competition, through unceasing selection and
rejection ; in a word, that evolution is the one great law
controlling aU living things, " the one divine event to which
the whole creation moves," this conception has been the
great gift of biology to the nineteenth century. In his
work on Social Evolution, Kidd thus states the problem in

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clear terms: "Nothing tends to exhibit more strikingly \
the extent to which the study of our social phenomena!
must in future be based on the biological sciences, than the !
fact that the technical controversy now being waged by
biologists as to the transmission or non-transmission toj
offspring of qualities acquired during the lifetime of the!
parent, is one which, if decided in the latter sense, must
produce the most revolutionary effect throughout the
whole domain of social and political philosophy. If the old
view is correct, and the effects of use and education are
transmitted by inheritance, then the Utopian dreams of
philosophy in the past are undoubtedly possible of realiza-
tion. If we tend to inherit in our own persons the result
of the education and mental and moral culture of past
generations, then we may venture to anticipate a future
society which will not deteriorate, but which may continue
to make progress, even though the struggle for existence
be suspended, the population regulated exactly to the
means of subsistence, and the antagonism between the
individual and the social organism extinguished. But if
the views of the Weismann party are in the main correct ;
if there can be no progress except by the accumulation of
congenital variations above the average to the exclusion
of others below ; if, without the constant stress of selection
which this involves, the tendency of every higher form of
life is actually retrograde; then is the whole human race
caught in the toils of that struggle and rivalry of life which
has been in progress from the beginning. Then must the
rivalry of existence continue, humanized as to conditions
it may be, but immutable and inevitable to the end. Then
also must all the phenomena of human life^ individual,

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political, social, and religious, be considered as aspects of
this cosmic process, capable of being studied and under-
stood by science only in their relations thereto." *

Biology touches the problems of life at every point, and
may claim, as no other science, completeness of view and a
comprehensiveness which pertains to it alone. To all
whose daily work lies in her manifestations the value of
a deep insight into her relations cannot be overestimated.
The study of biology trains the mind in accurate methods
of observation and correct methods of reasoning, and gives
to a man clearer points of view, and an attitude of mind
more serviceable in the working-day-world than that given
by other sciences, or even by the humanities. Year by
year it is to be hoped that young men will obtain in this
Institute a fundamental knowledge of the laws of life.

To the physician particularly a scientific discipline is an
incalculable gift, which leavens his whole life, giving exact-
ness to habits of thought and tempering the mind with that
judicious faculty of distrust which can alone, amid the
uncertainties of practice, make him wise unto salvation.
For perdition inevitably awaits the mind of the practi-
tioner who has never had the full inoculation with the
leaven, who has never grasped clearly the relations of
science to his art, and who knows nothing, and perhaps
cares less, for the limitations of either.

And I may be permitted on higher grounds to congratu-
late the University of Pennsylvania on the acquisition of
this Institute. There is great need in the colleges of this
country of men who are thinkers as well as workers — men
with ideas, men who have drunk deep of the Astral wine,

1 Social Evolution. By Benjamin Kidd. London. 1894.
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and whose energies are not sapped in the tread-mill of the
class-room. In these laboratories will be given opportuni-
ties for this higher sort of university work. The conditions
about us are changing rapidly : in the older states utility
is no longer regarded as the test of fitness, and the value of
the intellectual life has risen enormously in every depart-
ment. Germany must be our model in this respect. She
is great because she has a large group of men pursuing
pure science with unflagging industry, with self-denying
zeal, and with high ideals. No secondary motives sway
their minds, no cry reaches them in the recesses of their
laboratories, " of what practical utility is your work ? "
but, unhampered by social or theological prejudices, they
have been enabled to cherish " the truth which has never
been deceived — that complete truth which carries with it
the antidote against the bane and danger which follow in
the train of half -knowledge." (Helmholtz.)

The leaven of science gives to men habits of mental
accuracy, modes of thought which enlarge the mental
vision, and strengthens — to use an expression of Epichar-
mus — " the sinews of the understanding." But is there
nothing further ? Has science, the last gift of the gods,
no message of hope for the race as a whole ; can it do no
more than impart to the individual imperturbability amid
the storms of life, judgment in times of perplexity ? Where
are the bright promises of the days when " the kindly
earth should slumber rapt in universal law " ? Are these,
then, futile hopes, vain imaginings of the dreamers, who
from Plato to Comte have sought for law, for order, for the
civitas Dei in the regnum hominis ?

Science has done much, and will do more, to alleviate

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the unhappy condition in which so many millions of our
fellow-creatures live, and in no way more than in mitigating
some of the horrors of disease ; but we are too apt to forget
that apart from and beyond her domain lie those irresistible
forces which alone sway the hearts of men. With >reason
science never parts company, but with feeling, emotion,
passion, what has she to do ? They are not of her ; they
owe her no allegiance. She may study, analyze, and define,
she can never control them, and by no possibilty can their
ways be justified to her. The great philosopher who took
such a deep interest in the foundation of this University,
chained the lightnings, but who has chained the wayward
spirit of man ? Strange compound, now wrapt in the
ecstasy of the beatific vision, now wallowing in the sloughs
of iniquity, no leaven, earthly or divine, has worked any
permanent change in him. Listen to the words of a student
of the heart of man, a depictor of his emotions : " In all
ages the reason of the world has been at the mercy of brute
force. The reign of law has never had more than a passing
reality, and never can have more than that so long as man
is human. The individual intellect, and the aggregate
intelligence of nations and races, have alike perished in the
struggle of mankind, to revive again, indeed, but as surely
to be again put to the edge of the sword. Look where
you will throughout the length and breadth of all that was
the world, 5000 or 500 years ago ; everywhere passion has
swept thought before it, and belief, reason. Passion rules
the world, and rules alone. And passion is neither of the
head nor of the hand, but of the heart. Love, hate, ambi-
tion, anger, avarice, either make a slave of intelligence to
serve their impulses, or break down its impotent opposition

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THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE

with the unanswerable argument of brute force, and tear
it to pieces with iron hands." (Marion Crawford.)

Who runs may read the scroll which reason has placed
as a warning over the human menageries : " chained, not
tamed." And yet who can doubt that the leaven of science,
working in the individual, leavens in some slight degree
the whole social fabric. Reason is at least free, or nearly
so ; the shackles of dogma have been removed, and faith
herself, freed from a morganatic alliance, finds in the release
great gain.

One of the many fertile fancies of the " laughing phil-
osopher," a happy anticipation again of an idea peculiarly
modern, was that of the influence upon us for weal or woe
of Externals, of the idola, images, and effluences which
encompass us — of Externals upon which so much of our
happiness, yes, so much of our every character depends. The
trend of scientific thought in this, as in the atomic theory,
has reverted to the Sage of Abdera ; and if environment
really means so much, how all-important a feature in educa-
tion must be the nature of these encompassing effluences.
This magnificent structure, so admirably adapted to the
prosecution of that science from which modern thought
has drawn its most fruitful inspirations, gives completeness
to the already exhilarating milieu of this University. Here
at last, and largely owing to your indomitable energy,
Mr. Provost, are gathered all the externals which make up
a Schola major worthy of this great Commonwealth. What,
after all, is education but a subtle, slowly-affected change,
due to the action upon us of the Externals ; of the written
record of the great minds of all ages, of the beautiful and

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THE LEAVEN OF SCIENCE

harmonious surroundings of nature and of art, and of the
lives, good or ill, of our fellows— these alone educate us,
these alone mould the developing minds. Within the
bounds of this campus these influences will lead successive
generations of youth from matriculation in the college to
graduation in the special school, the complex, varied in-
fluences of Art, of Science, and of Charity ; of Art, the
highest development of which can only come with that
sustaining love for ideals which, " burns bright or dim as
each are mirrors of the fire for which all thirst ; " of Science,
the cold logic of which keeps the mind independent and
free from the toils of self-deception and half-knowledge ;
of Charity, in which we of the medical profession, to walk
worthily, must live and move and have our being.

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VI
THE ARMY SURGEON

103

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity.

SHAKESPEABE, Sonnets, LV,

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VI
THE ARMY SURGEON1

AT the outset I am sure you will permit me, on behalf
of the profession, to offer to the Army Medical
Department hearty congratulations on the completion
of the arrangements which have made possible this
gathering. With capacities strained to the utmost in
furnishing to students an ordinary medical education,-
the schools at large cannot be expected to equip army
surgeons with the full details of special training. A
glance at the curriculum just completed brings into
sharp relief the disabilities under which previous classes
must have proceeded to their labours, the members of
which have had to pick up at random — in many cases
have probably never acquired — the valuable know-
ledge traversed in the lectures and laboratory exercises
of the session. But greatest of all the advantages of an
army medical school must be counted the contact of
the young officers with their seniors, with the men under
whose directions they subsequently have to work; In
comparison with their predecessors, with what different
feelings and ideas will the men before us enter upon their
duties in the various posts to which they have been assigned.
Instead of hazy notions — perhaps to one fresh from the
Examining Board not pleasant ones — of a central authority
at Washington, of a Yama enthroned as Secretary of

1 Army Medical School, Washington, February 28, 1894.
105

THE ARMY SURGEON

War, and of an exacting Surgeon-General, the young
officer who has enjoyed the delightful opportunities of
four months' study amid these inspiring surroundings,
which teem with reminders of the glories of the corps
and of the greatness of his profession, the young officer,
I say, must be indeed a muddy-mettled fellow who does
not carry away, not alone rich stores of information, but,
most precious of all educational gifts, a true ideal of what
his life-work should be.

Members of the Graduating Class : Though to you it
may not, to me it seems peculiarly appropriate that the
Surgeon-General should have asked a civilian to make
an address on this occasion. With the strictly military
aspects of your future life you have made yourselves
familiar ; of the merits and demerits of the army as a
career for a physician you have in the past four months
heard very much ; but about all subjects there are some
questions which are more freely handled by one who is
unhampered by too particular knowledge, and this is
my position, I may say my advantage, to-day. For me
the Army Medical Department, so far as particulars are
concerned, means a library with unsurpassed facilities,
the worth of which is doubled by the liberality of its
management ; a museum in which I have spent some
delightful hours ; an index-catalogue, which is at my
elbow like a dictionary ; and the medical history of the
late war, particularly the volumes by Woodward and
Smart. Further, in my general reading in the history of
the profession of this country, I have here and there
gleaned facts about the corps and its members. I have
read the spirited vindication of John Morgan, who may

106

THE ARMY SURGEON

be called the first Surgeon- General, and I am familiar
with the names and works of many of your distinguished
predecessors who have left their mark in our literature.

But as I write an aspiration of the past occurs, bringing
me, it seems, closer to you than any of the points just
mentioned, a recollection of the days when the desire
of my life was to enter the India Medical Service, a dream
of youth, dim now and almost forgotten — a dream of
" Vishnu land, what Avatar ! "

Speaking, then, from the vantage ground of my ignor-
ance, let me tell you briefly of the opportunities of the
life you have chosen. First among your privileges I
shall place a feature often spoken of as a hardship, viz.,
the frequent change from station to station. Permanence
of residence, good undoubtedly for the pocket, is not
always best for wide mental vision in the physician.
You are modern representatives of a professional age
long past, of a day when physicians of distinction had
no settled homes. You are Cyprid larvae, unattached,
free-swimming, seeing much in many places ; not fixed,
as we barnacles of civil life, head downward, degenerate
descendants of the old professional Cirripeds, who laid
under contribution not one, but a score of cities.

Without local ties, independent of the public, in, while
not exactly of, our ranks, you will escape many of the
anxieties which fret the young physician — the pangs of
disprized worth, the years of weary waiting, the uncer-
tainty of the effort ; and perhaps those sorer trials in-
evitable in an art engaging equally heart and head, in
which, from the very nature of the occupation, the former
is apt — in finer spirits — to be touched with a grievous

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THE ARMY SURGEON

sensibility. In change, that leaven of life denied to so
many, you will find a strong corrective to some of
the most unpleasant of the foibles which beset us. Self-
satisfaction, a frame of mind widely diffused, is manifest
often in greatest intensity where it should be least en-
couraged, and in individuals and communities is some-
times so active on such slender grounds that the condi-
tion is comparable to the delusions of grandeur in the
insane. In a nomad life this common infirmity, to the
entertainment of which the twin sisters, Use and Wont,
lend their ever-ready aid, will scarcely touch you, and
for this mercy give thanks J and while you must, as
men, entertain many idols of the tribe, you may at least
escape this idol of the cave. Enjoying the privilege of
wide acquaintance with men of very varied capabilities
and training, you can, as spectators of their many crotchets
and of their little weaknesses, avoid placing an undue
estimate on your own individual powers and position.
As Sir Thomas Browne says, it is the " nimbler and con-
ceited heads that never looked a degree beyond their
nests that tower and plume themselves on light attain-
ments," but " heads of capacity and such as are not
full with a handful or easy measure of knowledge think
they know nothing till they know all ! "

Per contra, in thus attaining a broader mental platform,
you may miss one of the great prizes of the profession
— a position in a community reached in length of days
by one or two, who, having added to learning, culture,
to wisdom, charity, pass the evening of their lives in
the hearts of their colleagues and of their kind: No gift
of Apollo, not the Surgeon-Generalship, not distinguished

108

THE ARMY SURGEON

position in science, no professorship, however honoured,
can equal this, this which, as wandering Army Surgeons,
you must forego. Fortunate is it for you that the service
in one place is never long enough to let the roots strike
so deeply as to make the process of transplantation too
painful. Myself a peripatetic, I know what it is to bear
the scars of partings from comrades and friends, scars which
sometimes ache as the memories recur of the days which
have flown and of the old familiar faces which have gone.
Another aspect of the life of the Army Surgeon, isolation
in some degree from professional colleagues, will influence
you in different ways — hurtfully in the more dependent
natures, helpfully in those who may have learned that
" not from without us, only from within comes, or can
ever come, upon us light " — and to such the early years
of separation from medical societies and gatherings will
prove a useful seed-time for habits of study, and for the
cultivation of the self-reliance that forms so important an
element in the outfit of the practitioner. And, after all,
the isolation is neither so enduring nor so corroding as
might have fallen to your lot in the routine of country
practice. In it may be retained, too, some measure of
individuality, lost with astonishing rapidity in the city
mills that rub our angles down and soon stamp us all alike.
In the history of the profession there are grounds for the
statement that isolation promotes originality. Some of
the most brilliant work has been done by men in extremely
limited spheres of action, and during the past hundred
years it is surprising how many of the notable achievements
have been made by physicians dwelling far from educational
centres — Jenner worked out his discovery in a village ;

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THE ARMY SURGEON

McDowell, Long, and Sims were country doctors ; Koch
was a district physician.

So much depends upon the sort of start that a man
makes in his profession that I cannot refrain from con-
gratulating you again on the opportunities enjoyed during
the past four months, which have not only added enor-
mously to your capabilities for work, but have familiarized
you with life at the heart of the organization of which
hereafter you will form part, and doubtless have given
you fruitful ideas on the possibilities of your individual
development. Naturally each one of you will desire to
make the best use»of his talents and education, and let me
sketch briefly what I think should be your plan of action.

Throw away, in the first place, all ambition beyond
that of doing the day's work well. The travellers on
the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking
thought for the morrow, having been able at some time,
and in some form or other, to receive into their heart of
hearts this maxim of the Sage of Chelsea : Your business
is " not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do
what lies clearly at hand." Fevered haste is not en-
couraged in military circles, and if you can adapt your
intellectual progress to army rules, making each step in
your mental promotion the lawful successor of some
other, you will acquire little by little those staying powers
without which no man is of much value in the ranks.
Your opportunities for study will cover at first a wide
field in medicine and surgery, and this diffuseness in
your work may be your salvation. In the next five or
ten years note with accuracy and care everything that
comes within your professional ken. There are, in truth,

110

THE ARMY SURGEON

no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many
of the most important diseases a man must be familiar
with their manifestations in many organs. Let nothing
slip by you ; the ordinary humdrum cases of the morning
routine may have been accurately described and pictured,
but study each one separately as though it were new —
so it is so far as your special experience goes ; and if the
spirit of the student is in you the lesson will be there.
Look at the cases not from the standpoint of text-books
and monographs, but as so many stepping-stones in the
progress of your individual development in the art. This
will save you from the pitiable mental attitude of the men
who travel the road of practice from Dan to Beersheba,
and at every step cry out upon its desolation, its dreariness,
and its monotony. With Laurence Sterne, we can afford
to pity such, since they know not that the barrenness
of which they complain is within themselves, a result of
a lack of appreciation of the meaning and method of work.
In the early years of service your advantages will be
fully as great as if you had remained in civil life. Faith-
fulness in the day of small things will insensibly widen
your powers, correct your faculties, and, in moments of
despondency, comfort may be derived from a knowledge
that some of the best work of the profession has come from
men whose clinical field was limited but well-tilled. The
important thing is to make the lesson of each case tell
on your education. The value of experience is not in
seeing much, but in seeing wisely. Experience in the
true sense of the term does not come to all with years,
or with increasing opportunities. Growth in the acquisi-
tion of facts is not necessarily associated with develop-
Ill

THE ARMY SURGEON

nent. Many grow through life mentally as the crystal,
py simple accretion, and at fifty possess, to vary the
igure, the unicellular mental blastoderm with which
ihey started. The growth which is organic and enduring,
s totally different, marked by changes of an unmistakable
character. The observations are made with accuracy
ind care, no pains are spared, nothing is thought a trouble
n the investigation of a problem. The facts are looked
it in connexion with similar ones, their relation to others
s studied, and the experience of the recorder is compared
rith that of others who have worked upon the question,
tnsensibly, year by year, a man finds that there has been
n his mental protoplasm not only growth by assimilation
>ut an actual development, bringing fuller powers of
)bservation, additional capabilities of mental nutrition,
ind that increased breadth of view which is of the very
essence of wisdom.

As clinical observers, we study the experiments which
Mature makes upon our fellow-creatures. These experi-
nents, however, in striking contrast to those of the
aboratory, lack exactness, possessing as they do a vari-
)ility at once a despair and a delight — the despair of those
vho look for nothing but fixed laws in an art which is
itill deep in the sloughs of Empiricism ; the delight of
•hose who find in it an expression of a universal law
lanscending, even scorning, the petty accuracy of test-
;ube and balance, the law that in man " the measure of
ill things," mutability, variability, mobility, are the very
narrow of his being. The clientele in which you work
las, however, more stability, a less extended range of
variation than that with which we deal in civil life. In

112

THE ARM^i

a body of carefully selected
a material for study in wL

striking, and in which the results of the experiments, i^.,
the diseases, have a greater uniformity than in infancy
and old age, in the enfeebled and debauched. This adds
a value to the studies of army medical officers, who often
have made investigations in hygiene, dietetics, and
medicine, so trustworthy and thorough that they serve
us as a standard of comparison, as a sort of abscissa or
base-line. Thus you have demonstrated to us, and to
the community at large, the possibilities of stamping out
smallpox by systematic revaccination : in civil practice
we strive to reach the low rate of mortality of army
hospitals in the treatment of typhoid fever and of pneumonia.
Many of the most important facts relating to etiology
and symptomatology have come from camp or barrack.
I often think that army surgeons scarcely appreciate that
in their work they may follow the natural history of a
disease under the most favourable circumstances ; the
experiments are more ideal, the conditions less disturbing
than those which prevail either in family practice or in
the routine of the general hospital. Many of the common
disorders can be tracked from inception to close, as can
be done in no other line of medical work, and the facilities
for the continuous study of certain affections are un-
equalled. This, which is a point to be appreciated in the
intrinsic education of which I spoke, gives you a decided
advantage over your less favoured brethren.

Your extraordinary range of observation, from the
Florida Keys to Montana, from Maine to Southern Cali-
fornia, affords unequalled facilities for the study of many

AE. 113 i

THE ARMY SURGEON

exed problems in medicine — facilities, indeed,
the diversity of morbid conditions to be studied
ed in no position in civil life. Let me here
few of the subjects that may profitably engage
ition. No question is of more importance at
present than the settlement, definitely, of the varieties of
fever in the West and South. The studies of Baumgarten
in St. Louis, and of Guiteras and others in the Southern
States, suggest the possibility that in addition to typhoid
fever and malaria — the common affections — there are
other fevers the symptomatology and morbid anatomy
of which still require careful elucidation. In this you
will be walking in the footsteps of notable predecessors
in the corps, and in the exhaustive works of Woodward
and Smart, to which I have already alluded, and which
are always available, you will find a basis from which
you may start your personal observations. More par-
ticularly in this direction do we need careful anatomical
investigation, since the symptomatology of certain of
the affections in question has much in common with that
of the ordinary continued fevers of the North. I may
call your attention to the satisfactory settlement of the
nature of mountain fever by army surgeons, and need
hardly add that the specimens contributed by Hoff and
by Girard to this museum demonstrate conclusively that
t is in reality typhoid fever.

In the Southern posts malaria with its protean mani-
festations presents still many interesting problems for
jplution. *^A ~ou wfli leave this school better equipped
ir predecessors for the study and differen-
58 known varieties. With positive know-
114

THE ARMY SURGEON

ledge as to the etiology, and a practical famiTarity with
methods of blood-examination, you can do mucL in many
localities to give to malaria a more definite position than
it at present occupies in the profession, and can offer
in doubtful cases the positive and satisfactory test of the
microscope. The hsematuria of the South requires to be
studied anew — the filarial cases separated from the malarial,
and, most important of all, the relation of quinine to
haematuria positively settled.

In the more distant posK where, so far as the soldier
is concerned, your opportunisms for study may be limited;
you may add greatly to oiu knowledge of the disorders
prevalent among the Indians. More particularly do we
need additional information as to the frequency of tubercu-
losis among them, and its clinical history. One of your
number, Dr. Edwards, has already furnished admirable
statistics upon this point, but the field is still open, and
much remains to be done. In this connexion, too, you
may be able to carry saving knowledge upon the etiology
of the disease, and enforce regulations for its prevention.
You have only to turn to the Index-catalogue to see how
scanty in reality are the facts in the nosology of the North
American Indian.

At many posts there will be presented to you the
interesting effects of altitude, with problems of the greatest
physiological importance. An excellent piece of work may
be done upon its influences upon the red blood-corpuscles,
in determining whether, as has been maintained, there
is an increase numerically per cubic millimetre, so long
as the individual remains in the more rarefied atmosphere.
Points remain to be settled also upon the effects of altitude

115

THE ARMY SURGEON

upon the chest-capacity, the chest-measurement, and the
heart, and our knowledge is still lacking on questions
relating to the influence of high altitudes upon many of
the ordinary diseases.

To one of you, perhaps, another peculiarly American
disease — milk-sickness — may reveal its secret. Our know-
ledge of its etiology has not been materially increased
since the early papers on the subject, which so well
described its symptomatology.

These are but a few of the questions suggesting them-
selves to my mind, to which, as chance affords, you could
direct your attention. In a ten or fifteen years' service,
travelling with seeing eyes and hearing ears, and carefully-
kept note-books, just think what a store-house of clinical
material may be at the command of any one of you —
material not only valuable in itself to the profession, but
of infinite value to you personally in its acquisition, render-
ing you painstaking and accurate, and giving you, year by
year, an increasing experience of the sort to which I have
already more than once referred.

In what I have said hitherto I have dwelt chiefly on
your personal development, and on the direction in which
your activities might be engaged, but while you are thus
laying the foundation of an education in all that relates
to the technical side of the profession, there are other
duties which call for a word or two. In the communities
to which you may be sent do not forget that, though
army officers, you owe allegiance to an honourable pro-
fession, to the members of which you are linked by ties
of a most binding character. In situations in which the
advantages of a more critical training give you a measure

116

THE ARMY SUBGEON

of superiority over your confreres in civil life, let it not
be apparent in your demeanour, but so order yourselves
that in all things you may appear to receive, not to grant
favours. There are regions, in partibus infidelium, to
which you will go as missionaries, carrying the gospel of
loyalty to truth in the science and in the art of medicine,
and your lives of devotion may prove to many a stimu-
lating example. You cannot afford to stand aloof from
your professional colleagues in any place. Join their
associations, mingle in their meetings, giving of the best
of your talents, gathering here, scattering there ; but
everywhere showing that you are at all times faithful
students, as willing to teach as to be taught. Shun as
most pernicious that frame of mind, too often, I fear,
seen in physicians, which assumes an air of superiority
and limits as worthy of your communion only those with
satisfactory collegiate or sartorial credentials. The pass-
ports to your fellowship should be honesty of purpose
and a devotion to the highest interests of our profession,
and these you will find widely diffused, sometimes apparent
only when you get beneath the crust of a rough exterior.
If I have laid stress upon the more strictly professional
aspects of your career it has been with a purpose. I
believe the arrangements in the department are such
that, with habits of ordinary diligence, each one of you
may attain not only a high grade of personal development,
but may become an important contributor in the advance-
ment of our art. I have said nothing of the pursuit
of the sciences cognate to medicine, of botany, zoology,
geology, ethnology and archaeology. In every one of
these, so fascinating in themselves, it is true that army

117

THE ARMY SURGEON

medical officers have risen to distinction, but I claim
that your first duty is to medicine, which should have your
best services and your loyal devotion. Not, too, in the
perfunctory discharge of the daily routine, but in zealous
endeavour to keep pace with, and to aid in, the progress
of knowledge. In this way you will best serve the depart-
ment, the profession, and the public.

Generalities, of the kind in which I have been indulging,
though appropriate to the occasion, are close kin, I fear,
to the fancies fond, that vanish like the gay motes which
float for a moment in the sunbeams of our mind. But
I would fain leave with you, in closing, something of a
more enduring kind — a picture that for me has always
had a singular attraction, the picture of a man who,
amid circumstances the most unfavourable, saw his
opportunity and was quick to " grasp the skirts of happy
chance." Far away in the northern wilds, where the
waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron unite, stands
the fort of Michilimackinac, rich in memories of Indian
and voyageur, one of the four important posts on the
upper lakes in the days when the Rose and the Fleur-de-lis
strove for the mastery of the Western world. Here
was the scene of Marquette's mission, and here beneath
the chapel of St. Ignace they laid his bones to rest. Here
the intrepid La Salle, the brave Tonty, and the resolute
Du Lhut had halted in their wild wanderings. Its palisades
and bastions had echoed the war-whoops of Ojibwas and
Ottawas, of Hurons and Iroquois, and had been the
scene of bloody massacres and of hard-fought fights.
At the conclusion of the war of 1812, after two centuries
of struggle, peace settled at last upon the old fort, and

118

THE ARMY SURGEON

early in her reign celebrated one of the most famous of
her minor victories, one which carried the high-sounding
name of Michilimackinac far and wide, and into circles
where Marquette, Du Lhut and La Salle were unknown.
Here, in 1820, was assigned to duty at the fort, which had
been continued in use to keep the Indians in check, Surgeon
William Beaumont, then a young man in the prime of life.
On June 22, 1822, the accidental discharge of a musket
made St. Martin, a voyageur, one of the most famous
subjects in the history of physiology, for the wound laid
open his stomach, and he recovered with a permanent
gastric fistula of an exceptionally favourable kind. Beau-
mont was not slow to see the extraordinary possibilities
that were before him. Early in the second decade of the
century the process of gastric digestion was believed to
be due to direct mechanical maceration or to the action
of a vital principle, and though the idea of a solvent
juice had long been entertained, the whole question was
sub judice. The series of studies made by Beaumont on
St. Martin settled for ever the existence of a solvent fluid
capable of acting on food outside as well as within the
body, and in addition enriched our knowledge of the
processes of digestion by new observations on the move-
ments of the stomach, the temperature of the interior of
the body, and the digestibility of the various articles of
food. The results of his work were published in 1833,
in an octavo volume of less than 300 pages.1 In looking
through it one cannot but recognize that it is the source

1 Experiments and Observations on the. Gastric Juice and the
Physiology of Digestion. By William Beaumont, M.D., Surgeon in
the United States Army. Plattsburg. 1833.

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THE ARMY SURGEON

of a very large part of the current statements about
digestion ; but apart altogether from the value of the facts,
there are qualities about the work which make it a model
of its kind, and on every page is revealed the character
of the man. From the first experiment, dated August 1,
1825, to the last, dated November 1, 1833, the observa-
tions are made with accuracy and care, and noted in
plain, terse language. A remarkable feature was the
persistence with which for eight years Beaumont pursued
the subject, except during two intervals when St. Martin
escaped to his relatives in Lower Canada. On one occasion
Beaumont brought him a distance of two thousand miles
to Fort Crawford, on the upper Mississippi, where, in 1829,
the second series of experiments was made. The third
series was conducted in Washington, in 1832 ; and the
fourth at Plattsburg in 1833. The determination to sift
the question thoroughly, to keep at it persistently until
the truth was reached, is shown in every one of the 238
experiments which he has recorded.

The opportunity presented itself, the observer had the
necessary mental equipment and the needed store of
endurance to carry to a successful termination a long
and laborious research. William Beaumont is indeed
a bright example in the annals of the Army Medical
Department, and there is no name on its roll more deserving
to live in the memory of the profession of this country.

And in closing let me express the wish that each one
of you, in all your works begun, continued and ended,
may be able to say with him : " Truth, like beauty,
* when unadorned is adorned the most,' and in prosecuting
experiments and inquiries I believe I have been guided
by its light."

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VII
TEACHING AND THINKING

121

Let us then blush, in this so ample and so wonderful field of
nature (where performance still exceeds what is promised), to
credit other men's traditions only, and thence come uncertain
problems to spin out thorny and captious questions. Nature her
selfe must be our adviser ; the path she chalks must be our walk :
for so while we confer with our own eies, and take our rise from
meaner things to higher,- we shall at length be received into her
Closet-secrets.

Preface to Anatomical Exercitations concerning the Generation
of Living Creatures, 1653.

WILLIAM HARVEY.

122

vn

TEACHING AND THINKING 1

THE Two FUNCTIONS OF A MEDICAL SCHOOL

I

MANY things have been urged against our nineteenth
century civilization — that political enfranchise^
ment only ends in anarchy, that the widespread unrest in
spiritual matters leads only to unbelief, and that the best
commentary on our boasted enlightenment is the picture
of Europe in arms and the nations everywhere gnarring at
each other's heels. Of practical progress in one direction,
however, there can be no doubt ; no one can dispute the
enormous increase in the comfort of each individual life.
Collectively the human race, or portions of it at any rate,
may in the past have enjoyed periods of greater repose, and
longer intervals of freedom from strife and anxiety ; but
the day has never been when the unit has been of such
value, when the man, and the man alone, has been so much
the measure, when the individual as a living organism has
seemed so sacred, when the obligations to regard his rights
seemed so imperative. But even these changes are

i McGill Medical School, October 1, 1894.
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TEACHING AND THINKING

as nothing in comparison with the remarkable increase in
his physical well-being. The bitter cry of Isaiah that with
the multiplication of the nations their joys had not been
increased, still echoes in our ears. The sorrows and troubles
of men, it is true, may not have been materially diminished,
but bodily pain and suffering, though not abolished, have
been assuaged as never before, and the share of each in the
Weltschmerz has been enormously lessened.

Sorrows and griefs are companions sure sooner or later
to join us on our pilgrimage, and we have become perhaps
more sensitive to them, and perhaps less amenable to the
old time remedies of the physicians of the soul ; but the
pains and woes of the body, to which we doctors minister,
are decreasing at an extraordinary rate, and in a way that
makes one fairly gasp in hopeful anticipation.

In his Grammar of Assent, in a notable passage on
suffering, John Henry Newman asks, " Who can weigh and
measure the aggregate of pain which this one generation
has endured, and will endure, from birth to death ? Then
add to this all the pain which has fallen and will fall upon
our race through centuries past and to come." But take
the other view of it — think of the Nemesis which has over-
taken pain during the past fifty years ! Anaesthetics and
antiseptic surgery have almost manacled the demon, and
since their introduction the aggregate of pain which has
been prevented far outweighs in civilized communities that
which has been suffered. Even the curse of travail has
been lifted from the soul of women.

The greatest art is in the concealment of art, and I may
say that we of the medical profession excel in this respect.
You of the public who hear me, go about the duties of the

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TEACHING AND THINKING

day profoundly indifferent to the facts I have just men-
tioned: You do not know, many of you do not care, that
for the cross-legged Juno who presided over the arrival of
your grandparents, there now sits a benign and straight-
legged goddess. You take it for granted that if a shoulder
is dislocated there is chloroform and a delicious Nepenthe
instead of the agony of the pulleys and paraphernalia of
fifty years ago. You accept with a selfish complacency, as
if you were yourselves to be thanked for it, that the arrows
of destruction fly not so thickly, and that the pestilence
now rarely walketh in the darkness ; still less do you
realize that you may now pray the prayer of Hezekiah with
a reasonable prospect of its fulfilment, since modern science
has made to almost everyone of you the present of a few
years.

I say you do not know these things. You hear of them,
and the more intelligent among you perhaps ponder them
in your hearts, but they are among the things which you
take for granted, like the sunshine, and the flowers and the
glorious heavens.

'Tis no idle challenge which we physicians throw out to
the world when we claim that our mission is of the highest
and of the noblest kind, not alone in curing disease but in
educating the people in the laws of health, and in preventing
the spread of plagues and pestilences ; nor can it be gain-
said that of late years our record as a body has been more
encouraging in its practical results than those of the other
learned professions. Not that we all live up to the highest
ideals, far from it — we are only men. But we have
ideals, which mean much, and they are realizable, which
means more. Of course there are Gehazis among us who

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serve for shekels, whose ears hear only the lowing of the
oxen and the jingling of the guineas, but these are excep-
tions. The rank and file labour earnestly for your good,
and self-sacrificing devotion to your interests animates our
best work.

The exercises in which we are to-day engaged form an
incident in this beneficent work which is in progress
everywhere ; an incident which will enable me to dwell
upon certain aspects of the university as a factor in the
promotion of the physical well-being of the race.

II

A great university has a dual function, to teach and to
think. The educational aspects at first absorb all its
energies, and in equipping various departments and pro-
viding salaries, it finds itself hard pressed to fulfil even the
first of these duties. The story of the progress of the
medical school of this institution illustrates the struggles
and difficulties, the worries and vexations attendant upon
the effort to place it in the first rank as a teaching body. I
know them well, since I was in the thick of them for ten
years, and see to-day, the realization of many of my day-
dreams. Indeed in my wildest flights I never thought
to see such a splendid group of buildings as I have just
inspected. We were modest in those days, and I remember
when Dr. Howard showed me in great confidence the letter
of the Chancellor, in which he conveyed his first generous
bequest to the Faculty, it seemed so great that in my joy
I was almost ready to sing my Nunc dimittis. The great
advances here, at the Montreal General Hospital, and at
the Royal Victoria (both of which institutions form most

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TEACHING AND THINKING

essential parts of the medical schools of this city) mean
increased teaching facilities, and of necessity better
equipped graduates, better equipped doctors ! Here is
the kernel of the whole matter, and it is for this that we
ask the aid necessary to build large laboratories and large
hospitals in which the student may learn the science and
art of medicine. Chemistry, anatomy and physiology give
that perspective which enables him to place man and his
diseases in their proper position in the scheme of life, and
afford at the same time that essential basis upon which
alone a trustworthy experience may be built. Each one
of these is a science in itself, complicated and difficult,
demanding much time and labour for its acquisition, so
that in the few years which are given to their study the
student can only master the principles and certain of the
facts upon which they are founded. Only so far as they
bear upon a due understanding of the phenomena of disease
do these subjects form part of the medical curriculum, and
for us they are but means — essential means it is true — to
this end. A man cannot become a competent surgeon
without a full knowledge of human anatomy and physiology,
and the physician without physiology and chemistry
flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain any
accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of pop-
gun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the
patient, he himself not knowing which.

The primary function of this department of the univer-
sity is to instruct men about disease, what it is, what are its
manifestations, how it may be prevented, and how it may
be cured ; and to learn these things the four hundred young
men who sit on these benches have come from all parts of

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TEACHING AND THINKING

the land. But it is no light responsibility which a faculty
assumes in this matter. The task is beset with difficulties,
some inherent in the subject and others in the men them-
selves, while not a few are caused by the lack of common
sense in medical matters of the people among whom we
doctors work.

The processes of disease are so complex that it is exces-
sively difficult to search out the laws which control them,
and, although we have seen a complete revolution in our
ideas, what has been accomplished by the new school of
medicine is only an earnest of what the future has in store.
The three great advances of the century has been a know-
ledge of the mode of controlling epidemic diseases, the intro-
duction of anaesthetics, and the adoption of antiseptic
methods in surgery. Beside them all others sink into
insignificance, as these three contribute so enormously to
the personal comfort of the individual. The study of the
causes of so-called infectious disorders has led directly to
the discovery of the methods for their control, for example,
such a scourge as typhoid fever becomes almost unknown
in the presence of perfect drainage and an uncontaminated
water supply. The outlook, too, for specific methods of
treatment in these affections is most hopeful. The public
must not be discouraged by a few, or even by many
failures. The thinkers who are doing the work for you are
on the right path, and it is no vain fancy that before the
twentieth century is very old there may be effective
vaccines against many of the contagious diseases.

But a shrewd old fellow remarked to me the other day,
" Yes, many diseases are less frequent, others have disap-
peared, but new ones are always cropping up, and I notice

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TEACHING AND THINKING

that with it all there is not only no decrease, but a very
great increase in the number of doctors."

The total abolition of the infectious group we cannot
expect, and for many years to come there will remain
hosts of bodily ills, even among preventable maladies, to
occupy our labours ; but there are two reasons which ex-
plain the relative numerical increase in the profession in
spite of the great decrease in the number of certain diseases.
The development of specialties has given employment to
many extra men who now do much of the work of the old
farn^v practitioner, and again people employ doctors more
frequently and so give occupation to many more than
formerly.

It cannot be denied that we have learned more rapidly
how to prevent than how to cure diseases, but with a
definite outline of our ignorance we no longer live now in a
fool's Paradise, and fondly imagine that in all cases we
control the issues of life and death with our pills and
potions. It took the profession many generations to learn
that fevers ran their course, influenced very little, if at all,
by drugs, and the £60 which old Dover complained were
spent in drugs in a case of ordinary fever about the middle
of the last century is now better expended on a trained
nurse, with infinitely less risk, and with infinitely greater
comfort to the patient. Of the difficulties inherent in the
art not one is so serious as this which relates to the cure of
disease by drugs. There is so much uncertainty and discord
even among the best authorities (upon non-essentials it is
true) that I always feel the force of a well-known stanza in
Rabbi Ben Ezra —

AE; 129 K

TEACHING AND THINKING

Now, who shall arbitrate ?

Ten men love what I hate,

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;

Ten, who in ears and eyes

Match me: we all surmise,

They this thing, and I that : whom shall my soul believe ?

One of the chief reasons for this uncertainty is the in-
creasing variability in the manifestations of any one dis-
ease. As no two faces, so no two cases are alike in all
respects, and unfortunately it is not only the disease itself
which is so varied, but the subjects themselves have
peculiarities which modify its action.

With the diminished reliance upon drugs, there has been
a return with profit to the older measures of diet, exercise,
baths, and frictions, the remedies with which the Bithynian
Asclepiades doctored the Romans so successfully in the
first century. Though used less frequently, medicines are
now given with infinitely greater skill ; we know better
their indications and contradictions, and we may safely
say (reversing the proportion of fifty years ago) that for
one damaged by dosing, one hundred are saved.

.«Iany of the difficulties which surround the subject relate
to the men who practise the art. The commonest as well
as the saddest mistake is • to mistake one's profession,
and this we doctors do often enough, some of us, without
knowing it. There are men who have never had the pre-
liminary education which would enable them to grasp
the fundamental truths of the science on which medicine
is based. Others have poor teachers, and never receive that
bent of mind which is the all important factor in education ;
others again fall early into the error of thinking that they
know it all, and benefiting neither by their mistakes or

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TEACHING AND THINKING

their successes, miss the very essence of all experience, and
die bigger fools, if possible, than when they started.
There are only two sorts of doctors ; those who practise
wich their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.
The studious, hard-working man who wishes to know his
profession thoroughly, who lives in the hospitals and dis-
pensaries, and who strives to obtain a wide and philoso-
phical conception of disease and its processes, often has a
hard struggle, and it may take years of waiting before he
becomes successful ; but such form the bulwarks of our
ranks, and outweigh scores of the voluble Cassios who talk
themselves into, and often out of, practice.

Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which
we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience.
Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in
inverse ratio to the degree of education. I suppose as ?
body, clergymen are better educated than any other, yet
they are, notorious supporters of all the nostrums and
humbuggery with which the daily and religious papers
abound, and I find that the further away they have wan-
dered from the decrees of the Council of Trent, the mori
apt are they to be steeped in thaumaturgic and Galenical
superstition. But know also, man has an inborn craving
for medicine. Heroic dosing for several generations has
given his tissues a thirst for drugs. As I once before
remarked, the desire to take medicine is one feature which
distinguishes man, the animal, from his fellow creatures. It
is really one of the most serious difficulties with which we
have to contend. Even in minor ailments, which would
yield to dieting or to simple home remedies, the doctor's
visit is not thought to be complete without the prescription.

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TEACHING AND THINKING

And now that the pharmacists have cloaked even the most
nauseous remedies, the temptation is to use medicine on
every occasion, and I fear we may return to that state of
polypharmacy, the emancipation from which has been the
sole gift of Hahnemann and his followers to the race. As
the public becomes more enlightened, and as we get more
sense, dosing will be recognized as a very minor function in
the practise of medicine in comparison with the old measures
of Asclepiades.

After all, these difficulties— in the subject itself, in us,
and in you— are lessening gradually, and we have the
consolation of knowing that year by year the total amount
of unnecessary suffering is decreasing at a rapid rate.

In teaching men what disease is, how it may be pre-
vented, and how it may be cured, a University is fulfilling
one of its very noblest functions. The wise instruction
and the splendid example of such men as Holmes, Suther-
land, Campbell, Howard, Ross, Macdonnell, and others have
carried comfort into thousands of homes throughout this
land. The benefits derived from the increased facilities for
the teaching of medicine which have come with the great
changes made here and at the hospitals during the past
few years, will not be confined to the citizens of this town,
but will be widely diffused and felt in every locality to which
the graduates of this school may go ; and every gift which
promotes higher medical education, and which enables
the medical faculties throughout the country to turn out
better doctors, means fewer mistakes in diagnosis, greater
skill in dealing with emergencies, and the saving of pain
and anxiety to countless sufferers and their friends.
The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart ; his
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TEACHING AND THINKING

work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the
very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appeal-
ing to the emotions and finer feelings. At no time has his
influence been more potent than at present, at no time has
he been so powerful a factor for good, and as it is one of the
highest possible duties of a great University to fit men for
this calling, so it will be your highest mission, students of
medicine, to carry on the never-ending warfare against
disease and death, better equipped, abler men than your
predecessors, but animated with their spirit and sustained
by their hopes, " for the hope of every creature is the banner
that we bear."

Ill

The other function of a University is to think. Teaching
current knowledge in all departments, teaching the steps
by which the status prcesens has been reached, and teaching
how to teach, form the routine work of the various college
faculties. All this may be done in a perfunctory manner
by men who have never gone deeply enough into the sub-
jects to know that really thinking about them is in any way
necessary or important. What I mean by the thinking
function of a University, is that duty which the professional
corps owes to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge.
Work of this sort makes a University great, and alone
enables it to exercise a wide influence on the minds of men.

We stand to-day at a critical point in the history of this
faculty. The equipment for teaching, to supply which has
taken years of hard struggle, is approaching completion,
and with the co-operation of the General and the Royal
Victoria Hospitals students can obtain in all branches a

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TEACHING AND THINKING

thorough training. We have now reached a position in
which the higher university work may at any rate be
discussed, and towards its progress in the future must
trend. It may seem to be discouraging, after so much has
been done and so much has been so generously given, to
say that there remains a most important function to foster
and sustain, but this aspect of the question must be con-
sidered when a school has reached a certain stage of develop-
ment. In a progressive institution the changes come
slowly, the pace may not be perceived by those most con-
cerned, except on such occasions as the present, which serve
as land-marks in its evolution. The men and methods
of the old Cote street school were better than those
with which the faculty started ; we and our ways at the
new building on University street were better than those
of Cote street ; and now you of the present faculty teach and
work much better than we did ten years ago. Everywhere
the old order changeth, and happy those who can change
with it. Like the defeated gods in Keats's " Hyperion," too
many unable to receive the balm of the truth, resent the
wise words of Oceanus (which I quoted here with very
different feelings some eighteen years ago in an introductory
lecture).

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,
***** born of us
And fated to excel us.

Now the fresh perfection which will tread on our heels
will come with the opportunities for higher university
work. Let me indicate in a few words its scope and aims.
Teachers who teach current knowledge are not necessarily
investigators ; many have not had the needful training ;

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TEACHING AND THINKING

others have not the needful time. The very best instructor
for students may have no conception of the higher lines of
work in his branch, and contrariwise, how many brilliant
investigators have been wretched teachers ? In a school
which has reached this stage and wishes to do thinking as
well as teaching, men must be selected who are not only
thoroughly au courant with the best work in their depart-
ment the world over, but who also have ideas, with am-
bition and energy to put them into force — men who can add
each one in his sphere, to the store of the world's knowledge.
Men of this stamp alone confer greatness upon a university.
They should be sought for far and wide ; an institution which
wraps itself in Strabo's cloak and does not look beyond the
college gates in selecting professors may get good teachers,
but rarely good thinkers.

One of the chief difficulties in the way of advanced work
is the stress of routine class and laboratory duties, which
often sap the energies of men capable of higher things. To
meet this difficulty it is essential, first, to give the professors
plenty of assistance, so that they will not be worn out with
teaching ; and, secondly, to give encouragement to gradu-
ates and others to carry on researches under their direction.
With a system of fellowships and research scholarships a
university may have a body of able young men, who on the
outposts of knowledge are exploring, surveying, defining
and correcting. Their work is the outward and visible
sign that a university is thinking. Surrounded by a group
of bright young minds, well trained in advanced methods,
not only is the professor himself stimulated to do his best
work, but he has to keep far afield and to know what is
stirring in every part of his own domain.

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TEACHING AND THINKING

With the wise co-operation of the university and the
hospital authorities Montreal may become the Edinburgh
of America, a great medical centre to which men will flock
for sound learning, whose laboratories will attract the
ablest students, and whose teaching will go out into all
lands, universally recognized as of the highest and of the
best type.

Nowhere is the outlook more encouraging than at
McGill. What a guarantee for the future does the pro-
gress of the past decade afford ! No city on this continent
has endowed higher education so liberally. There remains
now to foster that undefinable something which, for want
of_ a better term, we call the university spirit, a something
which a rich institution may not have, and with which a
poor one may be saturated, a something which is associated
with men and not with money, which cannot be purchased
in the market or grown to order, but which comes insensibly
with loyal devotion to duty and to high ideals, and
without which Nehushtan is written on the portals of
any school of Medicine, however famous,

136

VIII

INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A
VOCATION

137

A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of
fortune ; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual ;
they that employ him know not his excellence ; they that reject
him know not his deficience.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

It happens to us, as it happeneth to wayfaring men : sometimes
our way is clean, sometimes foul ; sometimes up hill, sometimes
down hill ; we are seldom at a certainty ; the wind is not always
at our backs, nor is every one a friend that we meet in the way.
BUNYAN'S Pilgrim's Progress, Part II.

In the mind, as in the body, there is the necessity of getting rid
of waste, and a man of active literary habits will write for the fire
as well as for the press.

JEROME CARDAN.

138

VIII

INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A
VOCATION l

IT was with the greatest pleasure that I accepted an
invitation to address this section of the Academy
on the importance of internal medicine as a vocation.
I wish there were another term to designate the wide
field of medical practice which remains after the separation
of surgery, midwifery, and gynaecology. Not itself a
specialty (though it embraces at least half a dozen), its
cultivators cannot be called specialists, but bear without
reproach the good old name physician, in contradistinction
to general practitioners, surgeons, obstetricians, and
gynaecologists. I have heard the fear expressed that in
this country the sphere of the physician proper is becoming
more and more restricted, and perhaps this is true ; but I
maintain (and I hope to convince you) that the oppor-
tunities are still great, that the harvest truly is plenteous,
and the labourers scarcely sufficient to meet the demand.
At the outset I would like to emphasize the fact that
the student of internal medicine cannot be a specialist.
The manifestations of almost any one of the important
diseases in the course of a few years will " box the com-
pass " of the specialties. Typhoid fever, for example,
will not only go the rounds of those embraced in medicine

1 New York Academy of Medicine, 1897.
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INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A VOCATION

proper, but will carry its student far afield in morbid
psychology, and sometimes teach him, perhaps at the
cost of the patient, a little surgery. So, too, with syphilis,
which after the first few weeks I claim as a medical affection.
I often tell my students that it is the only disease which
they require to study thoroughly. Know syphilis in all
its manifestations and relations, and all other things
clinical will be added unto you.

Each generation has to grow its own consultants. Hos-
sack, Samuel Mitchill, Swett, Alonzo Clark, Austin Flint,
Fordyce Barker, and Alfred Loomis, served their day in
this city, and then passed on into silence. Their works
remain ; but enough of a great physician's experience dies
with him to justify the saying " there is no wisdom in the
grave." The author of Rab and His Friends has a couple
of paragraphs on this point which are worth quoting :
' Much that made such a man what the community, to
their highest profit, found to him be, dies with him. His
inborn gifts, and much of what was most valuable in his
experience, were necessarily incommunicable to others ;
this depending much on his forgetting the process by
which, in particular cases, he made up his mind, and its
minute successive steps, . : : , but mainly, we believe,
because no man can explain directly to another man how
he does any one practical thing, the doing of which he
himself has accomplished not at once or by imitation,
or by teaching, but by repeated personal trials, by missing
much before ultimately hitting."

Wherewithal shall a young man prepare himself, should
the ambition arise in him to follow in the footsteps of such
a teacher as, let us say, the late Austin Flint — the young

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INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A VOCATION

man just starting, and who will from 1915 to 1940 stand
in relation to the profession of this city and this country
as did Dr. Flint between 1861 and the time of his death.
We will assume that he starts with equivalent advantages,
though this is taking a great deal for granted, since Austin
Flint had a strong hereditary bias toward medicine, and
early in life fell under the influence of remarkable men
whose teachings moulded his thought to the very end.
We must not forget that Dr. Flint was a New Englander,
and of the same type of mind as his great teachers —
James Jackson and Jacob Bigelow.

Our future consultant has just left the hospital, where,
for the first time realizing the possibilities of his profession,
he has had his ambition fired. Shall he go abroad ? It
is not necessary. The man whom we have chosen as his
exemplar did not, but found his opportunities in country-
practice, in Buffalo and Louisville, then frontier towns,
and in New Orleans, and had a national reputation before
he reached New York. But would it be useful to him ?
Undoubtedly. He will have a broader foundation on
which to build, and a year or two in the laboratories and
clinics of the great European cities will be most helpful.
To walk the wards of Guy's or St. Bartholomew's, to see
the work at the St. Louis and at the Salpetriere, to spend
a few quiet months of study at one of the German uni-
versity towns will store the young man's mind with price-
less treasures. I assume that he has a mind. I am not
heedless of the truth of the sharp taunt —

How much the fool that hath been sent to Rome,
Exceeds the fool that hath been kept at home.

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INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A VOCATION

At any rate, whether he goes abroad or not, let him early
escape from the besetting sin of the young physician,
Chauvinism, that intolerant attitude of mind, which brooks
no regard for anything outside his own circle and his own
school. If he cannot go abroad let him spend part of his
short vacations in seeing how it fares with the brethren in
his own country. Even a New Yorker could learn some-
thing in the Massachusetts General and the Boston City
Hospitals. A trip to Philadelphia would be most helpful ;
there is much to stimulate the mind at the old Pennsylvania
Hospital and at the University, and he would be none the
worse for a few weeks spent still farther south on the banks
of the Chesapeake. The all-important matter is to get
breadth of view as early as possible, and this is difficult
without travel.

Poll the successful consulting physicians of this country
to-day, and you will find they have been evolved either
from general practice or from laboratory and clinical work :
many of the most prominent having risen from the ranks
of general practitioners. I once heard an eminent con-
sultant rise in wrath because some one had made a remark
reflecting upon this class. He declared that no single
part of his professional experience had been of such value.
But I wish to speak here of the training of men who start
with the object of becoming pure physicians. From the
vantage ground of more than forty years of hard work,
Sir Andrew Clark told me that he had striven ten years
for bread, ten years for bread and butter, and twenty
years for cakes and ale ; and this is really a very good
partition of the life of the student of internal medicine,
of some at least, since all do not reach the last stage.

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INTERNAL MEDICINE AS A VOCATION

It is high time we had our young Lydgate started.1 If
he has shown any signs of nous during his student and
hospital days a dispensary assistantship should be avail-
able ; anything should be acceptable which brings him
into contact with patients. By all means, if possible, let
him be a pluralist, and — as he values his future life — let
him not get early entangled in the meshes of specialism.
Once established as a clinical assistant he can begin his
education, and nowadays this is a very complicated
matter. There are three lines of work which he may
follow, all of the most intense interest, all of the greatest
value to him — chemistry, physiology, and morbid anatomy.
Professional chemists look askance at physiological
chemistry, and physiological chemists criticize pretty
sharply the work of some clinical chemists, but there can
be no doubt of the value to the physician of a very thorough
training in methods and ways of organic chemistry.. We
sorely want, in this country, men of this line of training,
and the outlook for them has never before been so bright.
If at the start he has not had a good chemical training,
the other lines should be more closely followed.

Physiology, which for him will mean very largely ex-
perimental therapeutics and experimental pathology,
will open a wider view and render possible a deeper grasp
of the problems of disease. To Traube and men of his
stamp, the physiological clinicians, this generation owes
much more than to the chemical or post-mortem-loom
group. The training is more difficult to get, and now-

1 This well-drawn character in George Eliot's MidcUemarch may
be studied with advantage by the physician ; one of the most
important lessons to b'e gathered from it is — marry the right woman 1

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adays, when physiology is cultivated as a specialty, few
physicians will graduate into clinical medicine directly
from the laboratory. On the other hand, the oppor-
tunities for work are now more numerous, and the train-
ing which a young fellow gets in a laboratory controlled
by a pure physiologist will help to give that scientific
impress, which is only enduring when early received. A
thorough chemical training and a complete equipment
in methods of experimental research are less often met
with in the clinical physician than a good practical know-
ledge of morbid anatomy ; and, if our prospective con-
sultant has to limit his work, chemistry and physiology
should yield to the claims of the dead-house. In this
dry-bread period he should see autopsies daily, if possible.
Successful knowledge of the infinite variations of disease
can only be obtained by a prolonged study of morbid
anatomy. While of special value in training the physician
in diagnosis, it also enables him to correct his mistakes,
and, if he reads its lessons aright, it may serve to keep
him humble.

This is, of course, a very full programme, but in ten
years a bright man, with what Sydenham calls " the
ancient and serious diligence of Hippocrates," will pick
up a very fair education, and will be fit to pass from the
dispensary to the wards. If he cannot go abroad after
his hospital term, let it be an incentive to save money,
and with the first $600 let him take a summer semester
in Germany, working quietly at one of the smaller places.
Another year let him spend three months or longer in
Paris. When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising
how often the circumstances fit in with them. How shall

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he live meanwhile ? On crumbs — on pickings obtained
from men in the cakes-and-ale stage (who always can
put paying work into the hands of young men), and on
fees from classes, journal work, private instruction, and
from work in the schools. Any sort of medical practice
should be taken, but with caution — too much of it early
may prove a good man's ruin. He cannot expect to do
more than just eke out a living. He must put his emotions
on ice ; there must be no " Amaryllis in the shade," and
he must beware the tangles of " Neaera's hair." Success
during the first ten years means endurance and perse-
verance ; all things come to him who has learned to labour
and wait, who bides his time "ohne Hast, aberohne Rast,"
whose talent develops " in der Stille," in the quiet fruitful
years of unselfish devoted work. A few words in addition
about this dry-bread decade. He should stick closely
to the dispensaries. A first-class reputation may be
built up in them. Byrom BramwelPs Atlas of Medicine
largely represents his work while an assistant physician
to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. Many of the best-
known men in London serve ten, fifteen, or even twenty
years in the out-patient departments before getting wards.
Lauder Brunton only obtained his full physicianship at
St. Bartholomew's after a service of more than twenty
years in the out-patient department. During this period
let him not lose the substance of ultimate success in grasp-
ing at the shadow of present opportunity. Time is now
his money, and he must not barter away too much of it
in profitless work — profitless so far as his education is
concerned, though it may mean ready cash. Too many
" quiz " classes or too much journal work has ruined
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many a promising clinical physician. While the Pytha-
gorean silence of nearly seven years, which the great
Louis followed (and broke to burst into a full-blown
reputation) cannot t>e enjoined, the young physician
should be careful what and how he writes. Let him take
heed to his education, and his reputation will take care
of itself, and in a development under the guidance of
seniors he will find plenty of material for papers before
medical societies and for publication in scientific journals.
I would like to add here a few words on the question of
clinical instruction, as with the great prospective increase
of it in our schools there will be many chances of employ-
ment for young physicians who wish to follow medicine
proper as a vocation. To-day this serious problem con-
fronts the professors in many of our schools — how to
teach practical medicine to the large classes ; how to give
them protracted and systematic ward instruction ? I
know of no teacher in the country who controls enough
clinical material for the instruction of classes say of 200
men during the third and fourth years. It seems to me
that there are two plans open to the schools : The first
is to utilize dispensaries for clinical instruction much
more than is at present the rule. For this purpose a
teaching-room for a class of twenty-five or thirty students
immediately adjoining the dispensary is essential. For
instruction in physical diagnosis, for the objective teach-
ing of disease, and for the instruction of students in the
use of their senses, such an arrangement is invaluable.
There are hundreds of dispensaries in which this plan
is feasible, and in which the material now is not properly
worked up because of the lack of this very stimulus. In

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the second place, 1 feel sure that ultimately we shall de-
velop a system of extra-mural teaching similar to that
which has been so successful in Edinburgh ; and this
will give employment to a large number of the younger
men. At any large university school of medicine there
might be four or five extra-mural teachers of medicine,
selected from men who could show that they were fully
qualified to teach and that they had a sufficient number of
beds at their command, with proper equipment for clinical
work. At Edinburgh there are eight extra-mural teachers
of internal medicine whose courses qualify the student to
present himself for examination either before the Royal
Colleges or the University. If we ever are to give our
third and fourth year students protracted and complete
courses in physical diagnosis and clinical medicine, ex-
tending throughout the session, and not in classes of a
brief period of six weeks' duration, I am confident that
the number of men engaged in teaching must be greatly
increased.

II

Ten years' hard work tells with colleagues and friends
in the profession, and with enlarged clinical facilities the
physician enters upon the second, or bread-and-butter
period. This, to most men, is the great trial, since the
risks are greater, and many now drop out of the race,
wearied at the length of the way and drift into specialism
or general practice. The physician develops more slowly
than the surgeon, and success comes later. There are
surgeons at forty years in full practice and at the very
top of the wave, a time at which the physician is only

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preparing to reap the harvest of years of patient toil.
The surgeon must have hands, and better, young hands.
He should have a head, too, but this does not seem so
essential to success, and he cannot have an old head with
young hands. At the end of twenty years, when about forty-
five, our Lydgate should have a first-class reputation in the
profession, and a large circle of friends and students. He
will probably have precious little capital in the bank, but
a very large accumulation of interest-bearing funds in
his brain-pan. He has gathered a stock of special know-
ledge which his friends in the profession appreciate, and
they begin to seek his counsel in doubtful cases, and
gradually learn to lean upon him in times of trial. He
may awake some day, perhaps, quite suddenly, to find
that twenty years of quiet work, done for the love of it,
has a very solid value.

The environment of a large city is not essential to the
growth of a good clinical physician. Even in small towns
a man can, if he has it in him, become well versed in
methods of work, and with the assistance of an occasional
visit to some medical centre he can become an expert
diagnostician and reach a position of dignity and worth
in the community in which he lives. I wish to plead
particularly for the wasted opportunities in the smaller
hospitals of our large cities, and in those of more moderate
size. There are in this State a score or more of hospitals
with from thirty to fifty medical beds, offering splendid
material for good men on which to build reputations.
Take, for example, the town of Thelma, which I know
well, to which young Rondibilis, a recent interne at the
Hotel Dieu, has just gone. He wrote asking me for a

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letter of advice, from which I take the liberty of extract-
ing one or two paragraphs : —

" Your training warrants a high aim. To those who
ask, say that you intend to practise medicine only, and
will not take surgical or midwifery cases. X. has promised
that you may help in the dispensary, and as you can
count blood and percuss a chest you will be useful to him
in the wards, which, by the way, he now rarely visits;
Be careful with the house physicians, and if you teach
them anything do it gently, and never crow when you
are right. The crow of the young rooster before his spurs
are on always jars and antagonizes. Get your own little
clinical laboratory in order. Old Dr. Rolando will be
sure to visit you, and bear with him as he tells you how
he can tell casts from the ascending limb of the loop of
Henle. Once he was as you are now, a modern, twenty
years ago ; but he crawled up the bank, and the stream
has left him there, but he does not know it. He means
to impress you ; be civil and show him the new Nissl-
stain preparations, and you will have him as a warm
friend. His good heart has kept him with a large general
practice, and he can put post-mortems in your way, and
may send for you to sit up o' nights with his rich patients.
If Y. asks you to help in the teaching, jump at the chance.
The school is not what you might wish, but the men are
in earnest, and a clinical microscopy-class or a voluntary
ward-class, with Y.'s cases, will put you on the first rung
of the ladder. Yes, join both the city and the county
society, and never miss a meeting. Keep your mouth
shut too, for a few years, particularly in discussions.

Let the old men read new books ; you read the journals

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and the old books. Study Laennec this winter ; Forbes' s
Translation can be cheaply obtained, but it will help to
keep up your French to read it in the original. The old
Sydenham Society editions of the Greek writers and of
Sydenham are easily got and are really very helpful. As
a teacher you can never get orientirt without a knowledge
of the Fathers, ancient and modern. And do not forget,
above all things, the famous advice to Blackmore, to whom,
when he first began the study of physic, and asked what
books he should read, Sydenham replied, Don Quixote,
meaning thereby, as I take it, that the only book of
physic suitable for permanent reading is the book of
Nature."

A young fellow with staying powers who avoids entangle-
ments, may look forward in twenty years to a good con-
sultation practice in any town of 40,000 to 50,000 in-
habitants. Some such man, perhaps, in a town far distant,
taking care of his education, and not of his bank book,
may be the Austin Flint of New York in 1930.

" Many are called, but few are chosen," and of the many
who start out with high aims, few see the goal. Even
when reached the final period of " cakes and ale " has
serious drawbacks. There are two groups of consultants,
the intra- and the extra-professional ; the one gets work
through his colleagues, the other, having outgrown the
narrow limits of professional reputation, is at the mercy
of the profanum vulgust Then for him " farewell the
tranquil mind, farewell content." His life becomes an
incessant struggle, and between the attempt to carry on
an exhausting and irksome practice, and to keep abreast
with young fellows still in the bread-and-butter stage,

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the consultant at this period is worthy of our sincerest
sympathy.

One thing may save him; It was the wish of Walter
Savage Landor always to walk with Epicurus on the right
hand and Epictetus on the left, and I would urge the
clinical physician, as he travels farther from the East, to
look well to his companions — to see that they are not of
his own age and generation. He must walk with the
" boys," else he is lost, irrevocably lost ; not all at once,
but by easy grades, and every one perceives his ruin before
he, " good, easy man," is aware of it. I would not have
him a basil plant, to feed on the brains of the bright young
fellows who follow the great wheel uphill, but to keep
his mind receptive, plastic, and impressionable he must
travel with the men who are doing the work of the world,
the men between the ages of twenty-five and forty.

In the life of every successful physician there comes
the temptation to toy with the Delilah of the press — daily
and otherwise. There are times when she may be courted
with satisfaction, but beware ! sooner or later she is sure
to play the harlot, and has left many a man shorn of his
strength, viz., the confidence of his professional brethren:
Not altogether with justice have some notable members
of our profession laboured under the accusation of pan-
dering too much to the public. When a man reaches the
climacteric, and has long passed beyond the professional
stage of his reputation, we who are still " in the ring "
must exercise a good deal of charity, and discount largely
the on dits which indiscreet friends circulate. It cannot
be denied that in dealings with the public just a little
touch of humbug is immensely effective, but it is not

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necessary. In a large city there were three eminent
consultants of world-wide reputation ; one was said to
be a good physician but no humbug, the second was no
physician but a great humbug, the third was a great
physician and a great humbug. The first achieved the
greatest success, professional and social, possibly not
financial.

While living laborious days, happy in his work, happy
in the growing recognition which he is receiving from his
colleagues, no shadow of doubt haunts the mind of the
young physician, other than the fear of failure ; but I warn
him to cherish the days of his freedom, the days when he
can follow his bent, untrammeled, undisturbed, and not
as yet in the coils of the octopus. In a play of Oscar
Wilde's one of the characters remarks, " there are only
two great tragedies in life, not getting what you want —
and getting it ! " and I have known consultants whose
treadmill life illustrated the bitterness of this mot, and
whose great success at sixty did not bring the comfort
they had anticipated at forty. The mournful echo of
the words of the preacher rings in their ears, words which
I not long ago heard quoted with deep feeling by a dis-
tinguished physician, " Better is an handful with quietness,
than both the hands full with travail and vexation of
spirit."

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NURSE AND PATIENT

153

I said, I will take heed to my ways , that I offend not in my
tongue.
I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle.

PSALM xxxix. 1, 2.

If thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee ; and be boldj
it will not burst thee.

ECCLESIASTICUS XIX. 10.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath

A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of death,

More hideous than their queen :

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,

That every labouring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage :

THOMAS GBAY.

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THE trained nurse as a factor in life may be regarded
from many points of view — philanthropic, social,
personal, professional and domestic. To her virtues we
have been exceeding kind — tongues have dropped manna
in their description. To her faults — well let us be blind,
since this is neither the place nor the time to expose them.
I would rather call your attention to a few problems
connected with her of interest to us collectively, — and
individually, too, since who can tell the day of her coming.
Is she an added blessing or an added horror in our be-
ginning civilization ? Speaking from the point of view
of a sick man, I take my stand firmly on the latter view,
for several reasons. No man with any self-respect cares
to be taken off guard, in mufti, so to speak. Sickness
dims the eye, pales the cheek, roughens the chin, and makes
a man a scarecrow, not fit to be seen by his wife, to say
nothing of a strange woman all in white or blue or gray.
Moreover she will take such unwarrantable liberties with
a fellow, particularly if she catches him with fever J then her
special virtues could be depicted by King Lemuel alone.
So far as she is concerned you are again in swathing bands,

1 Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1897.
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and in her hands you are, as of yore, a helpless lump of
human clay. • She will stop at nothing, and between baths
and spongings and feeding and temperature-taking you
are ready to cry with Job the cry of every sick man —
" Cease then, and let me alone." For generations has not
this been his immemorial privilege, a privilege with vested
rights as a deep-seated animal instinct — to turn his face
toward the wall, to sicken in peace, and, if he so wishes,
to die undisturbed ? All this the trained nurse has, alas !
made impossible. And more, too. The tender mother,
the loving wife, the devoted sister, the faithful friend, and
the old servant who ministered to his wants and carried
out the doctor's instructions so far as were consistent
with the sick man's wishes — all, all are gone, these old
familiar faces ; and now you reign supreme, and have
added to every illness a domestic complication of which
our fathers knew nothing. You have upturned an
inalienable right in displacing those whom I have just
mentioned. You are intruders, innovators, and usurpers,
dislocating, as you do, from their tenderest and most loving
duties these mothers, wives and sisters. Seriously, you
but lightly reck the pangs which your advent may cause:
The handing over to a stranger the care of a life precious
beyond all computation may be one of the greatest earthly
trials. Not a little of all that is most sacred is sacrificed
to your greater skill and methodical ways. In the com-
plicated fabric of modern society both our nursing and
our charity appear to be better done second-hand, though
at the cost in the one case as in the other of many Beatitudes,
links of that golden chain, of which the poet sings, let
down from heaven to earth.

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Except in the warped judgment of the sick man, for
which I have the warmest sympathy, but no respect,
you are regarded as an added blessing, with, of course,
certain limitations. Certainly you have made the practice
of medicine easier to the physician ; you are more than
the equivalent of the old two hourly doses to a fever
patient ; and as the public grows in intelligence you should
save in many instances the entire apothecary's bill. In
his chapter on Instinct, in the Origin of the Species, Dar-
win gives a graphic account of the marvellous care-taking
capacity of the little Formica fusca — a slave ant. One
of these " introduced into a company of her masters who
were helpless and actually dying for lack of assistance,
instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors, made
some cells, and tended the larvae and put all to rights."
Put all to rights ! How often have I thought of this ex-
pression and of this incident when at your word I have
seen order and quiet replace chaos and confusion, not alone
in the sick-room, but in the household.

As a rule, a messenger of joy and happiness, the trained
nurse may become an incarnate tragedy. A protracted
illness, an attractive and weak Mrs. Ebb-Smith as nurse,
and a weak husband — and all husbands are weak — make
fit elements for a domestic tragedy which would be far
more common were your principles less fixed.

While thus a source of real terror to a wife, you may
become a more enduring misery to a husband. In our
hurried progress the weak-nerved sisters have suffered
sorely, and that deep mysterious undercurrent of the
emotions, which flows along silently in each one of us, is
apt to break out in the rapids, eddies and whirls of hysteria

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or neurasthenia. By a finely measured sympathy and
a wise combination of affection with firmness, you gain the
full confidence of one of these unfortunates, and become
to her a rock of defence, to which she clings, and without
which she feels again adrift. You become essential in her
life, a fixture in the family, and at times a dark shadow
between husband and wife. As one poor victim expressed
it, " She owns my wife body and soul, and, so far as I am
concerned, she has become the equivalent of her disease."
Sometimes there develops that occult attraction between
women, only to be explained by the theory of Aristophanes
as to the origin of the race ; but usually it grows out of
the natural leaning of the weak upon the strong, and in
the nurse the wife may find that " stern strength and pro-
mise of control " for which in the husband she looked in
vain.

To measure finely and nicely your sympathy in these
cases is a very delicate operation. The individual tempera-
ment controls the situation, and the more mobile of you
will have a hard lesson to learn in subduing your emotions.
It is essential, however, and never let your outward action
demonstrate the native act and figure of your heart. You
arc lost irrevocably, should you so far give the reins to
your feelings as to " ope the sacred source of sympathetic
tears." Do enter upon your duties with a becoming
sense of your frailties. Women can fool men always,
women only sometimes, and it may be the lot of any one
of you to be such a castaway as the nurse of whom I was
told a few weeks ago. The patient was one of those
Alphonsine Plessis-like creatures whom everybody had
to love, and for whom the primrose path of dalliance had

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ended in a rigid rest cure. After three weary months she
was sent to a quiet place in the mountains with the more
sedate of the two nurses who had been with her. Miss
Blank had had a good training and a large experience,
and was a New England woman of the very best type.
Alas ! hers the greater fall ! An accomplishment of this
siren, which had produced serious symptoms, was excessive

cigarette smoking, and Dr. had strictly forbidden

tobacco. Three weeks later, my informant paid a visit
to the secluded resort, and to his dismay found patient
and nurse on the verandah enjoying the choicest brand of
Egyptian cigarette !

While not the recipient of all the wretched secrets of life,
as are the parson and the doctor, you will frequently be
in households the miseries of which cannot be hid, all
the cupboards of which are open to you, and you become
the involuntary possessor of the most sacred confidences,
known perhaps to no other soul. Nowadays that part of
the Hippocratic oath which enjoins secrecy as to the things
seen and heard among the sick, should be administered to
you at graduation.

Printed in your remembrance, written as headlines on
the tablets of your chatelaines, I would have two maxims :
" I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle," and " If
thou hast heard a word let it die with thee." Taciturnity,
a discreet silence, is a virtue little cultivated in these garru-
lous days when the chatter of the bander-log is every-
where about us, when, as some one has remarked, speech
has taken the place of thought. As an inherited trait it
is perhaps an infirmity, but the kind to which I refer is
an acquired faculty of infinite value. Sir Thomas

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Browne drew the distinction nicely when he said, " Think
not silence the wisdom of fools, but, if rightly timed,
the honour of wise men, who have not the infirmity but
the virtue of taciturnity," — the talent for silence Carlyle
calls it.

Things medical and gruesome have a singular attraction
for many people, and in the easy days of convalescence a
facile-tongued nurse may be led on to tell of " moving
incidents " in ward or theatre, and once untied, that
unruly member is not apt to cease wagging with the simple
narration of events. To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian
Nights' entertainment to which no discreet nurse will
lend her talents.

With the growth of one abominable practice in recent
days I am not certain you have anything to do, though
I have heard your name mentioned in connexion with it.
I refer to the habit of openly discussing ailments which
should never be mentioned. Doubtless it is in a measure
the result of the disgusting publicity in which we live,
and to the pernicious habit of allowing the filth of the gutters
as purveyed in the newspapers to pollute the stream of our
daily lives. This open talk about personal maladies is an
atrocious breach of good manners. Not a month ago, I
heard two women, both tailor-made, who sat opposite to
me in a street-car, compare notes on their infirmities
in Fulvian accents audible to everyone. I have heard a
young woman at a dinner- table relate experiences which
her mother would have blushed to have told to the family
physician. Everything nowadays is proclaimed from the
house-tops, among them our little bodily woes and worries.
This is a sad lapse from the good old practice of our grand-

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fathers, of which George Sand writes, " People knew how
to live and die in those days, and kept their infirmities
out of sight. You might have the gout, but you must
walk about all the same without making grimaces. It
was a point of good breeding to hide one's suffering."
We doctors are great sinners in this manner, and among
ourselves and with the laity are much too fond of " talking
shop."

To another danger I may refer, now that I have waxed
bold. With the fullest kind of training you cannot escape
from the perils of half-knowledge, of pseudo-science, that
most fatal and common of mental states. In your daily
work you involuntarily catch the accents and learn the
language of science, often without a clear conception
of its meaning. I turned incidentally one day to a very
fine example of the nurse learned and asked in a humble
tone what the surgeon, whom I had failed to meet,
had thought of the case, and she promptly replied that
" he thought there were features suggestive of an intra-
canalicular myxoma ; " and when I looked anxious and
queried, " had she happened to hear if he thought it had
an epiblastic or mesoblastic origin ? " this daughter of
Eve never flinched ; " mesoblastic, I believe," was her
answer. She would have handed sponges — I mean gauze —
with the same sang froid at a Waterloo.

It must be very difficult to resist the fascination of a
desire to know more, much more, of the deeper depths of
the things you see and hear, and often this ignorance must
be very tantalizing, but it is more wholesome than an
assurance which rests on a thin veneer of knowledge.

A friend, a distinguished surgeon, has written, in the

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Lady Priestley vein, an essay on " The Fall of the Trained
Nurse," which, so far, he has very wisely refrained from
publishing, but he has permitted me to make one extract
for your delectation. « A fifth common declension is into
the bonds of marriage. The facility with which these
modern Vestals fall into this commonplace condition is a
commentary, shall I not say rather an illustration, of the
inconsistency so notorious in the sex. The Association of
Superintendents has in hand, I believe, a Collective Inves-
tigation dealing with this question, and we shall shortly
have accurate figures as to the percentage of lady super-
intendents, of head-nurses, of graduates and of pupils
who have bartered away their heritage for a hoop of gold."
[ am almost ashamed to quote this rude paragraph,
but I am glad to do so to be able to enter a warm protest
against such sentiments. Marriage is the natural end of
the trained nurse. So truly as a young man married
is a young man marred, is a woman unmarried, in a certain
sense, a woman undone. Ideals, a career, ambition
touched though they be with the zeal of St. Theresa,'
all vanish before « the blind bow-boy's butt shaft." Are
you to be blamed and scoffed at for so doing ? Contrari-
wise, you are to be praised, with but this caution-which
I insert at the special request of Miss Nutting— that you
abstain from philandering during your period of training,
and, as much as in you lies, spare your fellow-workers,
the physicians and surgeons of the staff. The trained nurse
is a modern representative, not of the Roman Vestal,
but of the female guardian in Plato's republic-a choice
selection from the very best women of the community,
who know the laws of health, and whose sympathies have

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been deepened by contact with the best and worst of men.
The experiences of hospital and private work, while they
may not make her a Martha, enhance her value in many
ways as a life-companion, and it is a cause, not for re-
proach, but for congratulation, that she has not acquired
immunity from that most ancient of all diseases — that
malady of which the Rose of Sharon sang so plaintively,
that sickness " to be stayed not with flagons nor comforted
with apples."

A luxury, let us say, in her private capacity, in public
the trained nurse has become one of the great blessings
of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the
priest, and not inferior to either in her mission. Not that
her calling here is in any way new. Time out of mind
she has made one of a trinity. Kindly heads have always
been ready to devise means for allaying suffering ; tender
hearts, surcharged with the miseries of this " battered
caravanserai," have ever been ready to speak to the sufferer
of a way of peace, and loving hands have ever ministered
to those in sorrow, need and sickness. Nursing as an art
to be cultivated, as a profession to be followed, is modern ;
nursing as a practice originated in the dim past, when some
mother among the cave-dwellers cooled the forehead of her
sick child with water from the brook, or first yielded to
the prompting to leave a well-covered bone and a handful
of meal by the side of a wounded man left in the hurried
flight before an enemy. As a profession, a vocation,
nursing has already reached in this country a high develop-
ment. Graduates are numerous, the directories are full,
and in many places there is over-crowding, and a serious
complaint that even very capable women find it hard to

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get employment. This will correct itself in time, as the
existing conditions adjust the supply and demand.

A majority of the applicants to our schools are women
who seek in nursing a vocation in which they can gain a
livelihood in a womanly way ; but there is another aspect
of the question which may now be seriously taken up in
this country. There is a gradually accumulating surplus
of women who will not or who cannot fulfil the highest
duties for which Nature has designed them. I do not know
at what age one dare call a woman a spinster. I will put
it, perhaps rashly, at twenty-five. Now, at that critical
period a woman who has not to work for her living, who
is without urgent domestic ties, is very apt to become
a dangerous element unless her energies and emotions
are diverted in a proper channel. One skilled in hearts
can perhaps read in her face the old, old story ; or she calls
to mind that tender verse of Sapphc

As the sweet-apple blushes on the end of the
bough, the very end of the bough, which the
gatherers overlooked, nay overlooked not but could
not reach.

But left alone, with splendid capacities for good, she
is apt to fritter away a precious life in an aimless round of
social duties, or in spasmodic efforts at Church work.
Such a woman needs a vocation, a calling which will satisfy
her heart, and she should be able to find it in nursing
without entering a regular school or working in ecclesiastical
harness.

An organized nursing guild, similar to the German
Deaconesses, could undertake the care of large or small
institutions, without the establishment of training schools

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in the ordinary sense of the term. Such a guild might
be entirely secular, with St. James, the Apostle of
practical religion, as the patron. It would be of special
advantage to smaller hospitals, particularly to those un-
attached to Medical Schools, and it would obviate the
existing anomaly of scores of training schools, in which
the pupils cannot get an education in any way com-
mensurate with the importance of the profession. In
the period of their training, the members of the Nursing
Guild could be transferred from one institution to another
until their education was complete. Such an organization
would be of inestimable service in connexion with District
Nursing. The noble work of Theodore Fliedner should
be repeated at an early day in this country. The Kaisers -
werth Deaconesses have shown the world the way. I
doubt if we have progressed in secularism far enough
successfully to establish such guilds apart from church
organizations. The Religion of Humanity is thin stuff
for women, whose souls ask for something more substantial
upon which to feed.

There is no higher mission in this life than nursing God's
poor. In so doing a woman may not reach the ideals of
her soul ; she may fall far short of the ideals of her head,
but she will go far to satiate those longings of the heart
from which no woman can escape. Romola, the student,
helping her blind father, and full of the pride of learning,
we admire ; Romola, the devotee, carrying in her withered
heart woman's heaviest disappointment, we pity ; Romola,
the nurse, doing noble deeds amid the pestilence, rescuing
those who were ready to perish, we love.

On the stepping-stones of our dead selves we rise to
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higher things, and in the inner life the serene heights are
reached only when we die unto those selfish habits and
feelings which absorb so much of our lives. To each one
of us at some time, I suppose, has come the blessed impulse
to break away from all such ties and follow cherished
ideals. Too often it is but a flash of youth, which darkens
down with the growing years. Though the dream may
never be realized, the impulse will not have been wholly
in vain if it enables us to look with sympathy upon the
more successful efforts of others. In Institutions the
corroding effect of routine can be withstood only by main-
taining high ideals of work ; but these become the sound-
ing brass and tinkling cymbals without corresponding
sound practice. In some of us the ceaseless panorama
of suffering tends to dull that fine edge of sympathy with
which we started. A great corporation cannot have a
very fervent charity ; the very conditions of its existence
limit the exercise. Against this benumbing influence,
we physicians and nurses, the immediate agents of the
Trust, have but one enduring corrective — the practice
towards patients of the Golden Rule of Humanity as
announced by Confucius : " What you do not like when
done to yourself, do not do to others," — so familiar to us
in its positive form as the great Christian counsel of per-
fection, in which alone are embraced both the law and the
prophets.

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BRITAIN

167

Cranmer. Nor shall this peace sleep with her ; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new -create another heir
As great hi admiration as herself.
So shall she leave her blessedness to one —
When heaven shall call her from this cloud of

darkness —

Who from the sacred ashes of her honour
Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,
And so stand fix'd. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,
That were the servants to this chosen infant,
Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him :
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations : he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him. Our children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.

King. Thou speakest wonders.

SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VIII, Act V.

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER
BRITAIN 1
I

TO trace successfully the evolution of any one of the
learned professions would require the hand of a master
— of one who, like Darwin, combined a capacity for patient
observation with philosophic vision. In the case of medi-
cine the difficulties are enormously increased by the extra-
ordinary development which has taken place during the
nineteenth century. The rate of progress has been too
rapid for us to appreciate, and we stand bewildered and,
as it were, in a state of intellectual giddiness, when we
attempt to obtain a broad, comprehensive view of the
subject. In a safer " middle flight " I propose to dwell
on certain of the factors which have moulded the pro-
fession in English-speaking lands beyond the narrow seas —
of British medicine in Greater Britain. Even for this
lesser task (though my affiliations are wide and my sym-
pathies deep) I recognize the limitations of my fitness, and
am not unaware that in my ignorance I shall overlook
much which might have rendered less sketchy a sketch
necessarily imperfect.

Evolution advances by such slow and imperceptible
degrees that to those who are part of it the finger of time
scarcely seems to move. Even the great epochs are seldom

1 British Medical Association, Montreal, 1897.
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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

apparent to the participators. During the last century
neither the colonists nor the mother country appreciated
the thrilling interest of the long-fought duel for the pos-
session of this continent.' The acts and scenes of the drama^
to them detached, isolated and independent, now glide
like dissolving views into each other, and in the vitascope
of history we can see the true sequence of events. That
we can meet here to-day, Britons on British soil, in a French
province, is one of the far-off results of that struggle. This
was but a prelude to the other great event of the eighteenth
century : the revolt of the colonies and the founding of a
second great English-speaking nation — in the words of
Bishop Berkeley's prophecy, " Time's noblest offspring."

It is surely a unique spectacle that a century later
descendants of the actors of these two great dramas should
meet in an English city in New France. Here, the Ameri-
can may forget Yorktown in Louisbourg, the Englishman
Bunker Hill in Quebec, and the Frenchman both Louis-
bourg and Quebec in Chateauguay ; while we Canadians,
English and French, remembering former friendships and
forgetting past enmities can welcome you to our
country — the land in which and for which you have so
often fought.

Once, and only once, before in the history of the world
could such a gathering as this have taken place. Divided
though the Greeks were, a Hellenic sentiment of extra-
ordinary strength united them in certain assemblies and
festivals. No great flight of imagination is required to
picture a notable representation of our profession in the
fifth century B.C. meeting in such a colonial town as Agri-
gentum, under the presidency of Empedocles. Delegates

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from the mother cities, brilliant predecessors of Hippo-
crates of the stamp of Democedes and Herodicus, delegates
from the sister colonies of Syracuse and other Sicilian
towns, from neighbouring Italy, from far distant Massilia,
and from still more distant Panticapseum and Istria. And
in such an assemblage there would have been men capable
of discussing problems of life and mind more brilliantly than
in many subsequent periods, in proportion as the pre-
Hippocratic philosophers in things medical had thought
more deeply than many of those who came after them.

We English are the modern Greeks, and we alone have
colonised as they did, as free peoples. There have been
other great colonial empires, Phoenician, Roman, Spanish,
Dutch and French, but in civil liberty and intellectual
freedom Magna Graecia and Greater Britain stand alone.
The parallel so often drawn between them is of particular
interest with reference to the similarity between the Greek
settlements in Sicily and the English plantations on the
Atlantic coast. Indeed, Freeman says : "I can never
think of America without something suggesting Sicily, or
of Sicily without something suggesting America." I wish
to use the parallel only to emphasise two points, one of
difference and one of resemblance. The Greek colonist
took Greece with him. Hellas had no geographical bounds,
" Massilia and Olbia were cities of Hellas in as full sense
as Athens or Sparta." While the emigrant Britons changed
their sky, not their character, in crossing the great sea, yet
the home-stayers had never the same feeling toward the
plantations as the Greeks had towards the colonial cities
of Magna Grsecia. If, as has been shrewdly surmised,'
Professor Seely was Herodotus reincarnate, how grieved

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the spirit of the father of history must have been to say of
Englishmen, " nor have we even now ceased to think of
ourselves as simply a race inhabiting an island off the
northern coast of the Continent of Europe." The assump-
tion of gracious superiority which, unless carefully cloaked,
smacks just a little of our national arrogance, is apt to jar
on sensitive colonial nerves. With the expansion of the
Empire, and the supplanting of a national by an imperial
spirit this will become impossible. That this sentiment
never prevailed in Hellas, as it did later in the Roman
Empire, was due largely to the fact that in literature, in
science and in art, the colonial cities of Greece early over-
shadowed the mother cities. It may be because the settle-
ments of greater Britain were of slower growth that it took
several generations and several bitter trials to teach a
lesson the Greeks never had to learn.

The Greek spirit was the leaven of the old world, the
workings of which no nationality could resist ; thrice it
saved western civilisation, for it had the magic power of
leading captivity captive and making even captive con-
querors the missionaries of her culture. What modern
medicine owes to it will appear later. " The love of science,
the love of art, the love of freedom — vitally correlated to
each other, and brought into organic union," were the essen-
tial attributes of the Greek genius (Butcher). While we
cannot claim for the Anglo-Saxon race all of these distinc-
tions it has in a high degree that one which in practical
life is the most valuable, and which has been the most
precious gift of the race to the world — the love of freedom,

Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England.

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It would carry me too far afield to discuss the differences
between the native Briton and his children scattered so
widely up and down the earth. In Canada, South Africa,
Australia, and New Zealand, types of the Anglo-Saxon
race are developing which will differ as much from each
other, and from the English, as the American does to-day
from the original stock ; but amid these differences can
everywhere be seen those race-qualities which have made
us what we are — " courage, national integrity, steady good
sense, and energy in work." At a future meeting of the
Association, perhaps in Australia, a professional Sir Charles
Dilke with a firm grasp of the subject may deal with the
medical problems of Greater Britain in a manner worthy
of the address in medicine. My task, as I mentioned at the
outset, is much less ambitious.

Could some one with full knowledge patiently analyse
the characteristics of British medicine, he would find certain
national traits sufficiently distinct for recognition. Three
centuries cannot accomplish very much (and that period
has only just passed since the revival of medicine in Eng-
land), but the local conditions of isolation, which have
been singularly favourable to the development of special
peculiarities in the national character, have not been with-
out effect in the medical profession. I cannot do more
than touch upon a few features, which may be useful as
indicating the sources of influence upon Great Britain in
the past, and which may perhaps be suggestive as to lines
of progress in the future.

Above the fireplace in Sir Henry Acland's library are
three panelled portraits of Linacre, Sydenham, and Harvey ;
the scroll upon them reads Littercv, Praxis, Scientia. To

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this great triumvirate, as to the fountain heads, we may
trace the streams of inspiration which have made British
medicine what it is to-day.

Linacre, the type of the literary physician, must ever
hold a unique place in the annals of our profession. To
him was due in great measure the revival of Greek thought
in the sixteenth century in England ; and in the last Har-
veian oration Dr. Payne has pointed out his importance
as a forerunner of Harvey. He made Greek methods avail-
able ; through him the art of Hippocrates and the science
of Galen became once more the subject of careful, first-
hand study. Linacre, as Dr. Payne remarks, " was pos-
sessed from his youth till his death by the enthusiasm of
learning. He was an idealist devoted to objects which the
world thought of little use." Painstaking, accurate,-
critical, hypercritical perhaps, he remains to-day the chief
literary representative of British medicine. Neither in
Britain nor in Greater Britain have we maintained the
place in the world of letters created for us by Linacre's
noble start. It is true that in no generation since has the
profession lacked a man who might stand unabashed in the
temple at Delos ; but, judged by the fruits of learning,
scholars of his type have been more common in France and
Germany. Nor is it to our credit that so little provision is
made for the encouragement of these studies. For years
the reputation of Great Britain in this matter was sustained
almost alone by the great Dee-side scholar, the surgeon of
Banchory, Francis Adams — the interpreter of Hippocrates
to English students. In the nineteenth century he and
Greenhill well maintained the traditions of Linacre. Their
work, and that of a few of our contemporaries, among

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whom Ogle must be specially mentioned, has kept us in
touch with the ancients. But by the neglect of the study
of the humanities, which has been far too general, the
profession loses a very precious quality.

While in critical scholarship and in accurate historical
studies, British medicine must take a second place, the
influence of Linacre exerted through the Royal College
of Physicians and the old Universities, has given to the
humanities an important part in education, so that they
have moulded a larger section of the profession than in
any other country. A physician may possess the science
of Harvey and the art of Sydenham, and yet there may be
lacking in him those finer qualities of heart and head which
count for so much in life. Pasture is not everything and
that indefinable, though well understood, something which
we know as breeding, is not always an accompaniment of
great professional skill. Medicine is seen at its best in men
whose faculties have had the highest and most harmonious
culture. The Lathams, the Watsons, the Pagets, the
Jenners, and the Gairdners have influenced the profession
lees by their special work than by exemplifying those graces
of life and refinements of heart which make up character.
And the men of this stamp in Greater Britain have left
the most enduring mark, — Beaumont, Bovell and Hodder
in Toronto ; Holmes, Campbell and Howard in this city ;
the Warrens, the Jacksons, the Bigelows, the Bowditches,
and the Shattucks in Boston ; Bard, Hossack, Francis,
Clark, and Flint of New York ; Morgan, Shippen, Redman,
Rush, Coxe, the elder Wood, the elder Pepper, and the
elder Mitchell of Philadelphia — Brahmins all, in the lan-
guage of the greatest Brahmin among them, Oliver Wendell

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Holmes, — these and men like unto them have been the
leaven which has raised our profession above the dead level
of a business.

The litterce humaniores, represented by Linacre, revived
Greek methods ; but the Faculty during the sixteenth and
at the beginning of the seventeenth centuries was in a
slough of ignorance and self-conceit, and not to be aroused
even by Moses and the prophets in the form of Hippocrates
and the fathers of medicine. In the pictures referred to,
Sydenham is placed between Linacre and Harvey ; but
science preceded practice, and Harvey's great Lumleian
lectures were delivered before Sydenham was born. Linacre
has been well called, by Payne, Harvey's intellectual grand-
father. " The discovery of the circulation of the blood
was the climax of that movement which began a century
and a half before with the revival of Greek medical classics,
and especially of Galen." (Payne.) Harvey returned
to Greek methods and became the founder of modern ex-
perimental physiology and the great glory of British
scientific medicine. The demonstration of the circulation
of the blood remains in every detail a model research. I
shall not repeat the oft- told tale of Harvey's great and
enduring influence, but I must refer to one feature which,
until lately, has been also a special characteristic of his
direct successors in Great Britain. Harvey was a practi-
tioner and a hospital physician. There are gossiping
statements by Aubrey to the effect that " he fell mightily
in his practice " after the publication of the De motu eordis,
and that his " therapeutic way " was not admired ; but to
these his practical success is the best answer. It is remark-
able that a large proportion of all the physiological work

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of Great Britain has been done by men who have become
successful hospital physicians or surgeons. I was much
impressed by a conversation with Professor Ludwig in 1884.
Speaking of the state of English physiology, he lamented
the lapse of a favourite English pupil from science to prac-
tice ; but, he added, " while sorry for him, I am glad for
the profession in England." He held that the clinical
physicians of that country had received a very positive
impress from the work of their early years in physiology
and the natural sciences. I was surprised at the list of
names which he cited ; among them I remember Bowman,
Paget, Savory and Lister. Ludwig attributed this feature
in part to the independent character of the schools in Eng-
land, to the absence of the University element so important
in medical life in Germany, but, above all, to the practical
character of the English mind, the better men preferring
an active life in practice to a secluded laboratory Career.

Thucydides it was who said of the Greeks that they
possessed " the power of thinking before they acted, and
of acting, too." The same is true in a high degree of the
Englisi race. To know just what has to be done, then to
do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
Sydenham — Anglice lumen, as he has been well called — is the
model practical physician of modern times. Linacre led
Harvey back to Galen, Sydenham to Hippocrates. The
one took Greek science, the other not so much Greek medi-
cine aa Greek methods, particularly intellectual fearlessness,
and a certain knack of looking at things. Sydenham
broke with authority and went to nature. It is an extra-
ordinary fact that he could have been so emancipated
from dogmas and theories of all sorts. He laid down the

AE. 177 N

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fundamental proposition, and acted upon it, that " all
diseases should be described as objects of natural history."
To do him justice we must remember, as Dr. John Brown
says, " in the midst of what a mass of 6 ^rors and prejudices,
of theories actively mischievous, he was placed, at a time
when the mania of hypothesis was at its height, and when
the practical part of his art was overrun and stultified by
vile and silly nostrums." Sydenham led us back to Hippo-
crates, I would that we could be led oftener to Sydenham !
How necessary to bear in mind what he says about the
method of the study of medicine. " In writing therefore,
such a natural history of diseases, every merely philoso-
phical hypothesis should be set aside, and the manifest and
natural phenomena, however minute, should be noted with
the utmost exactness. The usefulness of this procedure
cannot be easily overrated, as compared with the subtle
inquiries- and trifling notions of modern writers, for can
there be a shorter, or indeed any other way of coming at
the morbific causes, or discovering the curative indications
than by a certain perception of the peculiar symptoms ?
By these steps and helps it was that the father of physic,
the great Hippocrates, came to excel, his theory being no
more than an exact description or view of Nature. He
found that Nature alone often terminates diseases, and
works a cure with a few simple medicines, and often enough
with no medicines at all." Well indeed has a recent writer
remarked, " Sydenham is unlike every previous teacher of
the principles and practice of medicine in the modern
world." He, not Linacre or Harvey, is the model British
physician in whom were concentrated all those practical
instincts upon which we lay such stress in the Anglo-Saxon
character.

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The Greek faculty which we possess of thinking and
acting has enabled us, in spite of many disadvantages, to
take the lion's share in the great practical advances in
medicine. Three among the greatest scientific movements
of the century have come from Germany and France.
Bichat, Laennec and Louis laid the foundation of modern
clinical medicine ; Virchow and his pupils of scientific
pathology ; while Pasteur and Koch have revolutionized
the study of the causes of disease ; and yet, the modern
history of the art of medicine could almost be written in its
fulness from the records of the Anglo-Saxon race. We
can claim every practical advance of the very first rank —
vaccination, anaesthesia, preventive medicine and antiseptic
surgery, the " cap tain jewels in the carcanet" of the pro-
fession, beside which can be placed no others of equal lustre.

One other lesson of Sydenham's life needs careful con-
ning. The English Hippocrates, as I said, broke with
authority. His motto was

Thou Nature art my Goddess ; to thy law
My services are bound.

Undue reverence for authority as such, a serene satisfac-
tion with the status quo, and a fatuous objection to change
have often retarded the progress of medicine. In every
generation, in every country, there have been, and ever
will be, laudatores temporis acti, in the bad sense of that
phrase, not a few of them men in high places, who have
lent the weight of a complacent conservatism to bolster
up an ineffectual attempt to stay the progress of new ideas.
Every innovator from Harvey to Lister has been made to
feel its force. The recently issued life of Thomas W^K/y
is a running commentary on this spirit, against the priclrs

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of which he kicked so hard and so effectually. But there
are signs of a great change. The old universities and the
colleges, once the chief offenders, have been emancipated,
and remain no longer, as Gibbon found them, steeped in
port and prejudice. The value of authority per se has
lessened enormously, and we of Greater Britain have per-
haps suffered as the pendulum has swung to the other
extreme. Practice loves authority, as announced in " the
general and perpetual voice of men." Science must ever
hold with Epicharmus that a judicious distrust and wise
scepticism are the sinews of the understanding. And yet
the very foundations of belief in almost everything relating
to our art rest upon authority. The practitioner cannot
always be the judge ; the responsibility must often rest
with the teachers and investigators, who can only learn
in the lessons of history the terrible significance of the
word. The fetters of a thousand years in the treatment
of fever were shattered by Sydenham, shattered only to be
riveted anew. How hard was the battle in this century
against the entrenched and stubborn foe ! Listen to the
eloquent pleadings of Stokes, pleading as did Sydenham,
against authority, and against the bleedings, the purgings
and sweatings of fifty years ago. " Though his hair be
grey and his authority high, he is but a child in knowledge
and his reputation an error. On a level with a child, so
far as correct appreciation of the great truths of medicine
is concerned, he is very different in other respects, his
powers of doing mischief are greater ; he is far more dan-
gerous. Oh ! that men would stoop to learn, or at least
cease to destroy." The potency of human authority
among the powers that be, was never better drawn than

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by the judicious Hooker in his section on this subject.
" And this not only with ' the simpler sort/ but the leameder
and wiser we are, the more such arguments in some cases
prevail with us. The reason why the simpler sort are
moved with authority is the conscience of their own ignor-
ance ; whereby it cometh to pass that having learned men
in admiration, they rather fear to dislike them than know
wherefore they should allow and follow their judgments.
Contrariwise with them that are skilful authority is much
more strong and forcible ; because they only are able to
discern how just cause there is why to some men's authority
so much should be attributed. For which cause the name
of Hippocrates (no doubt) were more effectual to persuade
even such men as Galen himself than to move a silly
empiric." l

Sydenham was called " a man of many doubts " and
therein lay the secret of his great strength.

II

Passing now to the main question of the development
of this British medicine in Greater Britain, I must at once
acknowledge the impossibility of doing justice to it. I can
only indicate a few points of importance, and I must con-
fine my remarks chiefly to the American part of Greater
Britain. We may recognize three distinct periods corres-
ponding to three distinct waves of influence, the first from
the early immigration to about 1820, the second from
about 1820 to 1860, and the third from about 1860 to the
present time.

The colonial settlements were contemporaneous with
the revival of medicine in England. Fellow-students of
1 Ecclesiastical Polity. Book ii., vii. 2.
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Harvey at Cambridge might have sailed in the Mayflower
and the Arbdla. The more carefully planned expeditions
usually enlisted the services of a well- trained physician,
and the early records, particularly of the New England
colonies, contain many interesting references to these
college-bred men. Giles Firman, who settled in Boston
in 1632, a Cambridge-man, seems to have been the first to
give instruction in medicine in the new world. The par-
sons of that day had often a smattering of physic, and
illustrated what Cotton Mather called an " angelical con-
junction." He says : " Ever since the days of Luke, the
Evangelist, skill in Physick has been frequently professed
and practised by Persons whose more declared Business
was the study of Divinity." Firman himself, finding physic
" but a meane helpe," took orders. These English phy-
sicians in the New England colonies were scholarly, able
men. Roger Chillingworth, in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter,
has depicted them in a sketch of his own life : " Made up
of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed
faithfully for the increase of knowledge, faithfully, too,
for the advancement of human welfare — men, thoughtful
for others, caring little for themselves, kind, just, true, and
of constant if not warm affections, — " a singularly truthful
picture of the old colonial physician.

Until the establishment of medical schools (University
of Pennsylvania, 1763 J King's College (afterwards Col-
umbia) 1767 ; Harvard, 1782 ; the supply of physicians
for the colonies came from Great Britain, supplemented
by men trained under the old apprentice system, and of
colonists who went to Edinburgh, Leyden and London for
their medical education. This latter group had a most

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powerful effect in moulding professional life in the pre-
revolutionary period. They were men who had enjoyed
not alone the instruction but often the intimate friendship
of the great English and European physicians. Morgan,
Rush, Shippen, Bard, Wistar, Hossack and others had
received an education comprising all that was best in the
period, and had acquired the added culture which can only
come from travel. and wide acquaintance with the world.
Morgan, the founder of the medical school of the University
of Pennsylvania, was away seven years, and before return-
ing had taken his seat as a corresponding member of the
French Academy of Surgery, besides having been elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society. The War of Independence
interrupted temporarily the stream of students, but not
the friendship which existed between Cullen and Fothergill
and their old pupils in America. The correspondence of
these two warm friends of the colonies testifies to the strong
professional intimacy which existed at the time between
the leaders of the profession in the old and new worlds.

But neither Boerhaave, Cullen nor Fothergill stamped
colonial medicine as did the great Scotsman, John Hunter.
Long, weary centuries separated Harvey from Galen ; not
a century elapsed from the death of the great physi-
ologist to the advent of the man in whose phenomenal
personality may be seen all the distinctive traits of modern
medicine, and the range of whose mighty intellect has had
few, if any, equals since Aristotle. Hunter's influence on
the profession of this continent, so deep and enduring, was
exerted in three ways. In the first place, his career as an
army surgeon, and his writings on subjects of special
interest to military men, carried his work and ways into

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

innumerable campaigns in the long French wars and in the
War of Independence. Hunter's works were reprinted in
America as early as 1791 and 1793. In the second place,
Hunter had a number of most distinguished students from
the colonies, among whom were two who became teachers
of wide reputation. William Shippen, the first Professor
of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, lived with
Hunter on terms of the greatest intimacy. He brought
back his methods of teaching and some measure of his
spirit. With the exception of Hewson and Home, Hunter
had no more distinguished pupil than Philip Syng Physick,
who was his house surgeon at St. George's Hospital, and
his devoted friend. For more than a generation Physick
had no surgical compeer in America, and enjoyed a reputa-
tion equaUed by no one save Rush. He taught Hunterian
methods in the largest medical school in the country, and
the work of his nephew (Dorsey) on Surgery is very largely
Hunter modified by Physick. But in a third and much
more potent way the great master influenced the profession
of this continent. Hunter was a naturalist to whom path-
ological processes were only a small part of a stupendous
whole, governed by law, which, however, could never be
understood until the facts had been accumulated, tabu-
lated and systematized. By his example, by his prodigious
industry, and by his suggestive experiments he led men
again into the old paths of Aristotle, Galen and Harvey.
He made all thinking physicians naturalists, and he lent a
dignity to the study of organic life, and re -established a
close union between medicine and the natural sciences.
Both in Britain and Greater Britain he laid the foundation
of the great collections and museums, particularly those

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

connected with the medical schools. The Wistar-Horner
and the Warren museums originated with men who had
been greatly influenced by Hunter. He was, moreover,
the intellectual father of that interesting group of men on
this side of the Atlantic who, while practising as physicians,
devoted much time and labour to the study of Natural
History. In the latter part of the last century and during
the first thirty years of this, the successful practitioner
was very often a naturalist. I wish that time permitted
me to do justice to the long list of men who have been
devoted naturalists and who have made contributions of
great value. Benjamin Smith Barton, David Hossack,
Jacob Bigelow, Richard Harlan, John D. Godman, Samuel
George Morton, John Collins Warren, Samuel L. Mitchill
J. Aiken Meigs and many others have left the records of
their industry in their valuable works and in the Transac-
tions of the various societies and academies. In Canada,
many of our best naturalists have been physicians, and
collections in this city testify to the industry of Holmes
and McCullough.

I was regretting the humanities a few minutes ago, and
now I have to mourn the almost complete severance of
medicine from the old natural history. To a man the
most delightful recollections of whose student life are the
Saturdays spent with a preceptor who had a Hunterian
appetite for specimens — anything from a trilobite to an
acarus — to such a one across the present brilliant outlook
comes the shadow of the thought that the conditions of
progress will make impossible again such careers as those of
William Kitchen Parker and William Carmichael Mclntosh.

Until about 1820 the English profession of this continent

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

knew little else than British medicine. After this date in
the United States the ties of professional union with the
old country became relaxed, owing in great part to the
increase in the number of home schools, and in part to the
development of American literature. To 1820 one hundred
and fourteen native medical books of all kinds had been
issued from the press, and one hundred and thirty-one
reprints and translations, the former English, the latter,
few in number, and almost exclusively French (Billings).

Turning for a few minutes to the condition of the profes-
sion in Canada during this period, I regret that I cannot
speak of the many interesting questions relating to the
French colonies. With the earliest settlers physicians had
come, and among the Jesuits, in their devoted missions,
there are records of donnes (laymen attached to the service),
who were members of the profession. One of these, Rene
Goupil, suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Iroquois.1

Between the fall of Quebec in 1759 and 1820, the English
population had increased by the settlement of Upper
Canada, chiefly by United Empire loyalists from the United
States, and after the war of 1812 by settlers from the old
country. The physicians in the sparsely settled districts
were either young men who sought their fortunes in the
new colony or were army surgeons, who had remained after
the revolutionary war or the war of 1812. The military
element gave for some years a very distinctive stamp to
the profession. These surgeons were men of energy and
ability, who had seen much service, and were accustomed
to order, discipline and regulations. Sabine, in his Ameri-
can Loyalists, refers to the Tory proclivities of the doctors,

1 Parkman. Jesuits in North America.
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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

but says that they were not so much disturbed as the
lawyers and clergymen. Still a good many of them left
their homes for conscience' sake, and Canniff , in his Medical
Profession in Upper Canada, gives a list of those known
to have been among the United Empire Loyalists.

The character of the men who controlled the profession
of the new colony is well shown by the proceedings of the
Medical Board which was organized in 1819. Drs. Ma-
caulay and Widrner, both army surgeons, were the chief
members. The latter, who has well been termed the father
of the profession in Upper Canada, a man of the very
highest character, did more than anyone else to promote
the progress of the profession ; and throughout his long
career his efforts were always directed in the proper channels;
In looking through CannifFs most valuable work one is
much impressed by the sterling worth and mettle of these
old army surgeons who in the early days formed the -larger
part of the profession. The minutes of the Medical Board
indicate with what military discipline the candidates were
examined, and the percentage of rejections has probably
never been higher in the history of the province than it
was in the first twenty years of the existence of the Board.

One picture on the canvas of those early days lingers in
the memory, illustrating all the most attractive features
of a race which has done much to make this country what
it is to-day. Widmer was the type of the dignified old
army surgeon, scrupulously punctilious and in every detail
regardful of the proprieties of life. " Tiger " Dunlop may
be taken as the very incarnation of that restless roving
spirit which has driven the Scotch broadcast upon the
world. After fighting with the Connaught Rangers in the

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

war of 1812, campaigning in India, clearing the Saugur of
tigers — hence his soubriquet " Tiger," lecturing on Medical
Jurisprudence in Edinburgh, writing for Blackwood, editing
the British Press and the Telescope, introducing Beck's
Medical Jurisprudence to English readers, and figuring as
director and promoter of various companies, this extra-
ordinary character appears in the young colony as " Warden
of the Black Forest " in the employ of the Canada Com-
pany. His life in the backwoods at Gairbraid, his Noctes
AmbrosiancB Canadenses, his famous " Twelve apostles,"
as he called his mahogany liquor stand (each bottle a full
quart), his active political life, his remarkable household,
his many eccentricities — are they not all portrayed to the
life in the recently issued In the days of the Canada Com-
pany ?

Ill

Turning now to the second period, we may remark in
passing that the nineteenth century did not open very
auspiciously for British medicine. Hunter had left no
successor, and powerful as had been his influence it was
too weak to stem the tide of abstract speculation, with
which Cullen, Brown, and others flooded the profession.
No more sterile period exists than the early decades of
this century. Willan (a great naturalist in skin diseases)
with a few others saved it from utter oblivion. The methods
of Hippocrates, of Sydenham, and of Hunter had not yet
been made available in everyday work.

The awakening came in France, and such an awakening !
It can be compared with nothing but the renaissance in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which gave us
Vesalius and Harvey. " Citizen " Bichat and Broussais

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

led the way, but Laennec really created clinical medicine
as we know it to-day. The discovery of auscultation was
only an incident, of vast moment it is true, in a systematic
study of the correlation of symptoms with anatomical
changes. Louis, Andral, and Chomel, extended the reputa-
tion of the French school which was maintained to the full
until the sixth decade, when the brilliant Trousseau ended
for a time a long line of Paris teachers, whose audience had
been world- wide. The revival of medicine in Great Britain
was directly due to the French. Bright and Addison,
Graves and Stokes, Forbes and Marshall Hall, Latham and
Bennett were profoundly affected by the new movement.
In the United States Anglican influence did not wane until
after 1820. Translations of the works of Bichat appeared
as early as 1802, and there were reprints in subsequent
years, but it was not until 1823 that the first translation
(a reprint of Forbes' edition) of Laennec was issued. Brous-
sais' works became very popular in translations after 1830,
and in the journals from this time on the change of allegi-
ance became very evident. But men rather than books
diverted the trend of professional thought. After 1825,
American students no longer went to Edinburgh and Lon-
don, but to Paris, and we can say that between 1830 and
1860, every teacher and writer of note passed under the
Gallic yoke. The translations of Louis' works and the
extraordinary success of his American pupils, a band of
the ablest young men the country had ever seen, added
force to the movement. And yet this was a period in
which American medical literature was made up largely
of pirated English books, and the systems, encyclopedia^
and libraries, chiefly reprints, testify to the zeal of the

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

publishers. Stokes, Graves, Watson, Todd, Bennett, and
Williams, furnished Anglican pap to the sucklings, as well
as strong meat to the full grown. In spite of the powerful
French influence the text books of the schools were almost
exclusively English.

In Canada the period from 1820 to 1860 saw the estab-
lishment of the English universities and medical schools.
In Montreal the agencies at work were wholly Scotch.
The McGill Medical School was organized by Scotchmen,
and from its inception has followed closely Edinburgh
methods. The Paris influence, less personal, was exerted
chiefly through English and Scotch channels. The Upper
Canada schools were organized by men with English affilia-
tions, and the traditions of Guy's, St. Bartholomew's,
St. Thomas's, St. George's, and of the London Hospital,
rather than those of Edinburgh, have prevailed in Toronto
and Kingston.

The local French influence on British medicine in Canada
has been very slight. In the early decades of the century,
when the cities were smaller, and the intercourse between
the French and English somewhat closer, the reciprocal
action was more marked. At that period English methods
became somewhat the vogue among the French ; several
very prominent French Canadians were Edinburgh gra-
duates. Attempts were made in the medical journals to
have communications in both languages, but the fusion of
the two sections of the profession was no more feasible than
the fusion of the two nationalities, and the development
has progressed along separate lines.

The third period dates from about 1860 when the influ-
ence of German medicine began to be felt. The rise of the

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

Vienna school was for a long time the only visible result in
Germany of the French renaissance. Skoda, the German
Laennec and Rokitansky, the German Morgagni, influenced
English and American thought between 1840 and 1860,
but it was not until after the last date that Teutonic medi-
cine began to be felt as a vitalizing power, chiefly through
the energy of Virchow. After the translation of the Cellu-
lar Pathology by Chance (1860) the way lay clear and open
to every young student who desired inspiration. There
had been great men in Berlin before Virchow, but he made
the town on the Spree a Mecca for the faithful of all lands.
From this period we can date the rise of German influence
on the profession of this continent. It came partly through
the study of pathological histology, under the stimulus
given by Virchow, and partly through the development of
the specialities, particularly diseases of the eye, of the skin
and of the larynx. The singularly attractive courses of
Hebra, the organization on a large scale in Vienna of a
system of graduate teaching designed especially for foreigners
and the remarkable expansion of the German laboratories
combined to divert the stream of students from France.
The change of allegiance was a deserved tribute to the
splendid organization of the German universities, to the
untiring zeal and energy of their professors and to their
single-minded devotion to science for its own sake.

In certain aspects the Australasian Settlements present
the most interesting problems of Greater Britain. More
homogeneous, thoroughly British, isolated, distant, they
must work out their destiny with a less stringent environ-
ment, than, for example, surrounds the English in Canada.
The traditions are more uniform and of whatever character

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN
have filtered through British channels. The professional
population of native-trained men is as yet small, and the
proportion of graduates and licentiates from the English,
Scotch and Irish colleges and boards guarantees a domi-
nance of Old Country ideas. What the maturity will
show cannot be predicted, but the vigorous infancy is Ml
of crescent promise. On looking over the files of Australian
and New Zealand journals, one is impressed with the mono-
tonous similarity of the diseases in the antipodes to those
of Great Britain and of this continent. Except in the
matter of parasitic affections and snake-bites, the nosology
presents few distinctive qualities. The proceedings of the
four Intercolonial Congresses indicate a high level of pro-
fessional thought. In two points Australia has not pro-
gressed as other parts of Greater Britain. The satisfactory
regulation of practice, so early settled in Canada, has been
beset with many difficulties. Both in the United States
and in Australia the absence of the military element, which
was so strong in Canada, may in part at least account for
the great difference which has prevailed in this matter of
the state licence. The other relates to the question of
ethics, to which one really does not care to refer, were i
not absolutely forced upon the attention in reading the
journals. Elsewhere professional squabbles, always
unseemly and distressing, are happily becoming very rare,
and in Great Britain, and on this side of the water, we
at any rate " to wash our dirty linen at home."
large Australian cities, differences and dissensions seem
lamentably common. Surely they must be fomented by
the atrocious system of elections to the hospitals, whi
plunges the entire profession every third or fourth year

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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

into the throes of a contest, in which the candidates have
to solicit the suffrages of from 2,000 to 4,000 voters ! Well,
indeed, might Dr. Batchelor, say, in his address at the
fourth Intercolonial Congress : " It is a scandal that in any
British community, much less in a community which takes
pride in a progressive spirit, such a pernicious system
should survive for an hour."

Of India, of " Vishnu-land," what can one say in a few
minutes ? Three thoughts at once claim recognition.
Here in the dim dawn of history, with the great Aryan
people, was the intellectual cradle of the world. To the
Hindoos we owe a debt which we can at any rate acknow-
ledge ; and even in medicine, many of our traditions and
practices may be traced to them, as may be gathered from
that most interesting History of Aryan Medical Science, by
the Thakore Saheb of Gondal.

Quickly there arises the memory of the men who have
done so much for British medicine in that great empire.
Far from their homes, far from congenial surroundings,
and far from the stimulus of scientific influences, Annesley,
Ballingall, Twining, Morehead, Waring, Parkes, Cunning-
ham, Lewis, Vandyke Carter, and many others, have up-
held the traditions of Harvey and of Sydenham. On the
great epidemic diseases how impoverished would our litera-
ture be in the absence of their contributions ! But then
there comes the thought of " the petty done, the undone
vast," when one considers the remarkable opportunities for
study which India has presented. Where else in the world
is there such a field for observation in cholera, leprosy,
dysentery, the plague, typhoid fever, malaria, and in a
host of other less important maladies. And what has the

AE. 193 o

BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

British Government done towards the scientific investiga-
tion of the diseases of India ? Until recently little or
nothing, and the proposal to found an institute for the
scientific study of disease has actually come from the
native chiefs ! The work of Dr. Hankin and of Professor
HafTkine, and the not unmixed evil of the brisk epidemic
of plague in Bombay, may arouse the officials to a con-
sciousness of their shortcomings. While sanitary progress
has been great as shown in a reduction of the mortality
from sixty-nine per mille before 1857 to fifteen per mille at
present, many problems are still urgent, as may be gathered
from reading Dr. Harvey's Presidental address and the
proceedings of the Indian Medical congress. That typhoid
fever can be called the " scourge of India," and that the
incidence of the disease should remain so high among the
troops point to serious sanitary defects as yet unremedied.
As to the prevalence of venereal disease among the soldiers
— an admission of nearly 500 per mille tells its own tale.

On reading the journals and discussions one gets the
impression that matters are not as they should be in India.
There seems to be an absence of proper standards of autho-
rity. Had there been in each presidency during the past
twenty years thoroughly equipped government laboratories
in charge of able men, well trained in modern methods, the
contributions to our knowledge of epidemic diseases might
have been epoch-making, and at any rate we should have
been spared the crudeness which is evident in the work
(particularly in that upon malaria) of some zealous but
badly trained men.

In estimating the progress of medicine in the countries
comprising Greater Britain, the future rather than the

194

BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

present should be in our minds. The strides which have
been taken during the past twenty years are a strong
warrant that we have entered upon a period of excep-
tional development. When I see what has been accom-
plished in this city in the short space of time since I left, I
can scarcely credit my eyes : the reality exceeds the ut-
most desire of my dreams. The awakening of the pro-
fession in the United States to a consciousness of its respon-
sibilities and opportunities has caused unparalleled changes,
which have given an impetus to medical education and to
higher lines of medical work which has already borne a
rich harvest. Within two hundred years who can say
where the intellectual centre of the Anglo-Saxon race will
be ? The Mother Country herself has only become an
intellectual nation of the first rank within a period alto-
gether too short to justify a prediction that she has reached
the zenith. She will probably reverse the history oi Hellas,
in which the mental superiority was at first with the colonies.
At the end of the twentieth century, ardent old-world
students may come to this side " as o'er a brook," seeking
inspiration from great masters, perhaps in this very city ;
or the current may turn towards the schools of the great
nations of the south. Under new and previously unknown
conditions, the Africander, the Australian, or the New
Zealander may reach a development before which even
" the glory that was Greece " may pale. Visionary as this
may appear, it is not one whit more improbable to-day
than would have been a prophecy made in 1797 that such a
gathering as the present would be possible within a century
on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
Meanwhile, to the throbbing vitality of modern medicine
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BRITISH MEDICINE IN GREATER BRITAIN

the two great meetings held this month, in lands so widely
distant, bear eloquent testimony. Free cosmopolitan, no
longer hampered by the dogmas of schools, we may feel
a just pride in a profession almost totally emancipated
from the bondage of error and prejudice. Distinctions of
race, nationality, colour, and creed are unknown within
the portals of the temple of ^Esculapius. Dare we dream
that this harmony and cohesion so rapidly developing in
medicine, obliterating the strongest lines of division, know-
ing no tie of loyalty, but loyalty to truth — dare we hope, I
say, that in the wider range of human affairs a similar
solidarity may ultimately be reached ? Who can say that
the forges of Time will weld no links between man and
man stronger than those of religion or of country ? Some
Son of Beor, touched with prophetic vision, piercing the
clouds which now veil the eternal sunshine of the mountain
top — some spectator of all time and all existence (to use
Plato's expression) — might see in this gathering of men of
one blood and one tongue a gleam of hope for the future,
of hope at least that the great race so dominant on the
earth to-day may progress in the bonds of peace — a faint
glimmer perhaps of the larger hope of humanity, of that
day when " the common sense of most shall hold a fretful
* world ' in awe." There remains for us, Greater Britons of
whatsoever land, the bounden duty to cherish the best
traditions of our fathers, and particularly of the men who
gave to British medicine its most distinctive features, of
the men, too, who found for us the light and liberty of
Greek thought — Linacre, Harvey and Sydenham, those
ancient founts of inspiration and models for all time in
Literature, Science and Practice.

196

XI
AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

197

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time has prest,

Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.

OMAB KHAYYAM.

198

XI
AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

FROM two points of view alone have we a wide and
satisfactory view of life — one, as, amid the glorious
tints of the early morn, ere the dew of youth has been
brushed off, we stand at the foot of the hill, eager for the
journey ; the other, wider, perhaps less satisfactory, as we
gaze from the summit, at the lengthening shadows cast by
the setting sun. From no point in the ascent have we the
same broad outlook, for the steep and broken pathway af-
fords few halting places with an unobscured views You
remember in the ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory,
Dante, after a difficult climb, reached a high terrace en-
circling the hill, and sitting down turned to the East, re-
marking to his conductor — " all men are delighted to look
back." So on this occasion, from the terrace of a quarter
of a century, I am delighted to look back, and to be able to
tell you of the prospect.

Twenty-five years ago this Faculty, with some hardi-
hood, selected a young and untried man to deliver the lec-

* McGill College, Montreal, 1899.
199

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

tures on the Institutes of Medicine. With characteristic
generosity the men who had claims on the position in virtue
of service in the school, recognizing that the times were
changing, stepped aside in favour of one who had had the
advantage of post-graduate training in the subjects to be
taught. The experiment of the Faculty, supplemented on
my part by enthusiasm, constitutional energy, and a fond-
ness for the day's work, led to a certain measure of success.
I have tried to live over again in memory those happy early
days, but by no possible effort can I recall much that I
would fainremember. The dust of passing years has blurred
the details, even in part the general outlines of the picture.
The blessed faculty of forgetting is variously displayed in
us. In some, as in our distinguished countryman, John
Beattie Crozier, it is absent altogether, and he fills chapter
after chapter with delightful reminiscences and descriptions
of his experiences and mental states.1 At corresponding
periods— we are about the same age— my memory hovers
like a shade about the magic circle which Ulysses drew in
Hades, but finds no Tiresias to lift the veil with which obli-
vion has covered the past. Shadowy as are these recollec-
tions, which,

be they what they may
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing, '

they are doubly precious from their association with men
who welcomed me into the Faculty, now, alas, a sadly re-
duced remnant. To them— to their influence, to their ex-
ample, to the kindly encouragement I received at their
hands— I can never be sufficiently grateful Faithfulness

1 My Inner Life, Longmans, 1898.
200

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

in the day of small things may be said to have been the
distinguishing feature of the work of the Faculty in those
days. The lives of the senior members taught us youngsters
the lesson of professional responsibility, and the whole tone
of the place was stimulating and refreshing. It was an
education in itself, particularly in the amenities of faculty
and professional life, to come under the supervision of two
such Deans as Dr. George Campbell and Dr. Palmer
Howard. How delightful it would be to see the chairs which
they adorned in the school endowed in their memories and
called by their names !

One recollection is not at all shadowy — the contrast in
my feelings to-day only serves to sharpen the outlines. My
first appearance before the class filled me with a tremulous
uneasiness and an overwhelming sense of embarrassment.
I had never lectured, and the only paper I had read before
a society was with all the possible vaso-motor accompani-
ment. With a nice consideration my colleagues did not
add to my distress by their presence, and once inside the
lecture room the friendly greeting of the boys calmed my
fluttering heart, and, as so often happens, the ordeal was
most severe in anticipation. One permanent impression
of the session abides — the awful task of the preparation of
about one hundred lectures. After the ten or twelve with
which I started were exhausted I was on the treadmill for
the remainder of the session. False pride forbade the
reading of the excellent lectures of my predecessor, Dr;
Drake, which, with his wonted goodness of heart, he had
offered. I reached January in an exhausted condition, but
relief was at hand. One day the post brought a brand-new
work on physiology by a wsll- known German professor,

201

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

and it was remarkable with what rapidity my labours of
the last half of the session were lightened. An extraordin-
ary improvement in the lectures was noticed ; the students
benefited, and I gained rapidly in the facility with which I
could translate from the German.

Long before the session was over I had learned to appre-
ciate the value of the position entrusted to me, and sought
the means to improve the methods of teaching. I had had
the advantage of one of the first systematic courses on
practical physiology given at University College, London,
a good part of which consisted of lessons and demonstra-
tions in histology. In the first session, with but a single
microscope, I was only able to give the stock display of the
circulation of the blood, ciliary action, etc., but a fortunate
appointment as physician to the smallpox department of
the General Hospital carried with it a salary which enabled
me to order a dozen Hartnack microscopes and a few bits
of simple apparatus. This is not the only benefit I received
from the old smallpox wards, which I remember with grati-
tude, as from them I wrote my first clinical papers. Dur-
ing the next session I had a series of Saturday demonstra-
tions, and gave a private course in practical histology.; One
grateful impression remains — the appreciation by the
students of these optional and extra hours. For several
years I had to work with very scanty accommodation, tres-
passing in the chemical laboratory in winter, and in
summer using the old cloak room downstairs for the histolo-
gy. In 1880 1 felt very proud when the faculty converted
one of the lecture rooms into a physiological laboratory and
raised a fund to furnish and equip it. Meanwhile I had
found time to take my bearings. From the chair of the

202

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

Institutes of Medicine both physiology and pathology were
taught. It has been a time-honoured custom to devote
twenty lectures of the course to the latter, and as my collea-
gues at the Montreal General Hospital had placed the post-
mortem room at my disposal I soon found that my chief
interest was in the pathological part of the work. In truth,
I lacked the proper technique for practical physiology. For
me the apparatus never would go right, and I had not a
Diener who could prepare even the simplest experiments.
Alas ! there was money expended (my own usually, I am
happy to say, but sometimes my friends', as I was a shock-
ing beggar !) in apparatus that I never could set up, but
over which the freshmen firmly believed that I spent sleep-
less nights in elaborate researches. Still one could always
get the blood to circulate, cilia to wave and the fibrin to
digest. I do not think that any member of the ten suc-
cessive classes to which I lectured understood the structure
of a lymphatic gland, or of the spleen, or of the placental
circulation. To those structures I have to-day an ingrained
hatred, and I am always delighted when a new research
demonstrates the folly of all preceding views of their forma-
tion. Upon no subjects had I harder work to conceal my
ignorance. I have learned since to be a better student, and
to be ready to say to my fellow students " I do not know."
Four years after my college appointment the Governors of
the Montreal General Hospital elected me on the visiting
staff. What better fortune could a young man desire ! I
left the same day for London with my dear friend, George
Ross, and the happy days we had together working at
clinical medicine did much to wean me from my first lovej
From that date I paid more and more attention to patho-

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

logy and practical medicine, and added to my courses one
in morbid anatomy, another in pathological histology, and
a summer classnn clinical medicineg I had become a plura-
list of the most abandoned sort, and at the end of ten years
it was difficult to say what I did profess : I felt like the man
in Alcibiades II. to whom are applied the words of the
poet : —

Full many a thing he knew ;
But knew them all badly.

Weakened in this way, I could not resist when temptation
came to pastures new in the fresh and narrower field of
clinical medicine.

After ten years of hard work I left this city a rich man
not in this world's goods, for such I have the misfortune —
or the good fortune — lightly to esteem, but rich in the goods
which neither rust nor moth have been able to corrupt, —
in treasures of friendship and good fellowship, and in those
treasures of widened experience and a fuller knowledge of
men and manners which contact with the bright minds in
the profession ensures. My heart, or a good bit of it at
least, has stayed with those who bestowed on me these trea-
sures. Many a day I have felt it turn towards this city to
the dear friends I left there, my college companions, ray
teachers, my old chums, the men with whom I lived in
closest intimacy, and in parting from whom I felt the
chordae tendineae grow tense.

II

Twenty-five years ago the staff of this school consisted
of the historic septenary, with one demonstrator. To-day
I find on the roll of the Faculty 52 teachers. Nothing em-

204

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

phasizes so sharply the character of the revolution which
has gradually and silently replaced in great part for the
theoretical, practical teaching, for the distant, cold lecture
of the amphitheatre the elbow to elbow personal contact
of the laboratory. The school, as an organization, the
teacher and the student have been profoundly influenced
by this change.

When I joined the faculty its finances were in a condition
of delightful simplicity, so simple indeed that a few years
later they were intrusted to my care. The current ex-
penses were met by the matriculation and graduation fees
and the government grant, and each professor collected the
fees and paid the expenses in his department. To-day the
support of the laboratories absorbs a much larger sum than
the entire income of the school in 1874. The greatly in-
creased accommodation required for the practical teaching
has made endowment a vital necessity. How nobly, by
spontaneous gifts and in generous response to appeals, the
citizens have aided the efforts of this faculty I need not
remind you. Without it McGill could not have kept pace
with the growing demands of modern methods. Upon one
feature in the organization of a first-class school permit me
to dwell for a moment or two. The specialization of to-day
means a group of highly trained experts in the scientific
branches, men whose entire energies are devoted to a single
subject. To attain proficiency of this sort much time and
money are required. More than this, these men are usually
drawn from our very best students, with minds above the
average. For a majority of them the life devoted to science
is a sacrifice ; not, of course, that it is so felt by them, since
the very essence of success demands that in their work

205

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

should lie their happiness. I wish that the situation could
be duly appreciated by the profession at large, and by the
trustees, governors and the members of the faculties
throughout the country. Owing these men an enormous
debt, since we reap where they have sown, and garner the
fruits of their husbandry, what do we give them in return ?
Too often beggarly salaries and an exacting routine of
teaching which saps all initiative. Both in the United
States and Canada the professoriate as a class, the men who
live by college teaching, is wretchedly underpaid. Only a
few of the medical schools have reached a financial position
which has warranted the establishment of thoroughly
equipped laboratories, and fewer still pay salaries in any
way commensurate with the services rendered. I am fully
aware that with cobwebs in the purse not what a faculty
would desire has only too often to be done, but I have not
referred to the matter without full knowledge, as there are
schools with large incomes in which there has been of late a
tendency to cut down salaries and to fill vacancies too much
on Wall Street principles. And not for relief of the pocket
alone would I plead. The men in charge of our Canadian
laboratories are overworked in teaching. A well organized
staff of assistants is very difficult to get, and still more diffi-
cult to get paid. The salary of the professor should be in
many cases that of the first assistant. When the entire
energy of a laboratory is expended on instruction, research,
a function of equal importance, necessarily suffers. Special
endowments are needed to meet the incessant and urgent
calls of the scientific staff. It is gratifying to know that
certain of the bequests to this school have of late been of
this kind, but I can safely say that no department is as yet

206

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

fully endowed. Owing to faulty conditions of preliminary
education the medical school has to meet certain illegiti-
mate expenses. No one should be permitted to register as
a medical student who had not a good preliminary training
in chemistry. It is an anomaly that our schools should
continue to teach general chemistry, to the great detriment
of the subject of medical chemistry, which alone belongs in
the curriculum. Botany occupies a similar position.

But the laboratories of this medical school are not those
directly under its management. McGill College turned out
good doctors when it had no scientific laboratories, when
the Montreal General Hospital and the University Mater-
nity were its only practical departments. Ample clinical
material and good methods of instruction gave the school
its reputation more than fifty years ago. Great as has been
the growth of the scientific half of the school, the all-im-
portant practical half has more than kept pace. The
princely endowment of the Royal Victoria Hospital by our
large-hearted Canadian Peers has doubled the clinical fa-
cilities of this school, and by the stimulus of a healthy
rivalry has put the Montreal General Hospital into a con-
dition of splendid efficiency. Among the many changes
which have occurred within the past twenty-five years, I
would place these first in order of importance, since they
assure the continued success of McGill as a school of practi-
cal medicine.

Equally with the school as an organization, the teacher
has felt deeply the changed conditions in medical education,
and many of us are much embarrassed to know what and
how to teach. In a period of transition it is not easy to get
orientirt. In some subjects fortunately there is but the

207

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

single difficulty — what to teach. The phenomenal strides
in every branch of scientific medicine have tended to over-
load it with detail. To winnow the wheat from the chafi
and to prepare it in an easily digested shape for the tender
stomachs of first and second year students taxes the re-
sources of the most capable teacher. The devotion to a
subject, and the enthusiasm and energy which enables a
man to keep abreast with its progress, are the very qualities
which often lead him into pedagogic excesses. To reach a
right judgment in these matters is not easy, and after all
it may be said of teaching as Izaak Walton says of angling,
" Men are to be born so, I mean with inclinations to it."
For many it is very hard to teach down to the level of be-
ginners. The Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Stratford-on- Avon,
shortly after Shakespeare's day made an uncomplimentary
classification of doctors which has since become well-
known : — " first, those that can talk but doe nothing ;
secondly, some that can doe but not talk ; third, some that
can both doe and talk ; fourthly, some that can neither doe
nor talk — and these get most monie." 1 Professors similarly
may be divided into four classes. There is, first, the man
who can think but who has neither tongue nor technique.
Though useless for the ordinary student, he may be the
leaven of a faculty and the chief glory of his university.
A second variety is the phonographic professor, who can
talk but who can neither think nor work. Under the old
regime he repeated year by year the same lecture. A third
is the man who has technique but who can neither talk nor
think ; and a fourth is the rare professor who can do all

1 Diary of the Rev. John Ward, ed. Dr. Charles Severn, Lond.;
1839.

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AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

three — think, talk and work. With these types fairly re-
presented in a faculty, the diversities of gifts only serving
to illustrate the wide spirit of the teacher, the Dean at least
should feel happy.

But the problem of all others which is perplexing the
teacher to-day is not so much what to teach, but how to
teach it, more especially how far and in what subjects the
practical shall take the place of didactic teaching. All will
agree that a large proportion of the work of a medical stu-
dent should be in the laboratory and in the hospital. The
dispute is over the old-fashioned lecture, which has been
railed against in good set terms, and which many would
like to see abolished altogether. It is impossible, I think
to make a fixed rule, and teachers should be allowed a wide
discretion. With the large classes of many schools the
abolition of the didactic lecture would require a total recon-
struction of the curriculum and indeed of the faculty.
Slowly but surely practical methods are everywhere taking
the place of theoretical teaching, but there will, I think,
always be room in a school for the didactic lecture. It is
destined within the next ten years to be much curtailed,
and we shall probably, as is usual, go to extremes, but there
will always be men who can present a subject in a more
lucid and attractive manner than it can be given in a book.
Sir William Gairdner once remarked that the reason why
the face and voice of the teacher had so much more power
than a book is that one has a more living faith in him.
Years ago Murchison (than whom Great Britain certainly
never had a more successful teacher of medicine) limited
the lecture in medicine to the consideration of rare cases,
and the prominent features of a group of cases, and to ques-

AE. 209 p

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

tions of prognosis which cannot be discussed at the bedside.
For the past four years in the subject of medicine I have
been making an experiment in teaching only by a weekly
examination on a set topic, by practical work in the wards,
in the out-patient room and the clinical laboratory, and by
a weekly consideration in the amphitheatre of the acute
diseases of the season. With a small class I have been
satisfied with the results, but the plan would be difficult to
carry out with a large body of students.

The student lives a happy life in comparison with that
which fell to our lot thirty years ago. Envy, not sym-
pathy, is my feeling towards him. Not only is the menu
more attractive, but it is more diversified and the viands
are better prepared and presented. The present tendency
to stuffing and cramming will be checked in part when you
cease to mix the milk of general chemistry and botany with
the proper dietary of the medical school. Undoubtedly
the student tries to learn too much, and we teachers try to
teach him too much — neither, perhaps, with great success.
The existing evils result from neglect on the part of the
teacher, student and examiner of the great fundamental
principle laid down by Plato — that education is a life-long
process, in which the student can only make a beginning
during his college course. The system under which we
work asks too much of the student in a limited time. To
cover the vast field of medicine in four years is an impos-
sible task. We can only instil principles, put the student
in the right path, give him methods, teach him how to
study, and early to discern between essentials and non-
essentials. Perfect happiness for student and teacher will
come with the abolition of examinations, which are stum-

210

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

bling blocks and rocks of offence in the pathway of the true
student. And it is not so Utopian as may appear at first
blush. Ask any demonstrator of anatomy ten days before
the examinations, and he should be able to give you a list
of the men fit to pass. Extend the personal intimate know-
ledge such as is possessed by a competent demonstrator of
anatomy into all the other departments, and the degree
could be safely conferred upon certificates of competency,
which would really mean a more thorough knowledge of a
man's fitness than can possibly be got by our present sys-
tem of examination. I see no way of avoiding the neces-
sary tests for the license to practise before the provincial
or state boards, but these should be of practical fitness only,
and not, as is now so often the case, of a man's knowledge
of the entire circle of the medical sciences.

Ill

But what is most important in an introductory lecture
remains to be spoken, for dead indeed would I be to the true
spirit of this day, were I to deal only with the questions of
the curriculum and say nothing to the young men who now
begin the serious work of life. Personally, I have never
had any sympathy with the oft-repeated sentiment ex-
pressed originally by Abernethy, I believe, who, seeing a
large class of medical students, exclaimed, " Good God,
gentlemen ! whatever will become of you ? " The profes-
sion into which you enter to-day guarantees to each and
every one of you a happy, contented, and useful life. I do
not know of any other of which this can be said with greater
assurance. Many of you have been influenced in your
choice by the example and friendship of the doctor in your

211

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

family, or of some country practitioner in whom you have
recognized the highest type of manhood and whose unique
position in the community has filled you with a laudable
ambition. You will do well to make such an one your ex-
emplar, and I would urge you to start with no higher am-
bition than to join the noble band of general practitioners.
They form the very sinews of the profession — generous-
hearted men, with well-balanced, cool heads, not scientific
always, but learned in the wisdom not of the laboratories
but of the sick room. This school can take a greater pride
in her graduates scattered throughout the length and
breadth of the continent than in her present splendid
equipment ; they explain in great part the secret of her
strength.

I was much interested the other day in reading a letter
of John Locke to the Earl of Peterborough who had con-
sulted him about the education of his son. Locke insisted
that the main point in education is to get " a relish of know-
ledge." " This is putting life into a pupil." Get early
this relish, this clear, keen joyance in work, with which
languor disappears and all shadows of annoyance flee away.
But do not get too deeply absorbed to the exclusion of all
outside interests. Success in life depends as much upon the
man as on the physician. Mix with your fellow students,
mingle with their sports and their pleasures. You may
think the latter rash advice, but now-a-days even the plea-
sures of a medical student have become respectable, and I
have no doubt that the " footing supper," which in old
Cote street days was a Bacchanalian orgie, has become a
love feast in which even the Principal and the Dean might
participate. You are to be members of a polite as well as

212

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

of a liberal profession and the more you see of life outside
the narrow circle of your work the better equipped will you
be for the struggle. I often wish that the citizens in our
large educational centres would take a little more interest
in the social life of the students, many of whom catch but
few glimpses of home life during their course.

AJS to your method of work, I have a single bit of advice,
which I give with the earnest conviction of its paramount
influence in any success which may have attended my
efforts in life — Take no thought for the morrow. Live neither
in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb
your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
That was a singular but very wise answer which Cromwell
gave to Belleyire — " No one rises so high as he who knows
not whither he is going," and there is much truth in it. The
student who is worrying about his future, anxious over the
examinations, doubting his fitness for the profession, is
certain not to do so well as the man who cares for nothing
but the matter in hand, and who knows not whither he is
going !

While medicine is to be your vocation, or calling, see to
it that you have also an avocation — some intellectual pas-
time which may serve to keep you in touch with the world
of art, of science, or of letters. Begin at once the cultiva-
tion of some interest other than the purely professional.
The difficulty is in a selection and the choice will be differ-
ent according to your tastes and training. No matter what
it is — but have an outside hobby. For the hard working
medical student it is perhaps easiest to keep up an interest
in literature. Let each subject in your year's work have a
corresponding outside author. When tired of anatomy

213

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

refresh your mind with Oliver Wendell Holmes ; after a
worrying subject in physiology, turn to the great idealists,
to Shelley or Keats for consolation ; when chemistry dis-
tresses your soul, seek peace in the great pacifier, Shake-
speare ; and when the complications of pharmacology are
unbearable, ten minutes with Montaigne will lighten the
burden. To the writings of one old physician I can urge
your closest attention. There have been, and, happily,
there are still in our ranks notable illustrations of the inti-
mate relations between medicine and literature, but in the
group of literary physicians Sir Thomas Browne stands
preeminent. The Religio Medici, one of the great English
classics, should be in the hands — in the hearts too — of every
medical student. As I am on the confessional to-day, I
may tell you that no book has had so enduring an influence
on my life. I was introduced to it by my first teacher, the
Rev. W. A. Johnson, Warden and Founder of the Trinity
College School, and I can recall the delight with which I
first read its quaint and charming pages. It was one of the
strong influences which turned my thoughts towards medi-
cine as a profession, and my most treasured copy — the
second book I ever bought — has been a constant companion
for thirty-one years, — comes viae vitaeque. Trite but true,
is the comment of Seneca — " If you are fond of books you
will escape the ennui of life, you will neither sigh for even-
ing, disgusted with the occupations of the day — nor will
you live dissatisfied with yourself or unprofitable to others."
And, finally, every medical student should remember
that his end is not to be made a chemist or physiologist or
anatomist, but to learn how to recognize and treat disease,
how to become a practical physician. Twenty years ago.

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AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

during the summer session, I held my first class in clinical
medicine at the Montreal General Hospital, and on the title
page of a note book I had printed for the students I placed
the following sentence, which you will find the alpha and
omega of practical medicine, not that it by any means
covers the whole field of his education : —

" The knowledge which a man can use is the only real
knowledge, the only knowledge which has life and growth
in it and converts itself into practical power. The rest
hangs like dust about the brain or dries like rain drops off
the stones." (Froude.)

215

XII
BOOKS AND MEN

217

How easily, how secretly, how safely in books do we make bare
without shame the poverty of human ignorance ! These are the
masters that instruct us without rod and ferrule, without words
of anger, without payment of money or clothing. Should ye
approach them, they are not asleep ; if ye seek to question them,
they do not hide themselves ; should ye err, they do not chide ;
and should ye show ignorance, they know not how to laugh. O
Books ! ye alone are free and liberal. Ye give to all that seek, and
set free all that serve you zealously.

RICHAED DE BURY, Philobiblon, Grolier Club Edition, vol. ii. p. 22

Books delight us when prosperity sweetly smiles ; they stay to
comfort us when cloudy fortune frowns. They lend strength to
human compacts, and without them grave judgments may not be
propounded.

Ibid. p. 113.

For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a
potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny
they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

JOHN MILTON, Areopagitica.

218

XII
BOOKS AND MEN1

THOSE of us from other cities who bring congratu-
lations this evening can hardly escape the tinglings
of envy when we see this noble treasure house ; but in my
own case the bitter waters of jealousy which rise in my
soul are at once diverted by two strong sensations. In the
first place I have a feeling of lively gratitude towards this
library. In 1876 as a youngster interested in certain
clinical subjects to which I could find no reference in our
library at McGill, I came to Boston, and I here found what
I wanted, and I found moreover a cordial welcome and
many friends. It was a small matter I had in hand but I
wished to make it as complete as possible, and I have al-
ways felt that this library helped me to a good start. It
has been such a pleasure in recurring visits to the library to
find Dr. Brigham in charge, with the same kindly interest
in visitors that he showed a quarter of a century ago.
But the feeling which absorbs all others is one of deep
satisfaction that our friend, Dr. Chadwick, has at last seen
fulfilled the desire of his eyes. To few is given the tenacity
of will which enables a man to pursue a cherished purpose
through a quarter of a century — " Ohne Hast, aber ohne
Rast " ('tis his favourite quotation) ; to fewer still is the

1 Boston Medical Library, 1901.
219

BOOKS AND MEN

fruition granted. Too often the reaper is not the sower.
Too often the fate of those who labour at some object for
the public good is to see their work pass into other hands,
and to have others get the credit for enterprises which they
have initiated and made possible. It has not been so
with our friend, and it intensifies a thousandfold the plea-
sure of this occasion to feel the fitness, in every way, of the
felicitations which have been offered to him.

It is hard for me to speak of the value of libraries in
terms which would not seem exaggerated. Books have
been my delight these thirty years, and from them I have
received incalculable benefits. To study the phenomena
of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while
to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.
Only a maker of books can appreciate the labours of others
at their true value. Those of us who have brought forth
fat volumes should offer hecatombs at these shrines of
Minerva Medica. What exsuccous, attenuated offspring
they would have been but for the pabulum furnished
through the placental circulation of a library. How
often can it be said of us with truth, " Das beste was er ist
verdankt er Andern ! "

For the teacher and the worker a great library such as
this is indispensable. They must know the world's best
work and know it at once. They mint and make current
coin the ore so widely scattered in journals, transactions
and monographs. The splendid collections which now exist
in five or six of our cities and the unique opportunities of
the Surgeon-General's Library have done much to give
to American medicine a thoroughly eclectic character.

But when one considers the unending making of books,

220

BOOKS AND MEN

who does not sigh for the happy days of that thrice happy
Sir William Browne 1 whose pocket library sufficed for
his life's needs ; drawing from a Greek testament his di-
vinity, from the aphorisms of Hippocrates his medicine,
and from an Elzevir Horace his good sense and vivacity.
There should be in connection with every library a corps
of instructors in the art of reading, who would, as a labour
of love, teach the young idea how to read. An old writer
says that there are four sorts of readers : " Sponges which
attract all without distinguishing ; Howre-glasses which
receive and powre out as fast ; Bagges which only retain
the dregges of the spices and let the wine escape, and Sives
which retaine the best onely." A man wastes a great
many years before he reaches the *' sive " stage.

For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of
the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt
to overtake him. Self-centred, self-taught, he leads a
solitary life, and unless his every-day experience is con-
trolled by careful reading or by the attrition of a medical
society it soon ceases to be of the slightest value and be-
comes a mere accretion of isolated facts, without corre-
lation. It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor
can practise medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly
he may do it. Not three months ago a physician living
within an hour's ride of the Surgeon-General's Library
brought to me his little girl, aged twelve. The diagnosis
of infantile myxoedema required only a half glance. In

1 In one of the Annual Orations at the Royal College of Physicians
he said : " Behold an instance of human ambition ! not to be satis-
fied but by the conquest, as it were, of three worlds, lucre in the
country, honour in the college, pleasure in the medicinal springs."

221

BOOKS AND MEN

placid contentment he had been practising twenty years
in " Sleepy Hollow " and not even when his own flesh and
blood was touched did he rouse from an apathy deep as
Rip Van Winkle's sleep. In reply to questions : No, he
had never seen anything in the journals about the thyroid
gland ; he had seen no pictures of cretinism or myxo3dema ;
in fact his mind was a blank on the whole subject. He had
not been a reader, he said, but he was a practical man
with very little time. I could not help thinking of John
Bunyan's remarks on the elements of success in the prac-
tice of medicine. " Physicians," he says, " get neither
name nor fame by the pricking of wheals or the picking
out thistles, or by laying of plaisters to the scratch of a
pin ; every old woman can do this. But if they would
have a name and a fame, if they will have it quickly, they
must do some great and desperate cures. Let them fetch
one to life that was dead, let them recover one to his wits
that was mad, let them make one that was born blind
to see, or let them give ripe wits to a fool — these are
notable cures, and he that can do thus, if he dost thus first,
he shall have the name and fame he deserves ; he may lie
abed till noon." Had my doctor friend been a reader he
might have done a great and notable cure and even have
given ripe wits to a fool ! It is in utilizing the fresh know-
ledge of the journals that the young physician may attain
quickly to the name and fame he desires.

There is a third class of men in the profession to whom
books are dearer than to teachers or practitioners — a small,
a silent band, but in reality the leaven of the whole lump.
The profane call them bibliomaniacs, and in truth they
are at times irresponsible and do not always know the

222

BOOKS AND MEN

difference between meum and tuum, In the presence of
Dr. Billings or of Dr. Chadwick I dare not further charac-
terize them. Loving books partly for their contents,
partly for the sake of the authors, they not alone keep
alive the sentiment of historical continuity in the pro-
fession, but they are the men who make possible such
gatherings as the one we are enjoying this evening. We
need more men of their class, particularly in this country,
where every one carries in his pocket the tape-measure of
utility. Along two lines their work is valuable. By the
historical method alone can many problems in medicine be
approached profitably. For example, the student who
dates his knowledge of tuberculosis from Koch may have a
very correct, but he has a very incomplete, appreciation
of the subject. Within a quarter of a century our libraries
will have certain alcoves devoted to the historical con-
sideration of the great diseases, which will give to the
student that mental perspective which is so valuable an
equipment in life. The past is a good nurse, as Lowell
remarks, particularly for the weanlings of the fold.

'Tis man's worst deed

To let the things that have been, run to waste
And in the unmeaning Present sink the Past.

But in a more excellent way these laudatores temporis
acti render a royal service. For each one of us to-day, as
in Plato's time, there is a higher as well as a lower edu-
cation. The very marrow and fitness of books may not
suffice to save a man from becoming a poor, mean-spirited
devil, without a spark of fine professional feeling, and
without a thought above the sordid issues of the day.
The men I speak of keep alive in us an interest in the great

223

BOOKS AND MEN

men of the past and not alone in their works, which they
cherish, but in their lives, which they emulate. They
would remind us continually that hi the records of no
other profession is there to be found so large a number
of men who have combined intellectual pre-eminence with
nobility of character. This higher education so much
needed to-day is not given in the school, is not to be bought
in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each
one of us for himself ; it is the silent influence of character
on character and in no way more potently than in the
contemplationof the lives of the great and good of the past,
in no way more than in " the touch divine of noble natures
gone."

I should like to see in each library a select company
of the Immortals set apart for special adoration. Each
country might have its representatives in a sort of alcove
of Fame, in which the great medical classics were gathered
Not necessarily books, more often the epoch-making con-
tributions to be found in ephemeral journals. It is too
early, perhaps, to make a selection of American medical
classics, but it might be worth while to gather suffrages
in regard to the contributions which ought to be placed
upon our Roll of Honour. A few years ago I made out a list
of those I thought the most worthy which I carried down to
1850, and it has a certain interest for us this evening. The
native modesty of the Boston physician is well known,
but in certain circles there has been associated with it a
curious psychical phenomenon, a conviction of the utter
worthlessness of the status prcesens in New England, as
compared with conditions existing elsewhere. There is a
variety to-day of the Back Bay Brahmin who delights

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in cherishing the belief that medically things are every-
where better than in Boston, and who is always ready to
predict " an Asiatic removal of candlesticks," to borrow
a phrase from Cotton Mather. Strange indeed would it
have been had not such a plastic profession as ours felt
the influences which moulded New England into the in-
tellectual centre of the New World. In reality, nowhere
in the country has the profession been adorned more plen-
tifully with men of culture and of character — not volu-
minous writers or exploiters of the products of other
men's brains — and they manage to get a full share on the
Roll of Fame which I have suggested. To 1850, I have
counted some twenty contributions of the first rank, con-
tributions which for one reason or another deserve to be
called American medical classics. New England takes
ten. But in medicine the men she has given to the other
parts of the country have been better than books. Men
like Nathan R. Smith, Austin Flint, Willard Parker, Alon-
zo Clark, Elisha Bartlett, John C. Dalton, and others
carried away from their New England homes a love of
truth, a love of learning and above all a proper estimate
of the personal character of the physician.

Dr. Johnson shrewdly remarked that ambition was
usually proportionate to capacity, which is as true of a
profession as it is of a man. What we have seen to-night
reflects credit not less on your ambition than on your
capacity. A library after all is a great catalyser, accelera-
ting the nutrition and rate of progress in a profession, and
I am sure you will find yourselves the better for the sacri-
fice you have made in securing this home for your books,
this workshop for your members.

AE. 225 Q

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CENTURY

227

Even where the milder zone afforded man

A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,

Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,

Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth availed

Till late to arrest its progress, or create

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved

Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime.

Happiness

And Science dawn though late upon the earth ;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame ;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there ;
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
Its all-subduing energies, and wields
The sceptre of a vast dominion there.

SHELLEY, The Daemon of the World.

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CENTURY l

FOR countless generations the prophets and kings of
humanity have desired to see the things which men
have seen, and to hear the things which men have heard
in the course of the wonderful nineteenth century. To
the call of the watchers on the towers of progress there
had been the one sad answer — the people sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death. Politically, socially, arid
morally the race had improved, but for the unit, for the
individual, there was little hope. Cold philosophy shed
a glimmer of light on his path, religion in its various guises
illumined his sad heart, but neither availed to lift the
curse of suffering from the sin-begotten son of Adam. In
the fulness of time, long expected, long delayed, at last
Science emptied upon him from the horn of Amalthea
blessings which cannot be enumerated, blessings which
have made the century forever memorable ; and which
have followed each other with a rapidity so bewildering
that we know not what next to expect. To us in the
medical profession, who deal with this unit, and measure

1 Johns Hopkins Historical Club, January, 1901 ; and pub-
lished in the New York Sun.

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progress by the law of the greatest happiness to the greatest
number, to us whose work is with the sick and suffering,
the great boon of this wonderful century, with which no
other can be compared, is the fact that the leaves of the
tree of Science have been for the healing of the nations.
Measure as we may the progress of the world — materially,
in the advantages of steam, electricity, and other mechani-
cal appliances ; sociologically, in the great improvement
in the conditions of life ; intellectually, in the diffusion
of education ; morally, in a possibly higher standard of
ethics — there is no one measure which can compare with
the decrease of physical suffering in man, woman, and
child when stricken by disease or accident. This is the
one fact of supreme personal import to every one of us.
This is the Promethean gift of the century to man.

THE GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE

The century opened auspiciously, and those who were
awake saw signs of the dawn. The spirit of Science was
brooding on the waters. In England the influence of
John Hunter stimulated the younger men to the study
of the problems of anatomy and pathology. On the Con-
tinent the great Boerhaave — the Batavian Hippocrates
— had taught correct ways in the study of the clinical
aspects of disease, and the work of Haller had given a
great impetus to physiology. The researches of Morgagni
had, as Virchow has remarked, introduced anatomical
thinking into medicine. But theories still controlled
practice. Under the teaching of Cullen, the old idea that
humours were the seat of disease had given place to a neuro-

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pathology which recognized the paramount influence of
the nervous system in disease. His colleague at Edin-
burgh, Brown, brought forward the attractive theory that
all diseases could be divided into two groups, the one
caused by excess of excitement — the sthenic — the other
by deficiency — the asthenic — each having its appropriate
treatment, the one by depletion, the other by stimulation.
In a certain measure Hahnemann's theory of homoeo-
pathy was a reaction against the prevalent theories of
the day, and has survived through the century, though in
a much modified form. Some of his views were as follows ;
" The only vocation of the physician is to heal ; theo-
retical knowledge is of no use. In a case of sickness he
should only know what is curable and the remedies. Of
the diseases he cannot know anything except the symp-
toms. There are internal changes, but it is impossible
to learn what they are ; symptoms alone are accessible ;
with their removal by remedies the disease is removed.
Their effects can be studied in the healthy only. They
act on the sick by causing a disease similar to that which
is to be combated, and which dissolves itself into this
similar affection. The full doses required to cause symp-
toms in the well are too large to be employed as remedies
for the sick. The healing power of a drug grows in an
inverse proportion to its substance. He says, literally :
' Only potencies are homoeopathic medicines.' ' I recog-
nize nobody as my follower but him who gives medicine
in so small doses as to preclude the perception of anything
medicinal in them by means either of the senses or of
chemistry.' * The pellets may be held near the young
infant when asleep.' ' Gliding the hand over the patient

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will cure Mm, provided the manipulation is done with
firm intention to render as much good with it as possible,
for its power is in the benevolent will of the manipulator.'
Such is the homcepathy of Hahnemann, which is no longer
recognized in what they call homoeopathy to-day." —
(A. Jacobi.)

The awakening came in France. In 1801 Bichat, a
young man, published a work on general anatomy, in
which he placed the seat of disease, not in the organs, but
in the tissues or fabrics of which they were composed,
which gave an extraordinary impetus to the investigation
of pathological changes. Meanwhile, the study of the
appearances of organs and bodies when diseased (morbid
anatomy), which had been prosecuted with vigor by Mor-
gagni in the eighteenth century, had been carried on
actively in Great Britain and on the Continent, and the
work of Broussais stimulated a more accurate investiga-
tion of local disorders. The discovery by Laennec of the
art of auscultation, by which, through changes in the
normal sounds within the chest, various diseases of the
heart and lungs could be recognized, gave an immense
impetus to clinical research. The art of percussion, dis-
covered by Auenbrugger in the eighteenth century, and
reintroduced by Corvisart, contributed not a little to the
same. Laennec's contributions to the study of diseases
of the lungs, of the heart, and of the abdominal organs
really laid the foundation of modern clinical medicine. A
little later Bright published his researches on diseases of
the kidneys, from which we date our knowledge of this
important subject. One .of the most complicated problems
of the first half of the century related to the differentiation

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of the fevers. The eruptive fevers, measles, scarlet fever,
and small-pox were easily recognized, and the great group
of malarial fevers was well known ; but there remained
the large class of continued fevers, which had been a source
of worry and dispute for many generations. Louis clearly
differentiated typhoid fever, and by the work of his Ameri-
can pupils, W. W. Gerhard and Alfred Stille, of Phila-
delphia, and George B. Shattuck, of Boston, typhus and
typhoid fevers were denned as separate and independent
affections. Relapsing fever, yellow fever, dengue, etc.,
were also distinguished. The work of Graves and Stokes,
of Dublin ; of Jenner and Budd, in England ; of Drake,
Dickson, and Flint, in America, supplemented the labours
of the French physicians, and by the year 1860 the pro-
fession had reached a sure and safe position on the question
of the clinical aspects of fevers.

The most distinguishing feature of the scientific medicine
of the century has been the phenomenal results which
have followed experimental investigations. While this
method of research is not new, since it was introduced by
Galen, perfected by Harvey, and carried on by Hunter,
it was not until well into the middle of the century that,
by the growth of research laboratories, the method exer-
cised a deep influence on progress. The lines of experi-
mental research have sought to determine the functions
of the organs in health, the conditions under which per-
version of these functions occurs in diseases, and the possi-
bility of exercising protective and curative influences on
the processes of disease.

The researches of the physiological laboratories have
enlarged in every direction our knowledge of the great

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functions of life — digestion, assimilation, circulation,
respiration, and excretion. Perhaps in no department
have the results been more surprising than in the growth
of our knowledge of the functions of the brain and nerves.
Not only has experimental science given us clear and
accurate data upon the localization of certain functions
of the brain and of the paths of sensatory and of motor
impulses, but it has opened an entirely new field in the
diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of these organs,
in certain directions of a most practical nature, enabling
us to resort to measures of relief undreamed of even thirty
years ago.

The study of physiology and pathology within the past
half-century has done more to emancipate medicine from
routine and the thraldom of authority than all the work
of all the physicians from the days of Hippocrates to
Jenner, and we are as yet but on the threshold.

THE GROWTH OF SPECIALISM

The restriction of the energies of trained students to
narrow fields in science, while not without its faults, has
been the most important single factor in the remarkable
expansion of our knowledge. Against the disadvantages
in a loss of breadth and harmony there is the compensatory
benefit of a greater accuracy in the application of know-
ledge in specialism, as is well illustrated in the cultivation
of special branches of practice. Diseases of the skin, of
the eye, of the ear, of the throat, of the teeth, diseases of
women, and of children are now studied and practised
by men who devote all their time to one limited field of

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work. While not without minor evils, this custom has
yielded some of the great triumphs of the profession.
Dentistry, ophthalmology, and gynaecology are branches
which have been brought to a state of comparative per-
fection, and very largely by the labours of American physi-
cians. In the last-named branch the blessings which have
been brought to suffering women are incalculable, not only
as regards the minor ailments of life, but in the graver and
more critical accidents to which the sex is liable.

One of the most remarkable and beneficial reforms of
the nineteenth century has been in the attitude of the pro-
fession and the public to the subject of insanity, and the
gradual formation of a body of men in the profession who
labour to find out the cause and means of relief of this most
distressing of all human maladies. The reform movement
inaugurated by Tuke in England, by Rush in the United
States, by Pinel and Esquirol in France, and by-Jacobi
and Hasse in Germany, has spread to all civilized countries,
and has led not only to an amelioration and improvement
in the care of the insane, but to a scientific study of the
subject which has already been productive of much goodg
In this country, while the treatment of the insane is careful
and humanitarian, the unfortunate affiliation of insanity
with politics is still in many States a serious hindrance
to progress.

It may be interesting to take a glance at the state of
medicine in this country at the opening of the century.
There were only three schools of medicine, the most im-
partant of which were the University of Pennsylvania and
the Harvard. There were only two general hospitals:
The medical education was chiefly in the hands of the

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MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

practitioners, who took students as apprentices for a
certain number of years. The well-to-do students and
those wishing a better class of education went to Edin-
burgh or London. There were only two or three medical
journals, and very few books had been published in the
country, and the profession was dependent entirely upon
translations from the French and upon English works.
The only medical libraries were in connexion with the
Pennsylvania Hospital and -the New York Hospital. The
leading practitioners in the early "years were Rush and
Physick, in Philadelphia ; Hosack arid Mitchill, in New
York ; and James Jackson and John Collins Warren, in
Boston. There were throughout the country, in smaller
places, men of great capabilities and energy, such as Nathan
Smith, the founder of the Medical Schools of Dartmouth
and of Yale, and Daniel Drake in Cincinnati. * After 1830
a remarkable change took place in the profession, owing
to the leaven of French science brought back from Paris
by American students. Between 1840 and 1870 there
was a great increase in the number of medical schools, but
the general standard of education was low — lower, indeed,
than had ever before been reached in the medical profes-
sion. The private schools multiplied rapidly, diplomas
were given on short two-year sessions, and nothing con-
tributed more to the degeneration of the profession than
this competition and rivalry between ill-equipped medical
schools. The reformation, which started at Harvard
shortly after 1870, spread over the entire country, and
the rapid evolution of the medical school has been one of
the most striking phenomena in the history of medicine in
the century. University authorities began to appreciate

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MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY

the fact that medicine was a great department of know-
ledge, to be cultivated as a science and promoted as an
art. Wealthy men felt that in no better wa^ could they
contribute to the progress of the race than by the estab-
lishment of laboratories for the study of disease and hospi-
tals for the care of the sick poor. The benefactions of
Johns Hopkins, of Sims, of Vanderbilt, of Pierpont Morgan,
of Strathcona, of Mount-Stephen, of Payne, and of Levi
C. Lane and others ha vp* placed scientific medicine on a
firm basis.

THE GROWTH OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Sanitary science, hygiene, or preventive medicine may
claim to be one of the brightest spots in the history of the
nineteenth century. Public hygiene was cultivated among
the Egyptians, and in the Mosaic law it reached a remark-
able organization. The personal hygiene of the Greeks
was embraced in the saying, " The fair mind in the fair
body," and the value of exercise and training was fully
recognized. The Romans, too, in public and private
hygiene, were our superiors in the matter of water supply
and baths. But modern sanitary science has a much
wider scope and is concerned with the causes of disease
quite as much as with the conditions under which these
diseases prevail. The foundations of the science were
laid in the last century with Jenner's discovery of vaccina-
tion. Howard, too, had grasped the association of fever
with overcrowding in the jails, while the possibility of the
prevention of scurvy had been shown by Captain Cook
and by Sir Gilbert Blane.

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Preventive medicine was a blundering, incomplete
science until bacteriology opened unheard-of possibilities
for the prevention of disease. Before discussing some of
the victories of preventive medicine it -.yill be well to take
a brief survey of the growth of the following subject :

SCIENCE OF BACTERIOLOGY

From the brilliant overthrow by Pasteur, in 1861, and
by Koch and Cohn, in 1876, of the theory of spontaneous
generation, we may date its modern growth. Wrapped
up in this theory of spontaneous generation, upon which
speculation raged centuries before the invention of the
microscope, lies the history of bacteriology.

The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers wrestled
with the question, and very interesting views of the rela-
tion of germ life to disease are preserved to us in their
manuscripts. With the invention of the miser oscope we
can mark the first positive step towards the goal of to-day.
A Jesuit priest, Kircher, in 1671, was the first to investi-
gate putrefying meat, milk, and cheese with the crude
microscope of his day, and left us indefinite remarks con-
cerning " very minute living worms " found therein. Four
years after Kircher a Dutch linen merchant, Antonius von
Leeuwenhoek, by improving the lenses of the microscope,
saw in rain-water, putrefying fluids, intestinal contents,
and saliva, minute," moving, IrVitig particles, which he
called " animalcule." In medical circles o! his day these
observations aroused the keenest interest, and the theory
that these " animalculae " might be the cause of all disease
was eagerly discussed. Plenciz, of Vienna, after much
observation of various fluids, putrefying and otherwise,

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wrote in 1762 that it was his firm belief that the pheno-
mena of diseases and the decomposition of animal fluids
were wholly caused by these- minure living things.

Notwithstanding* stich assertions*, from his day on until
Pasteur, Koch, and Cohn finally proved its misconceptions
in 1876, the theory of spontaneous generation held' the
upper hand in all discussions upon the question.

The stimulus to research as to the causes of disease
g the line of bacterial origin did not entirely cease to
be felt, and the names of Pollender and Davaine are linked
together in the first undoubted discovery of micro-organ-
isms in disease, when the cause of anthrax, a disease of
cattle, was solved in 1863. Following closely upon Da-
vaine's researches, the primary causes of wound infection
were worked out, and to the efforts of the British surgeon
Lister are due the great advances of modern surgery.

In rapid succession the presence of bacteria was clearly
demonstrated in relapsing fever, leprosy, and typhoid
fever ; but far eclipsing all former discoveries, on account
of the magnitude of the difficulties encountered and over-
come, were the brilliant demonstrations of the cause of
consumption and allied diseases, and that of Asiatic cholera,
by Dr. Robert Koch in 1882 and in 1884 respectively.

From that time onward innumerable workers have
satisfied the critical scientific world as to the causes of
pneumonia, diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, and bubonic
plague, besides many diseases of cattle, horses, sheep, and
other animals and insects.

Having glanced hastily at the history of bacteriology,
we may next consider some facts concerning the germs
themselves. What are they ? To the lay mind the words

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germ, microbe, bacterium, and bacillus often convey con-
fused ideas of invisible, wriggling, worm-like creatures,
enemies of mankind, ever on the watch to gain a stealthy
entrance into our bodies, where they wreak harm and
death. Scientifically considered, however, they are the
smallest of living things yet known. They are not animals,
but are members of the vegetable kingdom, and are pos-
sessed of definite yet varying shapes. They consist of a
jelly-like substance called protoplasm, which is covered
in and held in place by a well-formed membrane of a rela-
tively hard and dense character, exactly similar in com-
position to the woody fibre of trees.

According to their shape the bacteria are divided into

three chief groups, called respectively cocci, bacilli, and

spirilla. The cocci are spherical bodies and may exist

singly or in pairs, in fours, in clusters, or in chains. In

this group we find the smallest bacteria known, many of

»t over 1-150,000 of an inch in diameter. The

3 rod-like bodies, varying much in size in different

id in members of the same species. They are

larger than the cocci, measuring in length from 1-25.000

of an inch to 1-4,000, and in breadth from 1-125,000 to

1-16,000 of an inch. Many varieties are possessed of

organs of locomotion called flagella.

The spirilla resemble the bacilli, except that they are
twisted into corkscrew shapes, or have gently undulating
outlines. Upon an average they are much longer than
the bacilli, one species being very long, measuring about
1-600 of an inch. As seen in the natural state bacteria
are found to be colourless, but it is by the application of
various aniline dyes that they are usually studied. These

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minute plants increase by a simple method of division
into two equal parts, or by a more complex process of
forming a seed — the so-called spore — which later on de-
velops into the adult form. Under favourable conditions
they are able to multiply at an enormous rate ; for in-
stance, it has been calculated that a bacillus, dividing once
every hour would at the end of twenty-four hours have
increased to seventeen millions ; and if the division con-
tinued at the same rate we should find at the end of the
third day an incalculable number of billions, whose weight
would be nearly seven thousand five hundred tons !

But, fortunately for our welfare, nature by various
means renders the possibility of such a happening entirely
beyond the slightest chance of realization, her greatest
barrier being the lack of an adequate food supply.

The distribution in nature of bacteria is well-nigh uni-
versal, occurring as they do in the air we breathe, the
water and milk we drink, upon the exposed surfaces of
man and animals, and in their intestinal tracts, and in
the soil to a depth of about nine feet. But it has been
noted that at very high altitudes and in glacier ice none
exist, while in the Arctic regions and at sea far from land
their numbers are very few.

The conditions governing their growth involve many
complex problems, but a few of the chief factors concerned
are moisture, air, food, temperature, and light. All bac-
teria must have moisture, else they die sooner or later,
the period of survival depending upon the hardness of
the species, and none can multiply without it. A supply
of air is by no means essential to all germs. To some it is
absolutely necessary, and such germs are called aerobea.

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MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

To others air is wholly detrimental, and they constitute
the anaerobes, while to the majority of bacteria air supply
is a matter of indifference, and in consequence they are
grouped under the term facultative anaerobes.

The food supply of many consists of dead animal and
vegetable materials, a few require living tissues, while a
small number can exist wholly upon mineral salts, or even
the nitrogen of the air. The lowest temperature at which
some bacteria can multiply is the freezing-point of water,
and the highest 170 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the
average range of temperature suitable to the majority lies
between 60 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit, 98 2-5 degrees
Fahrenheit being the most suitable for the growth of
disease-producing germs. Light, ordinarily diffused day-
light, or its absence, is a matter of no moment to most
germs, but direct sunlight is a destroyer of all bacteria.

The study of the life histories of these diminutive plants
excites the wonder of those who make observations upon
them. It is truly marvellous to know that these bacteria
can accomplish in their short lives of possibly a few hours
or days feats which would baffle the cleverest of chemists
if given years of a lifetime to work upon. They give to
the farmer the good quality of his crops, to the dairyman
superior butter and cheese ; they assist in large measure
in freeing our rivers and lakes from harmful pollutions.
Here it should be strongly emphasized that those bacteria
which cause disease are only of a few species, all others con-
tributing to our welfare in countless ways.

Quite as astonishing is .the discovery that within the
root-knobs of pease and beans live bacteria which by
splitting up mineral salts containing nitrogen, and by

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absorbing nitrogen from the air, give it over to the plant
so that it is enabled to grow luxuriantly, whereas, with-
out their presence, the tiller of the soil might fertilize the
ground in vain. It is quite possible that not alone pease
and beans, but all grasses and plants and trees depend
upon the presence of such germs for their very existence,
which in turn supply man and animals with their means
of existence. Hence we see that these nitrifying bacteria,
as they are called, if swept out of existence, would be the
cause of cessation of all life upon the globe. And arguing
backward, one prominent authority states it as his belief
that the first of all life on this earth were those lowly forms
of plants which only required the nitrogen of air or salts
to enable them to multiply.

Limiting observation now to the sphere of medicine,
it will be readily perceived that the presence of bacterial
life in a causative relation to disease is an object of 'para-
mount regard. The following paragraphs will briefly treat
of the diseases associated with micro-organisms and the
common modes of infection in each, the chain of events
subsequent to an infection, and the possibilities of protec-
tion or cure by means of substances elaborated in the body
of an invidiual or animal recently recovered from an in-
fectious disease :

Anthrax. — A disease chiefly of cattle and sheep, occa-
sionally of man, is caused by the Bacillus anthracis, dis-
covered in 1849-50 by Pollender and Davaine. It enters
the body through abrasions of the skin, by inhalation of
the spores, or seeds, into the liyigs, or by swallowing in-
fected material.

Leprosy. — This disease is caused by a bacillus Known
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MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

as Bacillus leprae, which was discovered by Hansen in
1879. It is doubtful if it has been grown outside the body.
It is supposed to enter by abrasions of the skin, but it is very
feebly contagious, notwithstanding popular ideas as to its
supposedly highly contagious nature.

Tuberculosis. — All forms of this disease, among which is
ordinary consumption, are caused by a bacillus closely
resembling that of leprosy. It was discovered by Koch in
1880-82, and named Bacillus tuberculosis. The ways of
infection are by inhaling the dried sputum of consumptives,
drinking infected cow's milk, or eating infected meat.

TypJwid Fever. — A disease of human beings only. Eberth
in 1880 discovered the germ causing it and called it Bacillus
typhosus. It gains entrance to our bodies chiefly in the
milk and water we drink, which comes from infected
sources ; a rarer method is by inhalation of infected air.

Diphtheria. — A disease of human beings chiefly. It is
caused by a bacillus which was described in 1883-84 by
Klebs and Loeffler, and is known as BaciUus diphtheriae,
or Klebs-Loeffler bacillus. Its mode of entry is by inhaling
infected air, or by drinking or eating infected milk or food.

Cholera. — This disease is peculiar to human beings. Its
native home is on the banks of the river Ganges in India,
where Koch in 1884 was able to isolate its causative spi-
rillum. Man is infected by drinking contaminated water
or by contact.

Lockjaw, or Tetanus. — Afflicts men, horses, and dogs.
The Bacillus tetani is the most deadly of all known bacteria.
It enters the body by wounds. It was discovered in 1884
by Nicolaier.

Influenza, or the Grip. — Caused by one of the smallest-

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known bacilli ; discovered in 1892 by Canon and Pfeiffer.
Infection spreads by the scattering about by air-currents
of the dried nasal and bronchial secretion of those suffer-
ing from the disease, and its portal of entry is by the nose
and bronchial tubes.

Pneumonia. — Caused by a coccus which grows in pairs
and small chains. It enters the body by means of the
respiratory tract. It is present in the saliva of twenty per
cent, of healthy persons. Proved by Frankel in 1886 to be
the cause of this disease.

Bubonic Plague. — In 1894 Kitasato and Yersin isolated
a small bacillus in a large number of cases and proved it to
be the cause. It enters the body by means of wounds of
the skin, and through bites of fleas from infected rats,
which are said to be one of the chief factors in spreading
this dread malady.

YeU&w Fever. — The cause of this disease is still under
discussion.

Such are a few of the infectious diseases which we can
readily attribute to the presence of definite micro-organ-
isms in respective cases. But strange as it may seem, the
most typical of all infectious diseases, small-pox, scarlet
fever, measles, and hydrophobia, have as yet not yielded
up their secrets. This is possibly due to the minute size
of the micro-organisms concerned, which make it beyond
the power of the best microscope to demonstrate them. In
this connexion it has recently been shown by Roux and
Nocard that in the case of the disease known as pleuro-
pneumonia of cattle the causative agent is so very small
as just to be barely visible. Again, it is quite possible
that these diseases may be caused by living things we know

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nothing about, which may be quite dissimilar from the
bacteria.

INFECTION— ITS PROCESSES AND RESULTS

In the foregoing list of diseases associated with specific
bacteria, attention has been drawn to the common modes
of infection, or, as they are technically called, " portal 3
of entry," and it now remains to touch upon the main
factors, processes, and results following upon the entry
into the body of such disease-producing microbes.

It is a well-known fact that the normal blood has of
itself to a considerable extent the power of killing germs
which may wander into it through various channels.
Likewise the tissue cells of the body in general show similar
action depending upon the different cell groups, state of
health, general robustness, and period of life. The germ-
killing power varies in different individuals, though each
may be quite healthy. Considered as a whole, this power
possessed by the body against germs is known as " general
resistance." And when by any means this power of
resistance is lost or diminished, we run grave risks of
incurring disease.

Granted a case of infection, let us now trace up briefly
what occurs. Between the period when the bacteria gain
a lodgment and that in which the disease assumes a notice-
able form, the patient simply feels out of sorts. It is
during this stage that the blood and tissues are deeply
engaged in the attempt to repel the attacks of the invading
microbes.

With varying speed the germs multiply throughout the

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body generally, or may be at first localized, or even, as in
lockjaw, remain localized throughout the entire disease.
Multiplying in the tissues, they generate in increasing
amounts their noxious poisons, which soon cause profound
changes throughout the body ; the patient becomes de-
cidedly ill, and shows the signs of an unmistakable infection.

Does the body now give up the fight entirely ? No ;
on the contrary, the white blood-cells, the wandering cells,
and the cells of the tissues most affected still carry on an
unequal fight. From the lymphatic glands and spleen,
armies of white cells rush to the fray and attempt to eat
up and destroy the foe, but possibly in vain ; the disease
runs its course, to end either in death or recovery.

How, then, in cases of recovery, are the microbes finally
overcome ?

This question involves many complex processes which
at present are by no means thoroughly understood, but
we will concern ourselves with the simple principles.

It has been previously mentioned that once the bacteria
get a good foothold the body is subjected to the action of
generated poisons, which are known as toxins. They give
rise to such symptoms as loss of appetite, headache, fever,
pains and aches, and even a state of stupor or unconscious-
ness. In addition to the active warfare of the white blood-
cells, groups of cells throughout the body, after recovering
from the first rude shock of the toxins, begin to tolerate
their presence, then effect a change in the chemical con-
stitution of the toxins, and finally elaborate substances
which antagonize the toxins and destroy their action alto-
gether, thus lending aid to the warrior cells, which at last
overcome the invading microbes. Recovery is brought

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about, and a more or less permanent degree of immunity
against the special form of disease ensues.

Now if we could use these antagonizing substances, or,
as they are called, antitoxins, upon other men or animals
sick with a similar disease, would their bodies be at once
strengthened to resist and finally overcome the disease ?
Yes, in a certain majority of cases they would, and this is
exactly what scientific observers have noted, worked out,
and have successfully applied. A new art in the healing
of disease, which is spoken of broadly as serum-therapy,
or medication by curative or protective serums, has thus
been discovered.

The first observers in this new field were Pasteur and
Raynaud in France in 1877-78, and Salmon and Smith in
this country in 1886. Raynaud, by injecting serum from
a calf which had had an attack of cow-pox, prevented the
appearance of the disease in a calf freshly inoculated with
the virulent material of the disease. Pasteur, by using
feebly infective germs of fowl cholera, conferred immunity
upon healthy fowls against the disease, and was able to
cure those which were ill. Salmon and Smith injected
small and repeated amounts of the elaborated toxins or
poisons of the bacillus of hog cholera into healthy swine,
and were able to confer immunity upon them.

However, it was not until Behring in 1892 announced
his discovery of an antitoxin serum for diphtheria, along
with an undisputed proof of its value in treatment, that
the attention of the scientific world was finally aroused
and stimulated to the appreciation of the great possibilities
of serum-therapy.

Strange as it may seem, much opposition arose to this
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new method of treatment, not alone from the lay portions
of the community, but even from the ranks of the medical
profession itself. This opposition was due in part to mis-
conceptions of the principles involved in the new doctrine,
and in part to the falsely philanthropic prejudices of the
pseudo-scientific sections of both parties. But by the
persevering work of the enthusiastic believers in serum-
therapy, positive conviction has now replaced misconcep-
tion and prejudice in the minds of the majority of its
former opponents.

The accumulation of statistical evidence, even where all
allowance is made for doubtful methods of compilation,
shows that the aggregate mortality of diphtheria has been
reduced fully fifty per cent, since the introduction of anti-
toxic treatment by Behring in 1892.

Since the method of preparation of the commercial
diphtheria antitoxin illustrates the general principles
involved in the search for the production of curative or
protective serums for infectious diseases in general, a sum-
mary of the steps in its manufacture will now be given.

A race of diphtheria bacilli, which has been found to
yield a poison of great virulence in alkaline beef broth, is
grown for a week or ten days in this medium. The toxin
is then separated and its virulence exactly determined. It
is preserved in sterile receptacles for immediate or future
use. The next step is the inoculation of a suitable animal
with the toxin. Of all animals the horse has been found
to meet nearly every requirement. Such an animal, in a
state of perfect health, receives an injection of twenty
cubic centimetres of toxin, along with ten or fifteen of
standard antitoxin, beneath the skin of the neck or fore-

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quarters, upon three separate occasions at intervals of five
days. After this it receives increasing doses of toxin,
alone, at intervals of six to eight days, until, at the end of
two months, it is able to stand with little discomfort doses
of such strength that if given in the first stage these doses
would have quickly caused death.

At this period the horse is bled to a small extent, and
its serum tested to ascertain if prospects are good for the
production by the animal of a high grade of antitoxin. If
satisfactory progress has been made, the injections are
continued for another month, when, as a rule, the maximal
degree of antitoxic power in the serum will have been
attained.

The horse is now bled to the proper extent, the blood
being received in a sterile jar and placed in an ice-box.
Here it coagulates, and the serum separates from it. When
the separation of clot and serum is complete, the latter is
drawn off, taken to the laboratory, and standardized.
This being finished, an antiseptic fluid is added to pre-
serve the serum from decomposition. It is then bottled,
labelled, and sent out for use.

In similar fashion tetanus antitoxin is prepared ; and
quite recently Calmette has produced an antitoxic serum
for use in snake bite, by injecting horses with minute in-
creasing doses of snake venom. His experiments have
given some remarkable results, not only in laboratory
work, but also in cases of actual snake bite occurring in
man. Thus bacteriological scientists, after years of labori-
ous work, in the face of much criticism and severe denun-
ciation, may confidently announce that they have in their
possession a magic key to one of nature's secret doors.

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The lock has been turned. The door stands partly open,
and we are permitted a glimpse of the future possibilities
to be attained in the great fight against disease.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

The following are some of the diseases which have been
remarkably controlled through preventive medicine :

Small-pox. — While not a scourge of the first rank, like
the plague or cholera, at the outset of the nineteenth cen-
tury variola was one of the most prevalent and dreaded of
all diseases. Few reached adult life without an attack.
To-day, though outbreaks still occur, it is a disease tho-
roughly controlled by vaccination. The protective power
of the inoculated cow-pox is not a fixed and constant
quantity. The protection may be for life, or it may last
only for a year or two. The all-important fact is this :
That efficiently vaccinated persons may be exposed -with
impunity, and among large bodies of men (e.g., the Ger-
man army), in which re vaccination is practised, small-pox
is unknown. Of one hundred vaccinated persons exposed
to small-pox, possibly one might take the disease in a mild
form ; of one hundred unvaccinated persons so exposed,
one alone might escape — from twenty-five to thirty would
die. To be efficient, vaccination must be carried out
systematically, and if all the inhabitants of this country
were revaccinated at intervals small-pox would disappear
(as it has from the German army), and the necessity for
vaccination would cease. The difficulty arises from the
constant presence of an unvaccinated remnant, by which
the disease is kept alive. The Montreal experience in 1885
is an object-lesson never to be forgotten.

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For eight or ten years vaccination had been neglected,
particularly among the French-Canadians. On February
28, 1885, a Pullman car conductor, who came from Chicago,
where the disease had been slightly prevalent, was ad-
mitted into the Hotel Dieu. Isolation was not carried
out, and on the 1st of April a servant in the hospital died
of small-pox. Following her death the authorities of the
hospital sent to their homes all patients who presented no
symptoms of the disease. Like fire in dry grass, the con-
tagion spread, and within nine months there died of small-
pox three thousand one hundred and sixty-four persons.
It ruined the trade of the city for the winter, and cost
millions of dollars. There are no reasonable objections
to vaccination, which is a simple process, by which a mild
and harmless disease is introduced. The use of the animal
vaccine does away with the possibility of introduction of
other disorders, such as syphilis.

Typhus Fever. — Until the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury this disease prevailed widely in most of the large
cities, particularly in Europe, and also in jails, ships,
hospitals and camps. It was more widely spread than
typhoid fever and much more fatal. Murchison remarks
of it that a complete history of its ravages would be the
history of Europe during the past three centuries and a
half. Not one of the acute infections seems to have been
more dependent upon filth and unsanitary conditions.
With the gradual introduction of drainage and a good
water supply, and the relief of overcrowding, the disease
has almost entirely disappeared, and is rarely mentioned
now in the bills of mortality, except in a few of the larger
and more unsanitary cities. The following figures illus_-

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trate what has been done in England within sixty years :
In 1838 in England twelve hundred and twenty-eight per-
sons died of fever (typhus and typhoid) per million of
living. Twenty years later the figures were reduced to
nine hundred and eighteen ; in 1878 to three hundred and
six of typhoid and to thirty-six of typhus fever. In 1892
only one hundred and thirty-seven died of typhoid fever
and only three of typhus per million living !

Typhoid Fever. — While preventive medicine can claim
a great victory in this disease also, it is less brilliant, since
the conditions which favour its prevalence are not those
specially relating to overcrowding as much as to imperfect
water supply and the contamination of certain essential
foods, as milk. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that,
with a pure water supply and perfect drainage, typhoid
fever almost disappears from a city. In Vienna, after the
introduction of good water, the rate of mortality from
typhoid fever fell from twelve per ten thousand of the
inhabitants to about one. In Munich the fall was still
more remarkable ; from above twenty-nine per ten thou-
sand inhabitants in 1857 it fell to about one per ten thou-
sand in 1887. That typhoid fever in this country is still
a very prevalent disease depends mainly upon two facts :
First, not only is the typhoid bacillus very resistant, but it
may remain for a long time in the body of a person after
recovery from typhoid fever, and such persons, in apparent
good health, may be a source of contamination. With
many of the conditions favouring the persistence and growth
of the bacillus outside the body we are not yet familiar.
The experience in the Spanish-American War illustrates
how dangerous is the concentration together of large

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numbers of individuals. But, secondly, the essential
factor in the widespread prevalence of typhoid fever in
the United States, particularly in country districts, is
the absence of anything like efficient rural sanitation.
Many countries have yet to learn the alphabet of sanita-
tion. The chief danger results from the impure water
supplies of the smaller towns, while the local house epi-
demics are due to infected wells, and the milk outbreaks
due to the infection of dairy farms.

The importance of scrupulously guarding the sources of
supply was never better illustrated than in the well-known
and oft-quoted epidemic in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. The
town, with a population of eight thousand, was in part
supplied with drinking-water from a reservoir fed by a
mountain-stream. During January, February, and March,
in a cottage by the side of and at a distance of from sixty
to eighty feet from this stream, a man was ill with typhoid
fever. The attendants were in the habit at night of throw-
ing out the evacuations on the ground towards the stream.
During these months the ground was frozen and covered
with snow. In the latter part of March and early in April
there was considerable rainfall and a thaw, in which a
large part of the three months' accumulation of discharges
was washed into the brook not sixty feet distant. At the
very time of this thaw the patient had numerous and
copious discharges. About the 10th of April cases of
typhoid fever broke out in the town, appearing for a time
at the rate of fifty a day. In all about twelve hundred
were attacked. An immense majority of the cases were in
the part of the town which received water from the infected
reservoir.

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The use of boiled water and of ice made from distilled
water, the systematic inspection of dairies, the scrupulous
supervision of the sources from which the water is obtained,
an efficient system of sewage removal, and, above all, the
most scrupulous care on the part of physicians and of
nurses in the disinfection of the discharges of typhoid fever
patients—these are the factors necessary to reduce to a
minimum the incidence of typhoid fever.

Cholera.— One of the great scourges of the nineteenth
century made inroads into Europe and America from
India, its native home. We have, however, found out
the germ, found out the conditions under which it lives,
and it is not likely that it will ever again gain a foothold
in this country or Great Britain. Since the last epidemic,
1873, the disease, though brought to this country on several
occasions, has always been held in check at the port of
entry. It is communicated almost entirely through in-
fected water, and the virulence of an epidemic in any city
is in direct proportion to the imperfection of the water
supply. This was shown in a remarkable way in the
Hamburg epidemic of 1892. In Altona, which had a filtra-
tion plant, there were only five hundred and sixteen cases,
many of them refugees from Hamburg. Hamburg, where
the unaltered water of the Elbe was used, had some eighteen
thousand cases, with nearly eight thousand deaths.

Yellow Fever. —The cause of this disease is still under
discussion. It has an interest to us in this country from
ts continued prevalence in Cuba, and from the fact that at
ntervals it makes inroads into the Southern States, causing
erious commercial loss. The history of the disease in the
>ther West India inlands, particularly Jamaica, indicates

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the steps which must be taken for its prevention. For-
merly yellow fever was as fatal a scourge in them as it is
to-day in Cuba. By an efficient system of sanitation it
has been abolished. The same can be done (and will be
done) in Cuba within a few years. General Wood has
already pointed out the way in the cleansing of Santiago.

The Plague. — One of the most remarkable facts in
connexion with modern epidemics has been the revival
of the bubonic plague, the most dreaded of all the great
infections. During the nineteenth century the disease in
Europe has been confined almost exclusively to Turkey
and Southern Europe. Since 1894, when it appeared
at Hong Kong, it has gradually spread, and there have
been outbreaks of terrible severity in India. It has ex-
tended to certain of the Mediterranean ports, and during
the past summer it reached Glasgow, where there has
been a small outbreak. On this hemisphere there have
been small outbreaks in certain of the South American
ports, cases have been brought to New York, and there
have been to November 1 twenty- one cases among the
Chinese in San Francisco. Judging from the readiness
with which it has been checked and limited in Australia,
and in particular the facility with which the recent out-
break in Glasgow has been stamped out, there is very
little risk that plague will ever assume the proportions
which gave to it its terrible reputation as the " black
death *' of the Middle Ages. As I have already men-
tioned, the germ is known, and prophylactic inoculations
have been made on a large scale in India, with a certain
measure of success.

Tuberculosis. — In all communities the white plague,

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as Oliver Wendell Holmes calls it, takes the first rank
as a killing disease. It has been estimated that of it
one hundred and twenty thousand people die yearly in
this country. In all mortality bills tuberculosis of the
lungs, or consumption, heads the list, and when to this
is added tuberculosis of the other organs, the number
swells to such an extent that this disease equals in fatality
all the other acute infective diseases combined, if we
leave out pneumonia. Less than twenty years ago we
knew little or nothing of the cause of the disease. It
was believed to be largely hereditary. Koch discovered
the germ, and with this have come the possibilities of
limiting its ravages.

The following points with reference to it may be stated :
In a few very rare instances the disease is transmitted
from parent to child. In a large proportion of all cases
the disease is ''caught.'' The germs are widely • dis-
tributed through the sputum, which, when dry, becomes
dust, and is blown about in all directions. Tubercle
bacilli have been found in the dust of streets, houses,
hospital wards, and much- frequented places. A single
individual may discharge from the lungs countless myriads
of germs in the twenty-four hours. Dr. Nuttall esti-
mated from a patient in the Johns Hopkins Hospital,
who had only moderately advanced consumption, that
from one and a half to four and a third billions of germs
were thrown off in the twenty-four hours. The con-
sumptive, as has been well stated, is almost harmless,
and only becomes harmful through bad habits. The
germs are contained in the sput'im, which, when dry,
is widely scattered in the form of dust, and constitutes

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the great medium for the transmission of the disease.
If expectorated into a handkerchief, the sputum dries
quickly, particularly if it is put into the pocket or under
the pillow. The beard or moustache of a consumptive is
smeared with the germs. Even in the most careful the
hands are apt to be soiled with the germs, and in those
who are dirty and careless the furniture and materials
which they handle readily become infected. Where
the dirty habit prevails of spitting on the floor, a
room, or the entire house, may contain numbers of
germs. In the majority of all cases the infection in
tuberculosis is by inhalation. This is shown by the
frequency with which the disease is met in the lungs,
and the great prevalence of tuberculosis in institutions
in which the residents are restricted in the matter of
fresh air and a free, open life. The disease prevails
specially in cloisters, in jails and in asylums. Infection
through milk is also possible ; it is doubtful whether
the disease is transmitted through meat. So widespread
are the germs that post-mortem examination has shown
that a very large number of persons show slight signs
of the disease who have never during life presented any
symptoms ; in fact, some recent investigations would
indicate that a very large proportion of all persons at
the age of forty have somewhere in their bodies slight
tuberculous lesions. This shows the importance of the
individual predisposition, upon which the older writers
laid so much stress, and the importance of maintaining
the nutrition at its maximum.

One of the most remarkable features of modern pi
tective medicine is the widespread interest that has beei

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aroused in the crusade against tuberculosis. What has
already been accomplished warrants the belief that the
hopes of even the most enthusiastic may be realized. A
positive decline in the prevalence of the disease has been
shown in many of the larger cities during the past ten
years. In Massachusetts, which has been a hot-bed of
tuberculosis for many years, the death-rate has fallen
from forty-two per ten thousand inhabitants in 1853 to
twenty- one and eight-tenths per ten thousand inhabitants
in 1895. In the city of Glasgow, in which the records
have been very carefully kept, there has been an extra-
ordinary fall in the death-rate from tuberculosis, and the
recent statistics of New York City show, too, a similar
remarkable diminution.

In fighting the disease our chief weapons are : First,
education of the public, particularly of the poorer classes,
who do not fully appreciate the chief danger in the disease.
Secondly, the compulsory notification and registration
of all cases of tuberculosis. The importance of this
relates chiefly to the very poor and improvident, from whom
after all, comes the greatest danger, and who should be
under constant surveillance in order that these dangers
may be reduced to a minimum. Thirdly, the foundation
in suitable localities by the city and by the State oi
sanatoria for the treatment of early cases of the disease.
Fourthly, provision for the chrome, incurable cases in
special hospitals.

Diphtheria. — Since the discovery of the germ, of this
disease and our knowledge of the conditions of its trans-
mission, and the discovery of the antitoxin, there has
been a great reduction in its prevalence and an equally

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remarkable reduction in the mortality. The more careful
isolation of the sick, the thorough disinfection of the
clothing, the rigid scrutiny of the milder cases of throat
disorder, a more stringent surveillance in the period of
convalescence, and the routine examination -of the throats
of school-children — these are the essential measures
by which the prevalence of the disease has been very
markedly diminished. The great danger is in the mild
cases, in which the disease has perhaps not been suspected,
and in which the child may be walking about and even
going to school. Such patients are often a source of
widespread infection. The careful attention given by
mothers to teeth and mouth of children is also an important
factor. In children with recurring attacks of tonsillitis,
in whom the tonsils are enlarged, the organs should be
removed. Through these measures the incidence of the
disease has been very greatly reduced.

Pneumonia. — While there has been a remarkable
diminution in the prevalence of a large number of all the
acute infections, one diseaseanot only holds its own, but
seems even to have increased in its virulence. In the
mortality bills, pneumonia is an easy second, to tuber-
culosis; indeed, in many cities the death-rate is now higher
and it has become, to use the phrase of Bunyan, " the
Captain of the men of death." It attacks particularly
the intemperate, the feeble, and the old, though every year
a large number of robust, healthy individuals succumb.
So frequent is pneumonia at advanced periods of life that
to die of it has been said to be the natural end of old men
in this country. In many ways, too, it is a satisfactory
disease, if one may use such an expression. It is not

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associated with much pain, except at the onset, the battle
is brief and short, and a great many old persons succumb
to it easily arid peacefully.

We know the cause of the disease ; we know only too
well its symptoms, but the enormous fatality (from twenty
to twenty-five per cent.) speaks only too plainly of the
futility of our means of cure, and yet in no disease has
there been so great a revolution in treatment. The
patient is no longer drenched to death with drugs, or
bled to a point where the resisting powers of nature are
exhausted. We are not without hope, too, that in the
future an antidote maybe found to the toxins of the disease,
and of late there have been introduced several measures of
great value in supporting the weakness of the heart, a
special danger in the old and debilitated.

Hydrophobia. — Rabies, a remarkable, and in certain
countries a widespread, disease of animals, when trans-
mitted to a man by the bite of rabid dogs, wolves, etc.j
is known as hydrophobia. The specific germ is unknown,
but by a series of brilliant Observations Pasteur showed
(1) that the poison has certain fixed and peculiar properties
in connexion with the nervous system ; (2) that susceptible
animals could be rendered refractory to the disease, or
incapable of taking it, by a certain method of inoculation ;
and (3) that an animal unprotected and inoculated with
a dose of the virus sufficient to cause the disease may, by
the injection of proper anti-rabic treatment escape.
Supported by these facts, Pasteur began a system of treat-
ment of hydrophobia in man, and a special institute was
founded in Paris for the purpose. When carried out
promptly the treatment is successful in an immense

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majority of all cases, and the mortality in persons bitten
by animals proved to be rabid, who have subsequently
had the anti-rabic treatment, has been reduced to less
than one-half per cent. The disease may be stamped
out in dogs by careful quarantine of suspected animals
and by a thoroughly carried out muzzling order.

Malaria. — Among the most remarkable of modern
discoveries is the cause of malarial fever, one of the great
maladies of the world, and a prime obstacle to the settle-
ment of Europeans in tropical regions. Until 1880 the
cause was quite obscure. It was known that the disease
prevailed chiefly in marshy districts, in the autumn, and
that the danger of infection was greatest in the evening
and at night, and that it was not directly contagious.
In 1880 a French army surgeon, Laveran, discovered in
the red blood-corpuscles small bodies which have proved
to be the specific germ of the disease. They are not
bacteria, but little animal bodies resembling the amoeba
— tiny little portions of protoplasm. The parasite in its
earliest form is a small, clear, ring-shaped body inside
the red blood-corpuscle, upon which, it feeds, gradually
increasing in size and forming within itself blackish grains
out of the colouring matter of the corpuscle. When the
little parasite reaches a certain size it begins to divide
or multiply, and an enormous number of these breaking
up at the same time give off poison in the blood, which
causes the paroxysms of fever. Duirng what is known
as the chill, in the intermittent fever, for example, one can
always find these dividing parasites. Several different
forms of the parasites have been found, corresponding to
different varieties of malaria. Parasites of a very similar

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nature exist abundantly in birds. Ross, an army surgeon
in India, found that the spread of this parasite from bird
to bird was effected through the intervention of the
mosquito. The parasites reach maturity in certain cells
of the coats of the stomach of these insects, and develop
into peculiar thread-like bodies, many of which ultimately
reach the salivary glands, from which, as the insect bites,
they pass with the secretion of the glands into the wound.
From this as a basis, numerous observers have worked
out the relation of the mosquito to malaria in the human
subject.

Briefly stated, the disease is transmitted chiefly by
certain varieties of the mosquito, particularly the Ano-
pheles. The ordinary Culex, which is present chiefly in
the Northern States, does not convey the disease. The
Anopheles sucks the blood from a person infected with
malaria, takes in a certain number of parasites, which
undergo development in the body of the insect, the final
outcome of which is numerous small, thread-like struc-
tures, which are found in numbers in the salivary glands.
From this point, when the mosquito bites another in-
dividual, they pass into his blood, infect the system,
and in this way the disease is transmitted. Two very
striking experiments may be mentioned. The Italian
observers have repeatedly shown that Anopheles which
have sucked blood from patients suffering from malaria,
when sent to a non-malarial region, and there allowed
to bite perfectly healthy persons, have transmitted the
disease. But a very crucial experiment was made a
short time ago. Mosquitoes which had bitten malarial
patients in Italy were sent to London and there allowed

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to bite Mr. Manson, son of Dr. Manson, who really sug-
gested the mosquito theory of malaria. This gentle-
man had not lived out of England, and there is no acute
malaria in London. He had been a perfectly healthy,
strong man. In a few days following the bites of the
infected mosquitoes he had a typical attack of malarial
fever.

The other experiment, though of a different character,
is quite as convincing. In certain regions about Rome,
in the Campania, malaria is so prevalent that in the
autumn almost every one in the district is attacked,
particularly if he is a new-comer. Dr. Sambron and a
friend lived in this district from June 1 to September 1,
1900. The test was whether they could live in this exceed-
ingly dangerous climate for the three months without
catching malaria, if they used stringent precautions
against the bites of mosquitoes. For this purpose the
hut in which they lived was thoroughly wired, and they
slept with the greatest care under netting, Both of these
gentlemen at the end of the period had escaped the disease.

The importance of these studies cannot be overestimated.
They explain the relation of malaria to marshy districts,
the seasonal incidence of the disease, the nocturnal infection,
and many other hitherto obscure problems. More important
still, they point out clearly the way by which malaria
may be prevented : First, the recognition that any
individual with malaria is a source of danger in a com-
munity, so that he must be thoroughly treated with
quinine ; secondly, the importance of the draining of
marshy districts and ponds in which mosquitoes breed ;
and, thirdly, that even in the most infected regions persons

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may escape the disease by living in thoroughly protected
houses, in this way escaping the bites of mosquitoes.

Venereal Diseases. — These continue to embarrass the
social economist and to perplex and distress the profession.
The misery and ill-health which they cause are incalculable,
and the pity of it is that the cross is not always borne
by the offender, but innocent women and children share
the penalties. The gonorrhceal infection, so common,
and often so little heeded, is a cause of much disease in
parts other than those first affected. Syphilis claims
its victims in every rank of life, at every age, and in all
countries. We now treat it more thoroughly, but all
attempts to check its ravages have been fruitless. Physicians
have two important duties : the incessant preaching of
continence to young men, and scrupulous care, in every
case, that the disease may not be a source of infection
to others, and that by thorough treatment the patient
may be saved from the serious late nervous manifestations.
We can also urge that in the interests of public health
venereal diseases, like other infections, shall be subject
to supervision by the State. The opposition to measures
tending to the restriction of these diseases is most natural :
on the one hand, from women, who feel that it is an
aggravation of a shocking injustice and wrong to their sex :
on the other, from those who feel the moral guilt in a legal
recognition of the evil. It is appalling to contemplate
the frightful train of miseries which a single diseased
woman may entail, not alone on her associates, but on
scores of the innocent — whose bitter cry should make the
opponents of legislation feel that any measures of restric-
tion, any measures of registration, would be preferable

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to the present disgraceful condition, which makes of some
Christian cities open brothels and allows the purest homes
to be invaded by the most loathsome of all diseases.

Leprosy. — Since the discovery of the germ of this
terrible disease systematic efforts have been made to
improve the state of its victims and to promote the study
of the conditions under which the disease prevails. The
English Leprosy Commission has done good work in
calling attention to the widespread prevalence of the
disease in India and in the East. In this country leprosy
has been introduced into San Fransisco by the Chinese,
and into the North-western States by the Norwegians,
and there are foci of the disease in the Southern States,
particularly Louisiana, and in the province of New Bruns-
wick. The problem has an additional interest since the
annexation of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, in both
of which places leprosy prevails extensively. By systematic
measures of inspection and the segregation of affected
individuals the disease can readily be held in check. It
is not likely ever to increase among native Americans,
or again gain such a foothold as it had in the Middle
Ages.

Puerperal Fever. —Perhaps one of the most striking of all
victories of preventive medicine has been the almost total
abolition of so-called child-bed fever from the maternity
hospitals and from private practice. In many institutions
the mortality after child-birth was five or six per cent.,
indeed sometimes as high as ten per cent., whereas to-day,'
owing entirely to proper antiseptic precautions, the
mortality has fallen to three-tenths to four-tenths per cent.

The recognition of the contagiousness of puerperal fever

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was the most valuable contribution to medical science
made by Oliver Wendell Holmes. There had been previous
suggestions by several writers, but his essay on the " Con-
tagiousness of Puerperal Fever," published in 1843, was
the first strong, clear, logical statement of the case. Sem-
melweis, a few years later, added the weight of a large
practical experience to the side of the contagiousness, but
the full recognition of the causes of the disease was not
reached until the recent antiseptic views had been put into
practical effect.

THE NEW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

The nineteenth century has witnessed a revolution in
the treatment of disease, and the growth of a new school
of medicine. The old schools — regular and homoeopathic—
put their trust in drugs, to give which was the alpha and
the omega of their practice. For every symptom there
were a score or more of medicines — vile, nauseous com-
pounds in one case ; bland, harmless dilutions in the
other. The characteristic of the New School is firm faith
in a few good, well-tried drugs, little or none in the great
mass of medicines still in general use. Imperative drugging
— the ordering of medicine in any and every malady —
is no longer regarded as the chief function of the doctor.
Naturally, when the entire conception of the disease was
changed, there came a corresponding change in our
therapeutics. In no respect is this more strikingly shown
than in our present treatment of fever — say, of the common
typhoid fever. During the first quarter of the century
the patients were bled, blistered, purged and vomited,
and dosed with mercury, antimony, and other compounds

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to meet special symptoms. During the second quarter
the same, with variations in different countries. After
1850 bleeding became less frequent, and the experiments
of the Paris and Vienna schools began to shake the belief
in the control of fever by drugs. During the last quarter
sensible doctors have reached the conclusion that typhoid
fever is not a disease to be treated with medicines, but
that in a large proportion of all cases diet, nursing and
bathing meet the indications. There is active, systematic,
careful, watchful treatment, but not with drugs. The
public has not yet been fully educated to this point, and
medicines have sometimes to be ordered for the sake of
their friends, and it must be confessed that there are still
in the ranks antiques who would insist on a dose of some
kind every few hours.

The battle against poly-pharmacy, or the use of a
large number of drugs (of the action of which we know
little, yet we put them into bodies of the action of which
we know less), has not been fought to a finish. There
have been two contributing factors on the side of progress
— the remarkable growth of the sceptical spirit fostered
by Paris, Vienna and Boston physicians, and, above all,
the valuable lesson of homoeopathy, the infinitesimals
of which certainly could not do harm, and quite as certainly
could not do good ; yet nobody has ever claimed that the
mortality among homoeopathic practitioners was greater
than among those of the regular school. A new school
of practitioners has arisen which cares nothing for homoeo-
pathy and less for so-called allopathy. It seeks to study,
rationally and scientifically, the action of drugs, old and
new. It is more concerned that a physician shall know

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how to apply the few great medicines which all have to use,
such as quinine, iron, mercury, iodide of potassium, opium
and digitalis, than that he should employ a multiplicity
of remedies the action of which is extremely doubtful.

The growth of scientific pharmacology, by which we
now have many active principles instead of crude drugs,
and the discovery of the art of making medicines palatable,
have been of enormous aid in rational practice. There
is no limit to the possibility of help from the scientific
investigation of the properties and action of drugs. At
any day the new chemistry may give to us remedies of
extraordinary potency and of as much usefulness as
cocaine. There is no reason why we should not even in
the vegetable world find for certain diseases specifics
of virtue fully equal to that of quinine in the malarial
fevers.

One of the most striking characteristics of the modern
treatment of disease is the return to what used to be
called the natural methods — diet, exercise, bathing and
massage. There probably never has been a period in
the history of the profession when the value of diet in
the prevention and the cure of disease was more fully
recognized. Dyspepsia, the besetting malady of this
country, is largely due to improper diet, imperfectly pre-
pared and too hastily eaten. One of the great lessons to
be learned is that the preservation of health depends in
great part upon food well cooked and carefully eaten.
A common cause of ruined digestion, particularly in
young girls, is the eating of sweets between meals and
the drinking of the abominations dispensed in the chemists'
shops in the form of ice-cream sodas, etc. Another

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frequent cause of ruined digestion in business men is
the hurried meal at the lunch-counter. And a third
factor, most important of all, illustrates the old maxim,
that more people are killed by over eating and drinking
than by the sword. Sensible people have begun to realize
that alcoholic excesses lead inevitably to impaired health.
A man may take four or five drinks of whiskey a day, or
even more, and think perhaps that he transacts his
business better with that amount of stimulant ; but it
only too frequently happens that early in the fifth decade,
just as business or political success is assured, Bacchus
hands in heavy bills for payment, in the form of serious
disease of the arteries or of the liver, or there is a general
breakdown. With the introduction of light beer there
has been not only less intemperance, but a reduction in
the number of cases of organic disease of the heart, liver^
and stomach caused by alcohol. While temperance in1
the matter of alcoholic drinks is becoming a characteristic
of Americans, intemperance in the quantity of food taken
is almost the rule. Adults eat far too much, and physicians
are beginning to recognize that the early degenerations,
particularly of the arteries and of the kidneys, leading to
Bright'? disease, which were formerly attributed to alcohol
are due in large part to too much food.

Nursing. — Perhaps in no particular does nineteenth-
century practice differ from that of the preceding centuries
more than in the greater attention which is given to the
personal comfort of the patient and to all the accessories
comprised in the art of nursing. The physician has in
the trained nurse an assistant who carries out his directions
with a watchful care, is on the lookout for danger-signals

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and with accurate notes enables him to estimate the progress
of a critical case from hour to hour. The intelligent,
devoted women who have adopted the profession of nursing,
are not only in their ministrations a public benefaction,
but they lighten the anxieties which form so large a part
of the load of the busy doctor.

Massage and Hydrotherapy have taken their places
as most important measures of relief in many chronic
conditions, and the latter has been almost universally
adopted as the only safe means of combating the
high temperatures of the acute fevters.

Within the past quarter of a century the value of exercise
in the education of the young has become recognized.
The increase in the means of taking wholesome out-of-door
exercise is remarkable, and should show in a few years
an influence in the reduction of the nervous troubles in
young persons. The prophylactic benefit of systematic
exercise, taken in moderation by persons of middle age,
is very great. Golf and the bicycle have in the past few
years materially lowered the average incomes which doctors
in this country derive from persons under forty. From
the senile contingent — those above this age — the average
income has for a time been raised by these exercises, as a
large number of persons have been injured by taking up
sports which may be vigorously pursued with safety only
by those with young arteries.

Of three departures in the art of healing, brief mention
may be made. The use of the extracts of certain organs
(or of the organs themselves) in disease is as old as the
days of the Romans, but an extraordinary impetus has
been given to the subject by the discovery of the curative

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powers of the extract of the thyroid gland in the diseases
known as cretinism and myxoedema. The brilliancy
of the results in these diseases has had no parallel in the
history of modern medicine, but it cannot be said that
in the use of the extracts of other organs for disease the
results have fulfilled the sanguine expectations of many.
There was not, in the first place, the same physiologic^
basis, and practitioners have used these extracts too
indiscriminately and without sufficient knowledge of the
subject.

Secondly, as I have already mentioned, we possess
a sure and certain hope that for many of the acute infec-
tions antitoxins will be found.

A third noteworthy feature in modern treatment has
been a return to psychical methods of cure, in which
faith in something is suggested to the patient. After all,
faith is the great lever of life. Without it, man can do
nothing ; with it, even with a fragment, as a grain of
mustard-seed, all things are possible to him. Faith in
us, faith in our drugs and methods, is the great stock in
trade of the profession. In one pan of the balance, put
the pharmacopoeias of the world, all the editions from
Dioscorides to the last issue of the United States Dispen-
satory ; heap them on the scales as did Euripides his
books in the celebrated contest in the " Frogs " ; in the
other put the simple faith with which from the days of
the Pharaohs until now the children of men have swallowed
the mixtures these works describe, and the bulky tomes
will kick the beam. It is the aurum potabile, the touch-
stone of success in medicine. As Galen says, confidence
and hope do more good than physic — " he cures most

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in whom most are confident." That strange compound
of charlatan and philosopher, Paracelsus, encouraged
his patients " to have a good faith, a strong imagination,
and they shall find the effects " (Burton). While we
doctors often overlook or are ignorant of our own faith-
cures, we are just a wee bit too sensitive about those per-
formed outside our ranks. We have never had, and
cannot expect to have, a monopoly in this panacea, which
ia open to all, free as the sun, and which may make of
every one in certain cases, as was the Lacedemonian of
Homer's day, " a good physician out of Nature's grace."
Faith in the gods or in the saints cures one, faith in little
pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a plain
common doctor a^ fourth. In all ages the prayer of
faith has healed. the* sick, and the mental attitude of the
suppliant seems to be of more consequence than the
powers to which the prayer is addressed. The cures in
the temples of ^Esculapius, the miracles of the saints, the
remarkable cures of those noble men, the Jesuit mission-
aries, in this country, the modern miracles at Lourdes
and at St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, and the wonder-
workings of the so-called Christian Scientists, are often
genuine, and must be considered in discussing the founda-
tions of therapeutics. We physicians use the same power
every day. If a poor lass, paralyzed apparently, helpless,
bed-ridden for years, comes to me, having worn out in
mind, body and estate a devoted family ; if she in a
few weeks or less by faith in me, and faith alone, takes
up her bed and walks, the saints of old could not have
done more, St. Anne and many others can scarcely
to-day do less. We enjoy, I say, no monopoly in the faith
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business. The faith with which we work, the faith,
indeed, which is available to-day in everyday life, has
its limitations. It will not raise the dead ; it will not put
in a new eye in place of a bad one (as it did to an Iroquois
Indian boy for one of the Jesuit fathers), nor will it cure
cancer or pneumonia, or knit a bone ; but, in spite of these
nineteenth-century restrictions, such as we find it, faith
is a most precious commodity, without which we should
be very badly off.

Hypnotism, introduced by Mesmer in the eighteenth
century, has had several revivals as a method of treatment
during the nineteenth century. The first careful study
of it was made by Braid, a Manchester surgeon, who
introduced the terms hypnotism, hypnotic, and nervous
sleep ; but at this time no very great measure of success
followed its use in practice, except perhaps in the case of
an Anglo-Indian surgeon, James Esdaile, who, prior to
the introduction of anaesthesia, had performed two hundred
and sixty-one surgical operations upon patients in a
state of hypnotic unconsciousness. About 1880 the French
physicians, particularly Charcot and Bernheim, took
up the study, and since that time hypnotism has been
extensively practised. It may be defined as a subjective
psychical condition, which Braid called nervous sleep,
resembling somnambulism, in which, as Shakespeare says,
in the description of Lady Macbeth, the person receives
at once the benefit of sleep and does the effects or acts
of watching or waking. Therapeutically, the important
fact is that the individual's natural susceptibility to
suggestion is increased, and this may hold after the condi-
tion of hypnosis has passed away . The condition of hypnosis

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is usually itself induced by suggestion, requesting the
subject to close the eyes, to think of sleep, and the operator
then repeats two or three times sentences suggesting
sleep, and suggesting that the limbs are getting heavy
and that he is feeling drowsy. During this state it has
been found that the subjects are very susceptible to sugges-
tion. Too much must not be expected of hypnotism,
and the claims which have been made for it have been
too often grossly exaggerated. It seems, as it has been
recently well put, that hypnotism " at best permits of
making suggestions more effective for good or bad than
can be done upon one in his waking state." It is found
to be of very little use in organic disease. It has been
helpful in some cases of hysteria, in certain functional
spasmodic affections of the nervous system, in the vicious
habits of childhood, and in suggesting to the victims of
alcohol and drugs that they should get rid of their inordi-
nate desires. It has been used successfully in certain
cases for the relief of labour pains, and in surgical opera-
tions ; but on the whole, while a valuable agent in a few
cases, it has scarcely fulfilled the expectations of its
advocates. It is a practice not without serious dangers,
and should never be performed except in the presence of
a third person, while its indiscriminate employment by
ignorant persons should be prevented by law.

One mode of faith -healing in modern days, which passes
under the remarkable name of Christian Science, is probably
nothing more than mental suggestion under another
name. " The patient is told to be calm, and is assured
that all will go well ; that he must try to aid the healer
by believing that what is told him is true. The healer

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then, quietly but firmly, asserts and reiterates that there
is no pain, no suffering, that it is disappearing, that relief
will come, that the patient is getting well." This is
precisely the method which Bernheim used to use with
such success with his hypnoetic patients at Nancy, iterating
and reiterating, in a most wearisome way, that the disease
would disappear and the patient would feel better. As
has been pointed out by a recent writer (Dr. Harry Mar-
shall), the chief basis for the growth of Christian Science
is that which underlies every popular fallacy : " Oliver
Wendell Holmes outlined very clearly the factors concerned,
showing (a) how easily abundant facts can be collected
to prove anything whatsoever ; (b) how insufficient
' exalted wisdom, immaculate honesty, and vast general
acquirements ' are to prevent an individual from having
the most primitive ideas upon subjects out of his line of
thought ; and, finally, demonstrating * the boundless
credulity and excitability of mankind upon subjects con-
nected with medicine.' '

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277

I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can dis-
cover in others : those national repugnances do not touch me, nor
do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch :
but where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen's,
I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree. I was born
in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and constellated
unto all : I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden ; all
places, all airs, make unto me one country ; I am in England,
everywhere, and under any meridian.

SIB THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici.

All's not offence that indiscretion finds
And dotage terms so.

SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, Act II.

Still Li thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues.

SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VIII, Act III.

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AEARE and precious gift is the Art of Detachment,
by which a man may so separate himself from a
life-long environment as to take a panoramic view of the
conditions under which he has lived and moved : it frees
him from Plato's den long enough to see the realities as
they are, the shadows as they appear. Could a physi-
cian attain to such an art he would find in the state of his
profession a theme calling as well for the exercise of the
highest faculties of description and imagination as for the
deepest philosophic insight. With wisdom of the den
only and of my fellow-prisoners, such a task is beyond my
ambition and my powers, but to emphasize duly the sub-
ject that I wish to bring home to your hearts I must first
refer to certain distinctive features of our profession :

I. FOUR GREAT FEATURES OF THE GUILD

Its nolle ancestry.— Like everything else that is good
and durable in this world, modern medicine is a product
of the Greek intellect, and had its origin when that won-

1 Definition: A narrow, illiberal spirit in matters national,
provincial, collegiate, or personal.

* Canadian Medical Association, Montreal, 1902.

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derful people created positive or rational science, and no
small credit is due to the physicians who, as Professor
Gomperz remarks (in his brilliant chapter " On the Age
of Enlightenment," Greek Thinkers, Vol. 1), very early
brought to bear the spirit of criticism on the arbitrary
and superstitious views of the phenomena of life. If
science was ever to acquire " steady and accurate habits
instead of losing itself in a maze of phantasies, it must be by
quiet methodical research." "It is the undying glory of
the school of Cos that it introduced this innovation into
the domain of its Art, and thus exercised the most bene-
ficial influence on the whole intellectual life of mankinds
Fiction to the right ! Reality to the left ! was the battle
cry of this school in the war it was the first to wage against
the excesses and defects of the nature philosophy " (Gom-
perz). The critical sense and sceptical attitude of the
Hippocratic school laid the foundations of modern medi-
cine on broad lines, and we owe to it : first, the emanci-
pation of medicine from the shackles of priestcraft and of
caste ; secondly, the conception of medicine as an art based
on accurate observation, and as a science, an integral part
of the science of man and of nature ; thirdly, the high moral
ideals, expressed in that most " memorable of human
documents " (Gomperz), the Hippocratic oath ; and
fourthly, the conception and realization of medic ine as the
profession of a cultivated gentleman.1 No other profes-

1 Nowhere in literature do we have such a charming picture
illustrating the position of a cultivated physician in society as that
given in Plato's Dialogues of Eryximachus, himself the son of a
physician, Acumenus. In that most brilliant age the physician
was the companion and friend, and in intellectual intercourse the
peer of its choicest spirits.

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sion can boast of the same unbroken continuity of
methods and of ideals. We may indeed be justly proud of
our apostolic succession. Schools and systems have flou-
rished and gone, schools which have swayed for genera-
tions the thought of our guild, and systems that have
died before their founders ; the philosophies of one age
have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolish-
ness of yesterday has become the wisdom of to-morrow ;
through long ages which were slowly learning what we are
hurrying to forget — amid all the changes and chances
of twenty-five centuries, the profession has never lacked
men who have lived up to these Greek ideals. They
were those of Galen and of Aretseus, of the men of the
Alexandrian and Byzantine schools, of the best of the
Arabians, of the men of the Renaissance, and they are
ours to-day.

A second distinctive feature is the remarkable solidarity.
Of no other profession is the word universal applicable
in the same sense. The .celebrated phrase used of the
Catholic Church is in truth much more appropriate when
applied to medicine. It is not the prevalence of disease
or the existence everywhere of special groups of men to
treat it that betokens this solidarity, but it is the identity
throughout the civilized world of our ambitions, our
methods and our work. To wrest from nature the secrets
'which have perplexed philosophers in all ages, to track
to their sources the causes of disease, to correlate the vast
stores of knowledge, that they may be quickly available
for the prevention and cure of disease — these are our am-
bitions. To carefully observe the phenomena of life in
all its phases, normal and perverted, to make perfect that

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most difficult of all arts, the art of observation, to call to
aid the science of experimentation, to cultivate the reason-
ing faculty, so as to be able to know the true from the
false — these are our methods. To prevent disease, to re-
lieve suffering and to heal the sick— this is our work.
The profession in truth is a sort of guild or brotherhood,
any member of which can take up his calling in any part
of the world and find brethren whose language and methods
and whose aims and ways are identical with his own.

Thirdly, its progressive character.— Based on science,
medicine has followed and partaken of its fortunes, so
that in the great awakening which has made the nine-
teenth memorable among centuries, the profession re-
ceived a quickening impulse more powerful than at any
period in its history. With the sole exception of the
mechanical sciences, no other department of human know-
ledge has undergone so profound a change— a change so
profound that we who have grown up in it have but slight
appreciation of its momentous character. And not only
in what has been actually accomplished in unravelling
the causes of disease, in perfecting methods of prevention,
and in wholesale relief of suffering, but also in the un-
loading of old formulae and in the substitution of the
scientific spirit of free inquiry for cast-iron dogmas we see
a promise of still greater achievement and of a more
glorious future.

And lastly, the profession of medicine is distinguished
from all others by its singular beneficence. It alone does
the work of charity in a Jovian and God-like way, dis-
pensing with free hand truly Promethean gifts. There
are those who listen to me who have seen three of the most

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benign endowments granted to the race since the great
Titan stole fire from the heavens. Search the scriptures
of human achievement and you cannot find any to equal
in beneficence the introduction of Anaesthesia, Sanitation,
with all that it includes, and Asepsis— a short half- century's
contribution towards the practical solution of the pro-
blems of human suffering, regarded as eternal and insolu-
ble. We form almost a monopoly or trust in this busi-
ness. Nobody else comes into active competition with
us, certainly not the other learned professions which con-
tinue along the old lines. Every few years sees some new
conquest, so that we have ceased to wonder. The work
of half a dozen men, headed by Laveran, has made waste
places of the earth habitable and the wilderness to blossom
as the rose. The work of Walter Reed and his associate*,
will probably make yellow fever as scarce in the Spanish
Main as is typhus fever with us. There seems to-be no
limit to the possibilities of scientific medicine, and while
philanthropists are turning to it as to the hope of human-
ity, philosophers see, as in some far-off vision, a science
from which may come in the prophetic words of the Son
of Sirach, " Peace over all the earth."

Never has the outlook for the profession been brighter.
Everywhere the physician is better trained and better
equipped than he was twenty-five years ago. Disease
is understood more thoroughly, studied more carefully and
treated more skilfully. The average sum of human suf-
fering has been reduced in a way to make the angels re-
joice. Diseases familiar to our fathers and grandfathers
have disappeared, the death rate from others is falling
to the vanishing point, and public health measures have

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lessened the sorrows and brightened the lives of millions.
The vagaries and whims, lay and medical, may neither
have diminished in number nor lessened in their capacity
to distress the faint-hearted who do not appreciate that to
the end of time people must imagine vain things, but they
are dwarfed by comparison with the colossal advance of
the past fifty years.

So vast, however, and composite has the profession
become, that the physiological separation, in which de-
pendent parts are fitly joined together, tends to -become
pathological, and while some parts suffer necrosis and
degeneration, others, passing the normal limits, become
disfiguring and dangerous outgrowths on the body medical.
The dangers and evils which threaten harmony among the
units, are internal, not external. And yet, in it more than
in any other profession, owing to the circumstances of
which I have spoken, is complete organic unity possible.
Of the many hindrances in the way time would fail me to
speak, but there is one aspect of the question to which
I would direct your attention in the hope that I may
speak a word in season.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-
satisfied superiority to others. It cannot always be called
pride, that master sin. but more often it is an attitude
of mind which either leads to bigotry and prejudice or
to such a vaunting conceit in the truth of one's own be-
liefs and positions, that there is no room for tolerance of
ways and thoughts which are not as ours are. To avoid
some smirch of this vice is beyond human power ; we are
all dipped in it, some lightly, others deeply grained. Par-
taking of the nature of uncharitableness, it has not the

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intensity of envy, hatred and malice, but it shades off
in fine degrees from them. It may be a perfectly harm-
less, even an amusing trait in both nations and indi-
viduals, and so well was it depicted by Charlet, Horace
Vernet, and others, under the character of an enthusiastic
recruit named Chauvin, that the name Chauvinism has
become a by-word, expressing a bigoted, intolerant spirit.
The significance of the word has been widened, and it may
be used as a synonym for a certain type of nationalism, for
a narrow provincialism, or for a petty parochialism. It
does not express the blatant loudness of Jingoism, which
is of the tongue, while Chauvinism is a condition of the
mind, an aspect of character much more subtle and dan-
gerous. The one is more apt to be found in the educated
classes, while the other is pandemic in the fool multitude —
" that numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder,
seem men and reasonable creatures of God, but confused
together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity
more prodigious than Hydra " (Rdigio Medici). Wher-
ever found, and in whatever form, Chauvinism is a great
enemy of progress and of peace and concord among the
units. I have not the time, nor if I had, have I the ability
to portray this failing in all its varieties ; I can but touch
upon some of its aspects, national, provincial and paro-
chial.

II. NATIONALISM IN MEDICINE

Nationalism has been the great curse of humanity. In
no other shape has the Demon of Ignorance assumed more
hideous proportions ; to no other obsession do we yield
ourselves more readily. For whom do the hosannas ring

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higher than for the successful butcher of tens of thousands
of poor fellows who have been made to pass through the
fire to this Moloch of nationalism ? A vice of the blood,
of the plasm rather, it runs riot in the race, and rages to-
day as of yore in spite of the precepts of religion and the
practice of democracy. Nor is there any hope of change ;
the pulpit is dumb, the press fans the flames, literature
panders to it and the people love to have it so. Not that
all aspects of nationalism are bad. Breathes there a man
with soul so dead that it does not glow at the thought
of what the men of his blood have done and suffered to
make his country what it is ? There is room, plenty of
room, for proper pride of land and birth What I inveigh
against is a cursed spirit of intolerance, conceived in
distrust and bred in ignorance, that makes the mental
attitude perennially antagonistic, even bitterly antagonistic
to everything foreign, that subordinates everywhere the
race to the nation, forgetting the higher claims of human
brotherhood.

While medicine is everywhere tinctured with national
characteristics, the wider aspects of the profession, to
which I have alluded — our common lineage and the com-
munity of interests — should always save us from the more
vicious aspects of this sin, if it cannot prevent it altogether.
And yet I cannot say, as I wish I could, that we are wholly
free from this form of Chauvinism. Can we say, as Eng-
lish, French, German or American, physicians, that our
culture is always cosmopolitan, not national, that our
attitude of mind is always as frankly open and friendly
to the French as to the English, to the American as to the
German, and that we are free at all times and in all places

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from prejudice, at all times free from a self-satisfied feeling
of superiority the one over the other ? There has been
of late years a closer union of the profession of the different
countries through the International Congress and through
the international meetings of the special societies ; but
this is not enough, and the hostile attitude has by no
means disappeared. Ignorance is at the root. When
a man talks slightingly of the position and work of his
profession in any country, or when a teacher tells you
that he fails to find inspiration in the work of his foreign
colleagues, in the words of the Arabian proverb — he is a
fool, shun him ! Full knowledge, which alone disperses
the mists of ignorance, can only be obtained by travel
or by a thorough acquaintance with the literature of the
different countries. Personal, first-hand intercourse with
men of different lands, when the mind is young and plastic,
is the best vaccination against the disease. 'The man
who has sat at the feet of Virchow, or has listened to
Traube, or Helmholtz, or Cohnheim, can never look with
unfriendly eyes at German medicine or German methods
Who ever met with an English or American pupil of Louis
or of Charcot, who did not love French medicine, if not
for its own sake, at least for the reverence he bore his great
master ? Let our young men, particularly those who
aspire to teaching positions, go abroad. They can find
at home laboratories and hospitals as well equipped as
any in the world, but they may find abroad more than
they knew they sought — widened sympathies, heightened
ideals and something' perhaps of a Wdt-adtur which will
remain through life as the best protection against the vice
of nationalism.

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Next to a personal knowledge of men, a knowledge of the
literature of the profession of different countries will do
much to counteract intolerance and Chauvinism. The
great works in the department of medicine in which a
man is interested, are not so many that he cannot know
their contents, though they be in three or four languages.
Think of the impetus French medicine gave to the pro-
fession in the first half of the last century, of the debt we
all owe to German science in the latter half, and of the
lesson of the practical application by the English of sani-
tation and asepsis ! It is one of our chief glories and one
of the unique features of the profession that, no matter
where the work is done in the world, if of any value, it
is quickly utilized. Nothing has contributed more to the
denationalization of the profession of this continent than,
on the one hand, the ready reception of the good men
from the old countries who have cast in their lot with us,
and, on the other, the influence of our young men who
have returned from Europe with sympathies as wide as
the profession itself. There is abroad among us a proper
spirit of eclecticism, a willingness to take the good where-
ever found, that augurs well for the future. It helps a
man immensely to be a bit of a hero-worshipper, and the
stories of the lives of the wasters of medicine do much
to stimulate our ambition and rouse our sympathies. If
the life and work of such men as Bichat and Laennec will
not stir the blood of a young man and make him feel proud
of France and of Frenchmen, he must be a dull and muddy
mettled rascal. In reading the life of Hunter, of Jenner,
who thinks of the nationality which is merged and lost in
our interest in the man and in his work ? In the halcyon

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days of the Renaissance there was no nationalism in
medicine, but a fine catholic spirit made great leaders like
Vesalius, Eustachius, Stensen and others at home in every
country in Europe. While this is impossible to-day, a
great teacher of any country may have a world-wide
audience in our journal literature, which has done so
much to make medicine cosmopolitan.

III. PROVINCIALISM IN MEDICINE

While we may congratulate ourselves that the worst
aspects of nationalism in medicine are disappearing be-
fore the broader culture and the more intimate know-
ledge brought by ever-increasing intercourse, yet in Eng-
lish-speaking countries conditions have favoured the
growth of a very unpleasant subvariety, which may be
called provincialism or sectionalism. In one sense the
profession of this continent is singularly homogeneous.
A young man may be prepared for his medical course in
Louisiana and enter McGill College, or he may enter Dal-
housie College, Halifax, from the State of Oregon, and in
either case he will not feel strange or among strangers so
soon as he has got accustomed to his environment. In
collegiate life there is a frequent interchange of teachers
and professors between all parts of the country. To
better his brains the scholar goes freely where he wishes —
to Harvard, McGill, Yale, or Johns Hopkins ; there are
no restrictions. The various medical societies of the
two countries are, without exception, open to the members
of the profession at large. The President of the Asso-
ciation of American Physicians this year (Dr. James
Stewart), is a resident of this city, which gave also last year

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I believe, presidents to two of the special societies. The
chief journals are supported by men of all sections. The
text-books and manuals are everywhere in common ; there
is, in fact, a remarkable homogeneity in the English-speak
in'g profession, not only on this continent but throughout
the world. Naturally, in widely scattered communities
sectionalism— a feeling or conviction that the part is greater
than the whole— does exist, but it is diminishing, and one
great function of the national associations is to foster a
spirit of harmony and brotherhood among the scattered
units of these broad lands. But we suffer sadly from a
provincialism which has gradually enthralled us, and
which sprang originally from an attempt to relieve con-
ditions insupportable in themselves. I have praised the
unity of the profession of this continent, in so many re-
spects remarkable, and yet in another respect it is the most
heterogeneous ever known. Democracy in full circle
touches tyranny, and as Milton remarks, the greatest
proclaimers of liberty may become its greatest engrossers
(or enslavers). The tyranny of labour unions, of trusts,
and of an irresponsible press may bear as heavily on the
people as autocracy in its worst form. And, strange
irony of fate! the democracy of Provincial and State
Boards has imposed in a few years a yoke more grievous
than that which afflicts our brethren in Great Britain,
which took generations to forge. .

The delightful freedom of intercourse of which I spoke,
while wide and generous, is limited to intellectual and
social life, and on the practical side, not only are genial
and courteous facilities lacking, but the bars of a rigid
provincialism are put up, fencing each State as with a

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Chinese wall. In the Dominion of Canada there are eig?
portals of entry to the profession, in the United States
almost as many as there are States, in the United King-
dom nineteen, I believe, but in the latter the license of any
one of these bodies entitled a man to registration any-
where in the kingdom. Democracy in full circle has
reached on this hemisphere a much worse condition than
that in which the conservatism of many generations has
entangled the profession of Great Britain. Upon the
origin and growth of the Provincial and State Boards I
do not propose to touch. The ideal has been reached so
far as organization is concerned, when the profession
elects its own Parliament, to which is committed the con-
trol of all matters relating to the license. The recognition,
in some form, of this democratic principle, has been one
great means of elevating the standard of medical edu-
cation, and in a majority of the States of the Union it has
secured a minimum period of four years of study, and a
State Examination for License to Practice. All this is as it
should be. But it is high time that the profession real-
ized the anomaly of eight boards in the Dominion and
some scores in the United States. One can condone the
iniquity in the latter country more readily than in Canada,
in which the boards have existed for a longer period, and
where there has been a greater uniformity in the medical
curriculum. After all these years that a young man, a
graduate of Toronto and a registered practitioner in
Ontario, cannot practise in the Province of Quebec, his
own country, without submitting to vexatious penalties
of mind and pocket, or that a graduate from Montreal and
a registered practitioner of this province cannot go to

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Manitoba, his own country again, and take up liis life's
work without additional payments and penalties, is, I
maintain, an outrage ; it is provincialism run riot. That
this pestiferous condition should exist throughout the
various provinces of this Dominion and so many States
of the Union, illustrates what I have said of the tyranny
of democracy and how great enslavers of liberty its
chief proclaimers may be.

That the cure of this vicious state has to be sought in
Dominion bills and National examining boards, indicates
into what debasing depths of narrow provincialism we have
sunk. The solution seems to be so simple, particularly
in this country, with its uniformity of methods of teaching
and length of curriculum. A generous spirit that will
give to local laws a liberal interpretation, that limits its
hostility to ignorance and viciousness, that has regard
as much or more for the good of the guild as a whole as for
the profession of any province — could such a spirit brood
over the waters, the raging waves of discord would soon
be stilled. With the attitude of mind of the general prac-
titioner in each province rests the solution of the problem.
Approach it in a friendly and gracious spirit and the diffi-
culties which seem so hard will melt away. Approach
it in a Chauvinistic mood, fully convinced that the superior
and unparalleled conditions of your province will be jeo-
pardized by reciprocity or by Federal legislation, and the
present antiquated and disgraceful system must await
for its removal the awakening of a younger and more in-
telligent generation.

It would ill become me to pass from this subject-
familiar to me from my student days from the interest

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taken in it by that far-sighted and noble-minded man,
Dr. Palmer Howard — it would ill become me, I say, not
to pay a tribute of words to Dr. Roddick for the zeal and
persistence with which he has laboured to promote union
in the compound, comminuted fracture of the profession
of this Dominion. My feeling on the subject of inter-
national, intercolonial, and interprovincial registration
is this — a man who presents evidence of proper training,
who is a registered practitioner in his own country and
who brings credentials of good standing at the time of
departure, should be welcomed as a brother, treated as
such in any country, and registered upon payment of the
usual fee. The ungenerous treatment of English physi-
cians in Switzerland, France, and Italy, and the chaotic
state of internecine warfare existing on this continent,
indicate how far a miserable Chauvinism can corrupt the
great and gracious ways which should characterize a
liberal profession.

Though not germane to the subject, may I be allowed
to refer to one other point in connexion with the State
Boards — a misunderstanding, I believe, of their func-
tions. The profession asks that the man applying for
admission to its ranks shall be of good character and fit
to practise the science and art of medicine. The latter
is easily ascertained if practical men have the place and
the equipment for practical examinations. Many of the
boards have not kept pace with the times, and the ques-
tions set too often show a lack of appreciation of modern
methods. This has, perhaps, been unavoidable since,
in the appointment of examiners, it has not always been
possible to select experts. The truth is, that however

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well organized and equipped, the State Boards cannot
examine properly in the scientific branches, nor is there
need to burden the students with additional examinations
in anatomy, physiology and chemistry. The Provincial
and State Boards have done a great work for medical
education on this continent, which they would crown
and extend by doing away at once with all theoretical
examinations and limiting the tests for the license to a
rigid practical examination in medicine, surgery, and
midwifery, in which all minor subjects could be included.

IV. PAROCHIALISM IN MEDICINE

Of the parochial and more personal aspects of Chau-
vinism I hesitate to speak ; all of us, unwittingly as a rule,
illustrate its varieties. The conditions of life which round
us and bound us, whether in town or country, in college
or institution, give to the most liberal a smack of parochial-
ism, just as surely as we catch the tic of tongue of the land
in which we live. The dictum put into the mouth of
Ulysses, " I am a part of all that I have met ," expresses the
truth of the influence upon us of the social environment,
but it is not the whole truth, since the size of the parish,
representing the number of points of contact, is of less
moment than the mental fibre of the man. Who has
not known lives of the greatest freshness and nobility
hampered at every turn and bound in chains the most
commonplace and sordid, lives which illustrate the liberty
and freedom enjoyed by minds innocent and quiet, in
spite of stone walls and iron bars. On the other hand,
scan the history of progress in the profession, and men
the most illiberal and narrow, reeking of the most perni-

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cious type of Chauvinism, have been among the teachers
and practitioners in the large cities and great medical
centres ; so true is it, that the mind is its own place and in
itself can make a man independent of his environment.

There are shades and varieties which are by no means
offensive. Many excellent features in a man's character
may partake of its nature. What, for example, is more
proper than the pride which we feel in our teachers, in the
university from which we have graduated, in the hospital
at which we have been trained ? He is a " poor sort "
who is free from such feelings, which only manifest a
proper loyalty. But it easily degenerates into a base
intolerance which looks with digdain on men of other
schools and other ways. The pride, too, may be in in-
verse proportion to the justness of the claims. There is
plenty of room for honest and friendly rivalry between
schools and hospitals, only a blind Chauvinism .puts a
man into a hostile and intolerant attitude of mind at the
mention of a name. Alumni and friends should remember
that indiscriminate praise of institutions or men is apt
to rouse the frame of mind illustrated by the ignorant
Athenian who, so weary of hearing Aristides always called
the Just, very gladly took up the oyster shell for his os-
tracism, and even asked Aristides himself, whom he did
not know, to mark it.

A common type of collegiate Chauvinism is manifest
in the narrow spirit too often displayed in filling appoint-
ments. The professoriate of the profession, the most
mobile column of its great army, should be recruited with
the most zealous regard to fitness, irrespective of local
conditions that are apt to influence the selection. In-

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breeding is as hurtful to colleges as to cattle. The inter-
change of men, particularly of young men, is most stim-
ulating, and the complete emancipation of the chairs which
has taken place in most of our universities should extend
to the medical schools. Nothing, perhaps, has done more
to place German medicine in the forefront to-day than a
peripatetic professoriate, owing allegiance only to the
profession at large, regardless of civic, sometimes, indeed,
of national limitations and restrictions. We acknowledge
the principle in the case of the scientific chairs, and with
increasing frequency act upon it, but an attempt to ex-
pand it to other chairs may be the signal for the display
of rank parochialism.

Another unpleasant manifestation of collegiate Chau-
vinism is the outcome, perhaps, of the very keen com-
petition which at present exists in scientific circles. In-
stead of a generous appreciation of the work done in other
places, there is a settled hostility and a narrowness of
judgment but little in keeping with the true spirit of
science. Worse still is the " lock and key " laboratory in
which suspicion and distrust reign, and everyone is jealous
and fearful lest the other should know of or find out about
his work. Thank God ! this base and bastard spirit is
not much seen, but it is about, and I would earnestly
entreat any young man who unwittingly finds himself in a
laboratory pervaded with this atmosphere, to get out ere
the contagion sinks into his soul.

Chauvinism in the unit, in the general practitioner, is of
much more interest and importance. It is amusing to
read and hear of the passing of the family physician.
There never was a time in our history in which he was so

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much in evidence, in which he was so prosperous, in which
his prospects were so good or his power in the community
so potent. The public has even begun to get sentimental
over him ! He still does the work ; the consultants and
the specialists do the talking and the writing ; and take
the fees ! By the work, I mean that great mass of routine
practice which brings the doctor into every household
in the land and makes him, not alone the adviser, but the
valued friend. He is the standard by which we are mea-
sured. What he is, we are ; and the estimate of the pro-
fession in the eyes of the public is their estimate of him.
A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable
assets of a community, worth to-day, as in Homer's time,
many another man. To make him efficient is our highest
ambition as teachers, to save him from evil should be our
constant care as a guild. I can only refer here to certain
aspects in which he is apt to show a narrow Chauvinism
hurtful to himself and to us.

In no single relation of life does the general practitioner
show a more illiberal spirit than in the treatment of him-
self. I do not refer so much to careless habits of living,
to lack of routine in work, or to failure to pay due atten-
tion to the business side of the profession — sins which so
easily beset him — but I would speak of his failure to realize
first, the need of a lifelong progressive personal training,
and secondly, the danger lest in the stress of practice he
sacrifice that most precious of all possessions, his mental
independence. Medicine is a most difficult art to ac-
quire. All the college can do is to teach the student
principles, based on facts in science, and give him good
methods of work. These simply start him in the right direc-

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tion, they do not make him a good practitioner — that is his
own affair. To master the art requires sustained effort,
like the bird's flight which depends on the incessant action
of the wings, but this sustained effort is so hard that many
give up the struggle in despair. And yet it is only by
persistent intelligent study of disease upon a methodical
plan of examination that a man gradually learns to corre-
late his daily lessons with the facts of his previous experi-
ence and of that of his fellows, and so acquires clinical
wisdom. Nowadays it is really not a hard matter for a
well-trained man to keep abreast of the best work of the
day. He need not be very scientific so long as he has a
true appreciation of the dependence of his art on science,
for, in a way, it is true that a good doctor may have prac-
tice and no theory, art and no science. To keep up a
familiarity with the use of instruments of precision is an
all -important help in his art, and I am profoundly con-
vinced that as much space should be given to the clinical
laboratory as to the dispensary. One great difficulty is
that while waiting for the years to bring the inevitable
yoke, a young fellow gets stale and loses that practised
familiarity with technique which gives confidence. I
wish the older practitioners would remember how im-
portant it is to encourage and utilize the young men who
settle near them. In every large practice there are a
dozen or more cases requiring skilled aid in the diagnosis,
and this the general practitioner can. have at hand. It is
his duty to avail himself of it, and failing to do so he acts
in a most illiberal and unjust way to himself and to the
profession at large. Not only may the older man, if he
has soft arteries in his grey cortex, pick up many points

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from the young fellow, but there is much clinical wisdom
afloat in each parish which is now wasted or dies with the
old doctor, because he and the young men have never
been on friendly terms.

In the fight which we have to wage incessantly against
ignorance and quackery among the masses and follies of all
sorts among the classes, diagnosis, not drugging, is our
chief weapon of offence. Lack of systematic personal
training in the methods of the recognition of disease leads
to the misapplication of remedies, to long courses of treat-
ment when treatment is useless, and so directly to that lack
of confidence in our methods which is apt to place us in the
eyes of the public on a level with empirics and quacks.

Few men live lives of more devoted self-sacrifice than
the family physician, but he may become so completely
absorbed in work that leisure is unknown ; he has scarce
time to eat or to sleep, and, as Dr. Drummond remarks
in one of his poems, " He's the only man, I know me, don't
get no holiday." There is danger in this treadmill life
lest he lose more than health and time and rest — his in-
tellectual independence. More than most men he feels
the tragedy of isolation — that inner isolation so well ex-
pressed in Matthew Arnold's line " We mortal millions
live alone." Even in populous districts the practice of
medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way
and a man may easily go astray and never reach the De-
lectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd
guides of whom Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience,
Watchful, and Sincere. The circumstances of life mould
him into a masterful, self-confident, self-centered man,
whose worst faults often partake of his best qualities. The

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peril is that should he cease to think for himself he becomes
a mere automaton, doing a penny-in-the-slot business
which places him on a level with the chemist's clerk who
can hand out specifics for every ill, from the " pip " to the
pox. The salt of life for him is a judicious scepticism,
not the coarse, crude form, but the sober sense of honest
doubt expressed in the maxim of the sly old Sicilian Epi-
charmus, " Be sober and distrustful ; these are the sinews
of the understanding." A great advantage, too, of a
sceptical attitude of mind is, as Green the historian re-
marks, " One is never very surprised or angry to find that
one's opponents are in the right." It may keep him
from self-deception and from falling into that medical
slumber into which so many drop, deep as the theological
slumber so lashed by Erasmus, in which a man may write
letters, debauch himself, get drunk, and even make money
—a slumber so deep at times that no torpedo-touch can
waken him.

It may keep the practitioner out of the clutches of the
arch enemy of his professional independence — the perni-
cious literature of our camp-followers, a literature in-
creasing in bulk, in meretricious attractiveness, and in
impudent audacity. To modern pharmacy we owe much,
and to pharmaceutical methods we shall owe much more
in the future, but the profession has no more insidious
foe than the large borderland pharmaceutical houses. No
longer an honoured messmate, pharmacy in this form
threatens to become a huge parasite, eating the vitals of
the body medical. We all know only too well the bastard
literature which floods the mail, every page of which illus-
trates the truth of the axiom, the greater the ignorance

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the greater the dogmatism. Much of it is advertisements
of nostrums foisted on the profession by men who trade
on the innocent credulity of the regular physician, quite
as much as any quack preys on the gullible public. Even
the most respectable houses are not free from this sin of
arrogance and of ignorant dogmatism in their literature.
A still more dangerous enemy to the mental virility of the
general practitioner, is the " drummer " of the drug house.
While many of them are good, sensible fellows, there are
others, voluble as Cassio, impudent as Autolycus, and sense-
less as Caliban, who will tell you glibly of the virtues of
extract of the coccygeal gland in promoting pineal meta-
bolism, and are ready to express the most emphatic opin-
ions on questions about which the greatest masters of our
art are doubtful. No class of men with which we have
to deal illustrates more fully that greatest of ignorance —
the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what
he does not know ; but the enthralment of the practitioner
by the manufacturing chemist and the revival of a pseudo-
scientific polypharmacy are too large questions to be dealt
with at the end of an address.

But there is a still greater sacrifice which many of us
make, heedlessly and thoughtlessly forgetting that " Man
does not live by bread alone. One cannot practise medi-
cine alone and practise it early and late, as so many of us
have to do, and hope to escape the malign influences of
a routine life. The incessant concentration of thought
upon one subject, however interesting, tethers a man's
mind in a narrow field. The practitioner needs culture
as well as learning. The earliest picture we have in lite-
rature of a scientific physician, in our sense of the term,

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is as a cultured Greek gentleman ; and I care not whether
the young man labours among the beautiful homes on
Sherbrooke Street, or in the slums of Caughnawauga, or
in some sparsely settled country district, he cannot afford
to have learning only. In no profession does culture count
for so much as in medicine, and no man needs it more than
the general practitioner, working among all sorts and
conditions of men, many of whom are influenced quite
as much by his general ability, which they can appreciate,
as by his learning of which they have no measure. The
day has passed for the " practiser of physic " to be like
Mr. Robert Levet, Dr. Johnson's friend, " Obscurely wise
and coarsely kind." The wider and freer a man's general
education the better practitioner is he likely to be, parti-
cularly among the higher classes to whom the reassurance
and sympathy of a cultivated gentleman of the type of
Eryximachus, may mean much more than pills and po-
tions. But what of the men of the type of Mr. Robert
Levet, or " Ole Docteur Fiset," whose virtues walk a
narrow round, the men who do the hard general practices
in the poorer districts of the large cities, in the factory
towns and in the widely scattered rough agricultural re-
gions— what, I hear you say, has culture to do with them ?
Everything ! It is the bichloride which may prevent the
infection and may keep a man sweet and whole amid the
most debasing surroundings. Of very little direct value
to him in his practice — though the poor have a pretty
keen appreciation of a gentleman — it may serve to pre-
vent the degeneration so apt to overtake the overworked
practitioner, whose nature is only too prone to be subdued
like the dyer's hand to what it works in. If a man does

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not sell his soul, if he does not part with his birthright of
independence for a mess of pottage to the Ishmaelites who
harass our borders with their clubs and oppress us with
their exactions, if he can only keep free, the conditions
of practice are nowhere incompatible with St. Paul's
noble Christian or Aristotle's true gentleman (Sir Thomas
Browne).

Whether a man will treat his professional brethren in a
gentlemanly way or in a narrow illiberal spirit is partly
a matter of temperament, partly a matter of training.
If we had only to deal with one another the difficulties
would be slight, but it must be confessed that the practice
of medicine among our fellow creatures is often a testy
and choleric business. When one has done his best or
when a mistake has arisen through lack of special know-
ledge, but more particularly when, as so often happens,
our heart's best sympathies have been engaged, to be mis-
understood by the patient and his friends, to have evil
motives imputed and to be maligned, is too much for
human endurance and justifies a righteous indignation.
Women, our greatest friends and our greatest enemies,
are the chief sinners, and while one will exhaust the re-
sources of the language in describing our mistakes and
weaknesses, another will laud her pet doctor so indiscrimin-
ately that all others come under a sort of oblique con-
demnation. " FceminaB sunt medicorum tubse " is an old
and true saying. It is hard to say whether as a whole
we do not suffer just as much from the indiscriminate
praise. But against this evil we are helpless. Far other-
wise, when we do not let the heard word die ; not to listen
is best, though that is not always possible, but silence

303

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is always possible, than which we have no better weapon
in our armoury against evil-speaking, lying, and slander-
ing. The bitterness is when the tale is believed and a
brother's good name is involved. Then begins the worst
form of ill-treatmjnt that the practitioner receives — and
at his own hands ! He allows the demon of resentment
to take possession of his soul, when five minutes' frank
conversation might have gained a brother. In a small
or a large community what more joyful than to see the
brethren dwelling together in unity. The bitterness, the
rancour, the personal hostility which many of us remember
in our younger days has been largely replaced by a better
feeling and while the golden rule is not always, as it
should be, our code of ethics, we have certainly become
more charitable the one towards the other.

To the senior man in our ranks we look for an example,
and in the smaller towns and country districts if he would
remember that it is his duty to receive and welcome the
young fellow who settles near him, that he should be willing
to act as his adviser and refuse to regard him as a rival,
he may make a good friend and perhaps gain a brother.
In speaking of professional harmony, it is hard to avoid
the trite and commonplace, but neglecting the stale old
chaps whose ways are set and addressing the young, to
whom sympathy and encouragement are so dear, and
whose way of life means so much to the profession we
love, upon them I would urge the practice of St. Augus-
tine, of whom it is told in the Golden Legend that " he had
these verses written at his table :

Quisquis amat dictis absentum rodere vitam,
Hanc mensam indignam noverit esse sibi :
304

CHAUVINISM IN MEDICINE

That is to say : Whosoever loves to missay any creature
that is absent, it may be said that this table is denied to
him at all."

With our History, Traditions, Achievements, and
Hopes, there is little room for Chauvinism in medicine.
The open mind, the free spirit of science, the ready accept-
ance of the best from any and every source, the attitude
of rational receptiveness rather than of antagonism to new
ideas, the liberal and friendly relationship between dif-
ferent nations and different sections of the same nation,
the brotherly feeling which should characterize members
of the oldest, most beneficent and universal guild that
the race has evolved in its upward progress — these should
neutralize the tendencies upon which I have so lightly
touched.

I began by speaking of the art of detachment .as that
rare and precious quality demanded of one who wished
to take a philosophical view of the profession as a whole.
In another way and in another sense this art may be still
more precious. There is possible to each one of us a higher
type of intellectual detachment, a sort of separation from
the vegetative life of the work-a-day world — always too
much with us — which may enable a man to gain a true
knowledge of himself and of his relations to his fellows.
Once attained, self-deception is impossible, and he may
see himself even as he is seen — not always as he would
like to be seen — and his own deeds and the deeds of others
stand out in their true light. In such an atmosphere pity
for himself is so commingled with sympathy and love
• for others that there is no place left for criticism or for a
harsh judgment of his brother. But as Sir Thomas Browne

AE. 305 x

CHAUVINISM IN MEDICINE

— most liberal of men and most distinguished of general
practitioners — so beautifully remarks : "These are Thoughts
of things which Thoughts but tenderly touch," and it
may be sufficient to remind this audience, made up of
practical men, that the word of action is stronger than the
word of speech.

306

XV

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN
MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

307

Without History a man's soul is purblind, seeing only the things
which almost touch his eyes.

FULLEB, Holy and Profane State, 1642.

~ Every physician will make, and ought to make, observations
from his own experience ; but he will be able to make a better
judgment and juster observations by comparing what he reads
and what he sees together. It is neither an affront to any man's
understanding, nor a cramp to his genius, to say that both the one
and the other may be usefully employed, and happily improved
in searching and examining into the opinions and methods of
those who lived before him, especially considering that no one
is tied up from judging for himself, or obliged to give into the
notions of any author, any further than he finds them agreeable
to reason, and reducible to practice. No one therefore need fear
that his natural sagacity, whatever it is, should be perplexed or
misled by reading. For there is as large and fruitful a field for
sagacity and good judgment to display themselves in, by dis-
tinguishing between one author and another, and sometimes be-
tween the several parts and passages in the same author, as is to
be found in the greatest extent and variety of practice. ... It
has not usually been looked upon as an extraordinary mark of
wisdom for a man to think himself too wise to be taught ; and
yet this seems to be the case of those who rely wholly upon their
own experience, and despise all teachers but themselves.

FEIEND, History of Physic, Volume I.

308

XV

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN
MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY'

IN conferring upon me the presidency of this Association,
I felt that you wished to pay a compliment to a man
who had been much helped by libraries and who knew
their value, and I hoped that it was, perhaps, in recogni-
tion of the fact that a practical and busy physician may
be at the same time a book lover, even a book worm.

You are familiar, of course, with the objects of this
Association, but as there are present with us also those
who are not members, this is an occasion in which a little
missionary work is timely, and I may briefly refer to some
of them. An association of the medical libraries of the
country, our membership includes both the great libraries,
with 50,000-100,000 volumes, and the small collections
just started of a few hundred books. The former gain
nothing directly from an affiliation with us — they give
more than they get, but the blessing that goes with this
attitude is not to be despised, and from their representa-
tives we look for guidance and advice. Please understand

1 Association of Medical Librarians, 1902.
309

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN

that in this address I am not talking to the men in charge
of them who are familiar with what I shall say, and who
are experts where I am only a dabbler ; but I wish to
catch the inexperienced, those in charge of the small but
growing libraries, upon whom I wish to impress some
wider aspects of the work. In the recent history of the
profession there is nothing more encouraging than the
increase in the number of medical libraries. The organi-
zation of a library means effort, it means union, it means
progress. It does good to men who start it, who help
with money, with time and with the gifts of books. It
does good to the young men, with whom our hopes rest,
and a library gradually and insensibly moulds the profession
of a town to a better and higher status.

We trust that this Association may be a medium through
which men interested in the promotion of the welfare of the
profession may do much good in a quiet way. We have
to thank some twenty physicians who have kindly joined
us in this work and whose subscriptions help to pay the
expenses of • our exchange ; but their names on our list
do more — it is an encouragement to know that they are
with us, and as they get nothing in return (except the
BULLETIN) they should know how much we appreciate
their fellowship. We have to thank, in particular, many
editors who send us their journals for distribution, and the
editors of many Transactions. The liberality with which
the work of our Exchange has been aided by the large
libraries is beyond all praise. Time and again the Library
of the Surgeon-General's Office, the Academy of Medicine
of New York, the Boston Medical Library Association,
and the College of Physicians' Library of Philadelphia have

310

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

filled long lists of wants for smaller libraries. The pro-
fession is deeply indebted to Drs. Merrill, Chadwick, and
Brigham, to Mr. Browne and to Mr. C. P. Fisher for their
disinterested labours. In some details our machinery
could be better adjusted, but we have had to work with
very little money, which means slight clerical help where
much is needed, but with an increasing membership we
can look forward confidently to a much more complete
organization and to a wider field of usefulness.

But this Association may have other ambitions and
hopes. We desire to foster among our members and in
the profession at large a proper love of books. For its own
sake and for the sake of what it brings, medical biblio-
graphy is worthy of a closer study than it has received
heretofore in this country. The subject presents three
aspects, the book itself, the book as a literary record,
i.e., its contents, and the book in relation to the author.
Strictly speaking, bibliography means the science of
everything relating to the book itself, and has nothing to
do with its contents. In the words of a recent writer, the
bibliographer " has to do with editions and their pecu-
liarities, with places, printers, and dates, with types and
illustrations, with sizes and collations, with bindings and
owners, with classifications, collections, and catalogues.
It is the book as a material object in the world that is
his care, not the instruction of which it may be, or may
fail to be, the vehicle. Bibliography is the science or the
art, or both, of book description."1

But there is a larger sense of the word, and I shall discuss

1 Professor Ferguson, Some Aspects of Bibliography, Edinburgh;
1900.

811

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN

some aspects of American medical bibliography in the three-
fold relationship to which I have referred.

II

The typographical considerations may be passed over
with a few words. We have no Aldus or Froben or
Stephanus or Elzevir, whose books are sought and prized
for themselves, irrespective of their contents. With few
exceptions the medical works published here at the end of
the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
turies were poor specimens of the printer's art. Compare
a Sydenham first edition of 1682 with Caldwell's Cullen,
issued in Philadelphia more than 100 years later, and the
comparison is in favour of the former ; and yet there is
mcch of bibliographical interest in early American publica-
tions. It would make an instructive exhibit to take a
series of surgical books issued in this country from Jones'
Manual in 1776 to Kelly's Operative Gynecology ; it would
illustrate the progress in the art of book making, and
while there would be nothing striking or original, such
volumes as Dorsetfs Elements of Surgery (1813), particularly
in the matter of illustrations, would show that there
were good book makers at that date. At one of the
meetings of the American Medical Association a selection
of the works issued during the 117 years of the existence
of the house of Lea Brothers would form an instructive
exhibition. There are few medical works in this country
the genealogy of which requires any long search. Other
than the " Code of Ethics " of the American Medical Associa-
tion and the " American Pharmacopeia," both of which,
by the way, have histories worth tracking, and the " Dis-

312

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

pensatory " of Wood and Bache, I know of no works
fifty years old which continue to be reprinted. Compared
with the text-books, etc., the journals of the early days
were more presentable, and the general appearance of such
publications as the Medical Repository, of New York, the
Medical Museum, of Philadelphia, and later the Medical
and Physical Journal, the North American Medical and
Surgical Journal and the Medical Recorder, not only
contrasts favourably with that of European journals of
the period, but one gets an impression of capable and
scholarly editorial control and a high grade of original
contribution. The Medical and Physical Journal, founded
in 1820, has a special interest and should be put on the
shelves just before the American Journal of the Medical
Sciences, into which it merged, one of the few great journals
of the world, and the one from which one can almost write
the progress of American medicine during the past century.
While there is not in American medicine much of pure
typographical interest, a compensation is offered in one
of the most stupendous bibliographical works ever under-
taken. The Index- Catalogue of the Library of the
Surgeon-General's Office atones for all shortcomings, as
in it is furnished to the world a universal medical biblio-
graphy from the earliest times. It will ever remain a
monument to the Army Medical Department, to the
enterprise, energy and care of Dr. Billings, and to the
scholarship of his associate, Dr. Robert Fletcher. Ambi-
tious men before Dr. Billings had dreamt of a comprehen-
sive medical bibliography. Conrad Gesner, the learned
Swiss naturalist and physician, published his Bibliotheca
Universalis as early as 1545 and followed it in 1548-9

313

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by a supplement entitled Pandectarum sive Partitionum
universalium Conradi Gesneri, libri xxi. Book xx, which
was to represent the quintessence of the labours of his life
and which was to include the medical bibliography, never
appeared, owing to his untimely yet happy death — fdix
mors Gesneri, as Caius says, in the touching tribute to his
friend.1 Merklin, von Haller, Ploucquet, Haeser, Young,
Forbes, Atkinson and others have dipped into the vast
subject, but their efforts are Lilliputian beside the Gar-
gantuan undertaking of the Surgeon- General's Office.
One work I cannot pass without a regret and a reference —
the unfinished medical bibliography of James Atkinson,
London, 1834. If not on your shelves, keep your eyes
on the London catalogues for it. It only includes the
letters A and B, but it is a unique work by a Thelemite,
a true disciple of Rabelais. I need not refer in this audi-
ence to the use of the Index-Catalogue in library work ;
it is also of incalculable value to any one interested in books.
Let me give an everyday illustration. From the library
of my friend, the late Dr. Rush Huidekoper, was sent
to me a set of very choice old tomes, among which, was a
handsome folio of the works of du Laurens, a sixteenth
century anatomist and physician. I had never heard of
him, but was very much interested in some of his medical
dissertations. In a few moments from the Index-Catalogue
the whole bibliography of the man was before me, the
dates of his birth and death, the source of his biography,
and where to look for his portrait. It is impossible to
overestimate the boon which this work is to book lovers.

1 Caii Opera, Jebb's edition.
314

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

One other point— the Index is not used enough by students.
Take under the subject of diseases of the heart. Only the
other day I referred to a journal article which had a very
full bibliography, and I turned to Volume V in the old
series, and to the just issued Volume VI of the new series,
and there was the literature in full on this subject and in
it many articles' which the author had overlooked. The
entire bibliography might have been omitted with advantage
from the paper and simply a reference made to the Index-
Catalogue. It would be well in future if writers would
bear in mind that on many subjects, particularly those
covered by the second series of the Catalogue, the biblio-
graphy is very complete, and only supplementary refer-
ences should be made to the articles which have appeared
since the volume of the new series dealing with the subject
was printed.

Ill

The second aspect of a book relates to its contents, which
may have an enduring value or which may be of interest
only as illustrating a phase in the progress of knowledge,
or the importance may relate to the conditions under which
the book appeared.

It is sad to think how useless are a majority of the works
on our shelves — the old cyclopedias and dictionaries, the
files of defunct journals, the endless editions of text-books
as dead as the authors. Only a few epoch-making works
survive. Editions of the Hippooratic writings appear from
time to time, and in the revival of the study of the history
of medicine the writings of such masters as Galen and
Aretaeus reappear, but the interest is scholastic, and amid

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the multiplicity of studies how can we ask the student
to make himself familiar with the ancients? We can,
however, approach the consideration of most subjects
from an historical standpoint, and the young doctor who
thinks that pathology began with Virchow gets about
the same erroneous notion as the student who begins the
study of American history with the Declaration of Inde-
pendence.

Now among the colossal mass of rubbish on the shelves
there are precious gems which should be polished and
well set and in every library put out on view. But let
me first mollify the harshness of the expression just used.
The other day, thinking in this way, I took from a shelf
of old books the first one I touched. It was Currie's
Historical Accou7it of the Climates and Diseases of the
United States of America, published in Philadelphia in
1792. I had possessed it for years, but had never before
looked into it. I found the first comprehensive study on
climatology and epidemiology made in this country, one
which antedates by several years Noah Webster's work on
epidemics. With remarkable industry Dr. Currie collected
from correspondents in all parts of the country informa-
tion about the prevalent diseases, and I know of no other
work from which we can get a first-hand sketch from the
practitioners themselves of the maladies prevalent in the
different States. Then I had to look up his possible
relationship with James Currie, of Liverpool, the strong
advocate of hydrotherapy, the friend and editor of Burns,
who had had, I remember, interesting affiliations with
Virginia. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War
he was employed as a clerk at one of the landings on

316

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

the James River, and suffered not a little for the Tory
cause. His letters, given in his Life, which are well worth
reading, give a valuable picture of the period. The
American Currie's book at least was not rubbish in 1792,
but who will read it now ? And yet it is on our shelves
for a purpose. It may not be called for once in five years ;
it did a good work in its day, and the author lived a life
of unselfish devotion to the profession. As a maker of
much which in a few years will be rubbish of this kind, let
me take back the harsh expression.

But I wish to refer particularly to certain treasures in
American bibliography which you should all have on your
shelves. Of course the great libraries have most of them,
and yet not all have all of them, but with a little effort
they can be picked up. Take that notable Discourse
upon the Institution of Medical Schools in America, by
John Morgan, M.D., 1765. From it dates the organiza-
tion of medical colleges in this country, but there is
much more in this scholarly address. The introduction
contains a picture of the state of practice in Philadelphia
which is in its way unique, and for the first time in the
history of the profession in this country Morgan tried
to introduce what he calls the regular mode of practising
physic, as apart from the work of the surgeon and apothe-
cary. What interests us, too, is his plea for the estab-
lishment of a medical library. Listen to his appeal :
" Perhaps the physicians of Philadelphia, touched with
generous sentiments of regard for the rising generation
and the manifest advantages accruing to the College
thereby, would spare some useful books or contribute
somewhat as a foundation on which we might begin." The

817

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN

biographical fragments in the introduction show the
remarkable care with which some of the young colonial
physicians sought the best available education. Few
to-day, after a protracted apprenticeship, do as did Morgai
spend five years in Europe under the most celebrated
masters, but he returned a distinguished Fellow of the
Royal Society of London, and a Correspondent of the
Royal Academy of Surgery in Paris.

John Jones's Plain, Practical, Concise, Remarks on
the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures, Designed for the
Use of Young Military and Naval Surgeons in North
America, 1776, was the vade meoum of the young surgeons
tin the Revolutionary War. As the first separate surgical
treatise published in this country it has a distinct biblio-
graphical value, and, when, possible, you should put the
three editions together.

Samuel Bard's study on Angina Suffocativa (1771), or
diphtheria, as it would be now termed, is an American
classic of the first rank. It is difficult to get, but it is
worth looking for. Get, too, his work on Midwifery, 1807,
the first published in this country. An enterprising
librarian will have all the editions of such a work.

Thomas Bond's Lecture Introductory to the Study of
Clinical Medicine at the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1766,
remained in manuscript until printed in Vol. IV of the
North American Medical Journal, 1827, a copy of which
is not difficult to obtain. It is also republished in Morton's
History of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and I republished it
in the University Medical Magazine in 1897.

The works of Rush should be fully represented even in
the smaller libraries. His collected writings passed

318

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

through five editions and are easy to get. Rush " is the
father not only of American medicine, but of American
medical literature, the type of a great man, many-sided,
far-seeing, full of intellect, and genius ; abused and vili-
fied, as man hardly ever was before, by his contemporaries,
professional and non-professional ; misunderstood by
his immediate successors, and unappreciated by the
present generation, few of whom know anything of his
real character." I gladly quote this estimate of Rush
by S. D. Gross. Owing to the impression that he was
disloyal to Washington, there has arisen of late a certain
feeling of antagonism to his name. The truth is he was a
strong hater, and, as was common at that period, a bitter
partisan. I wish some one would give us the account from
contemporary letters, and from the side of Rush. There is
an astonishing amount of bibliographical interest in the
writings of Rush, and a good story awaits the leisure
hours of some capable young physician. His letters are
innumerable and scattered in many libraries. I came
across one the other day (Bulletin of the New York Library,
vol. I, No. 8), dated July 27, 1803, in which, replying to
an invitation from Horatio Gates, he says pathetically,

A large and expensive family chain me to the pestle and
mortar," and in a postscript he adds that as he now con-
fines his labours to his patients, without trying to combat
ignorance and error, he is kindly tolerated by his fellow-
citizens.

Many early works of great importance are difficult
to find, such as Elisha North on Spotted Typhus or cere-
brospinal fever, 1811. Noah Webster's History of Epi-
demics has a special value, apart from its interest as the

319

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most important medical work written in this country by
a layman.

The tracts on vaccination by Waterhouse — the American
Jenner— should be sought for carefully. Try to have a
copy of Nathan Smith's A Practical Essay on Typhous
Fever (1824) to hand to any young physician who asks
for something good and fresh on typhoid fever. There
is a long list of important essays which you should have.
I cannot begin to name them all, but I may mention,
as an example, Jacob Bigelow on Self-limited Diseases,
1835, which is a tract every senior student should read,
mark, learn and inwardly digest. If not obtainable, his
Nature in Disease, 1859, contains it and many other
essays of value. James Jackson's Letters to a Young
Physician, 1856, are still worth reading — and worth re-
publishing.

The stories of the great epidemics offer material for care-
ful bibliographical research. Matthew Carey's graphic
description of the great epidemic of yellow fever in Phila-
delphia, while not so lifelike and brilliant as De Foe's
great story of the plague in London, has the advantage
of the tale of an eye-witness and of a brave man, one of
the small band who rose above the panic of those awful
days. It is a classic of the first rank. The little book,
by the way, had a remarkable sale. The first edition is
dated November 13, 1793, the second, November 23, the
third, November 30, and the fourth, January 16, 1794.
Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn, while it gives in places
a vivid description of this epidemic, is, in comparison,
disappointing and lame, not worthy to be placed on the
same shelf with Carey's remarkable account.

320

MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Even the smaller libraries should have the works of this
type. They are not hard to get, if looked for in the right
way. Early American works on special subjects should
be sought for. The collection of works exhibited in the
section on ophthalmology at the meeting of the American
Medical Association shows in the most instructive manner
the early publications on the subject in this country.

IV

The third aspect of medical bibliography relates to
writings which have a value to us from our interest in
the author. After all, the true bibliophile cares not so
much for the book as for the man whose life and mind
are illustrated in it. There are men of noble life and high
character, every scrap of whose writings should be precious
to us, and such men are not rare. The works are not
always of any special value to-day, or even of any intrinsic
interest, but they appeal to us through the sympathy
and even the affection, stirred in us by the story of the
man's life. It is, I know, a not uncommon feeling —
a feeling which pervades No. XXXII of Shakespeare's
Sonnets and is so beautifully expressed in the concluding
line, " Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."
Such an attitude I feel personally toward the literary
remains of John Morgan, David Ramsay, Daniel Drake,
John D. Godman, James Jackson, junr., Elisha Bartlett
and others,

In our libraries under John Morgan, to whose remark-
able essay I have already referred, there should be also
his Vindication, which gives the story of the Army Medical
Department in the early days of the Revolution. One

AB. 321 T

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of the most famous names in American medicine is David
Ramsay, perhaps the most distinguished pupil of Ben-
jamin Rush, a man of high character, full of zeal and
ambition and devoted to his profession, yet what he has
left in general literature far excels in importance his
medical writings. The larger libraries should have his
famous History of the American Revolution, 1789, his
Life of Washington, and the History of South Carolina,
1809. The memory of such a man should be cherished
among us, and one way — and the best — is to put a com-
plete set of his writings on our shelves.

Another noble soul of the same stamp was John D.
Godman, the tragedy of whose life and early death has a
pathos unequalled in the annals of the profession of America.
Besides his anatomical works, his Museum of American
Natural History and The Rambles of a Naturalist should
be among your treasured Americana.

There is a large literature in this group illustrating the
excursions of medical men into pure literature. A com-
plete set of the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes should
be in every medical library. His Boylston prize essays
on Neuralgia, on Malarial Fever, and on Direct Explora-
tions can be had bound in one volume. One of his writings
is inestimable, and will be remembered in the profession
as long, I believe, as posterity will cherish his Chambered
Nautilus or the Last Leaf. If you can find the original
pamphlet on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, a
reprint from the New England Journal of Medicine and
Surgery, 1843, have it bound in crushed levant— 'tis
worthy of it. The reprint of 1855 is more accessible.
Failing either of these, get the journal and cut out and

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bind the article. Semmelweiss, who gets the credit for
introducing asepsis in midwifery, came some years later.
Occasionally, a well-known medical writer will dabble in
pure literature, and will sometimes, as in the case of Dr.
Wier Mitchell, attain a success as remarkable as that
which he has had in his profession. Put his writings on
the shelves — they illustrate his breadth and his strength.
A volume of poems may illustrate some strong man's
foible. George B. Wood's epic poem, " First and Last,"
and the " Eolopoesis " of Jacob Bigelow illustrate the
dangers which beset physicians who write poetry.

Biography is a department which you will find a very
attractive and a most profitable field to cultivate for your
readers. The foreign literature includes several compen-
hensive encyclopedias, but it is not a department very
well represented in this country. It is true that an enor-
mous literature exists, chiefly in periodicals, but the sort
of biography to which I refer has a threefold distinction.
The subject is a worthy one, he is dead, and the writer
has the necessary qualifications for the task. We possess
three notable works on American medical biography :
James Thacher, 1828 ; Stephen W. Williams, 1845, and
Samuel D. Gross, 1861, which remain to-day the chief
works of reference to the latter date. Thacher's is a
remarkable production and for the period a most ambitious
work. It has been a common tap to which writers have
gone for information on the history of medicine in this
country, and the lives of the prominent physicians to
about 1825. It is a rare volume now, but worth its price,
and I know of no more fascinating book, or one more
difficult to put down. Even the printed list of subscribers

328

SOME ASPECTS OF AMERICAN

—a long one, too— is most interesting. Many of Thacher's
best known books come in the third category, and are of
value in a medical library only so far as they illustrate
the remarkable versatility of the man. His Practice,
the first American one, you will, of course, try to get,
and you should also have one of the editions of his Journal
of the Revolutionary War, through which he served with
pencil, as well as scalpel, in hand. It is a most graphic
account, and of interest to us here since he describes very
fully the campaign in this region, which led to the sur-
render of Burgoyne, the treachery of Arnold, and he was
an eye-witness of the tragic end of poor Major Andre.
You will not find it easy to get a complete set of his writings.
There are many single volumes for which you will be on
the look out. CaldwelTs Autobiography is a storehouse of
facts (and fancies !) relating to the University of Pennsyl-
vania, to Rush and to the early days of the Transylvania
University and the Cincinnati schools. Pickled, as it is,
in vinegar, the work is sure to survive.

Have carefully rebound James Jackson's memoir of his

son (1835), and put it in the way of the young men among

your readers. Few biographies will do them more good.

For the curious pick up the literature on the Chapman-

Pattison quarrel, and anything, in fact, relating to that

vivacious and pugnacious Scot, Granville Sharpe Pattison.

There are a few full-blown medical biographies of special

interest to us : The life and writings of that remarkable

philosopher and physician, Wells, of Charleston. The

life of John C. Warren (186Q) is full of interest, and in the

Essays of David Hossack you will get the inner history of

the profession in New York during the early years of the

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MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

last century. In many ways Daniel Drake is the most
unique figure in the history of American medicine. Get
his Life, by Mansfield, and his Pioneer Life in Kentucky.
He literally made Cincinnati, having " boomed " it in the
early days in his celebrated Picture of Cincinnati, 1815.
He founded nearly everything that is old and good in
that city. His monumental work on The Diseases of the
Mississippi Valley is in every library ; pick out from the
catalogues every scrap of his writings.

I must bring these " splintery," rambling remarks to a
close, but I hope that I may have stirred in you an interest
in some of the wider aspects of American medical bioblio-
graphy— I mean aspects other than the daily demand upon
you for new books, new editions and new journals.

Keep ever in view, each one in this circle, the important
fact that a library should be a storehouse of everything
relating to his history of the profession of the locality.
Refuse nothing, especially if it is old ; letters, manuscripts
of all kinds, pictures, everything illustrating the growth
as well as the past condition, should be preserved and
tabulated. There is usually in each community a man
who is fond of work of this sort. Encourage him in
every possible way. Think of the legacy left by Dr.
Toner, of Washington, rich in materials for the history
of the profession during the Revolutionary War ! There
should be a local pride in collecting the writings and
manuscripts of the men who have made a school or a
city famous. It is astonishing how much manuscript
material is stowed away in old chests and desks. Take,
for example, the recent " find " of Dr. Cordell of the letters
of the younger Wiesenthal, of Baltimore, describing student
life in London about the middle of the eighteenth century.

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AMERICAN MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Think of the precious letters of that noble old man, Nathan
Smith, full of details about the foundations of the Dart-
mouth and the Yale Schools of Medicine ! Valuable now
(too valuable to be in private hands), what will they be
100 or 200 years hence !

What should attract us all is a study of the growth
of the American mind in medicine since the starting of the
colonies. As in a mirror this story is reflected in the
literature of which you are the guardians and collectors—
in letters, in manuscripts, in pamphlets, in books, and in
journals. In the eight generations which have passed,
the men who have striven and struggled — men whose lives
are best described in the words of St. Paul, in journeyings
often, in perils of water, in perils in the city, in perils in
the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in weariness and pain-
fulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, and in
fastings — these men, of some of whom I have told you
somewhat, have made us what we are. With the irre-
vocable past into which they have gone lies our future, since
our condition is the resultant of forces which, in these
generations, have moulded the profession of a new and
mighty empire. From the vantage ground of a young
century we can trace in the literature how three great
streams of influence — English, French and German —
have blended into the broad current of American medicine
on which we are afloat. Adaptiveness, lucidity and
thoroughness may be said to be the characteristics of
these Anglican, Gallic and Teutonic influences, and it is no
small part of your duty to see that these influences, the
combination of which gives to medicine on this continent its
distinctively eclectic quality, are maintained and extended:

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THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

327

The Hospital Is the only proper College in which to rear a true
disciple of Aesculapius.

ABEBNETHY.

The most essential part of a student's instruction is obtained,
as I believe, not in the lecture room, but at the bedside. Nothing
seen there is lost ; the rhythms of disease are learned by frequent
repetition ; its unforeseen occurrences stamp themselves indelibly
on the memory. Before the student is aware of what he has
acquired he has learned the aspects and causes and probable issue
of the diseases he has seen with his teacher, and the proper mode
of dealing with them, so far as his master knows.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Introductory Lecture, 1867.

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XVI
THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE '

THE last quarter of the last century saw many remark-
able changes and reformations, among which in
far-reaching general importance not one is to be compared
with the reform, or rather revolution, in the teaching of
the science and art of medicine. Whether the conscience
of the professors at last awoke, and felt the pricking of
remorse, or whether the change, as is more likely, was only
part of that larger movement toward larger events in the
midst of which we are to-day, need not be here discussed.
The improvement has been in three directions : in demand-
ing of the student a better general education ; in lengthening
the period of professional study ; and in substituting
laboratories for lecture rooms — that is to say, in the replace-
ment of theoretical by practical teaching. The problem
before us as teachers may be very briefly stated : to give
to our students an education of such a character that
they can become sensible practitioners — the destiny of
seven-eighths of them. Toward this end are all our
endowments, our multiplying laboratories, our complicated
curricula, our palatial buildings. In the four j ears' course

1 Academy of Medicine, New York, 1903.
329

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

a division is very properly made between the preparatory
or scientific branches and the practical ; the former are
taught in the school or college, the latter in the hospital.
Not that there is any essential difference ; there may be as
much science taught in a course of surgery as in a course of
embryology. The special growth of the medical school in
the past 25 years has been in the direction of the practical
teaching of science. Everywhere the lectures have been
supplemented or replaced by prolonged practical courses,
and instead of a single laboratory devoted to anatomy,
there are now laboratories of physiology, of physiological
chemistry, of pathology, of pharmacology, and of hygiene.
Apart from the more attractive mode of presentation and
the more useful character of the knowledge obtained in
this way, the student learns to use the instruments of
precision, gets a mental training of incalculable value, and
perhaps catches some measure of the scientific spirit. The
main point is that he has no longer merely theoretical
knowledge acquired in a lecture room, but a first-hand
practical acquaintance with the things themselves. He not
only has dissected the sympathetic system, but he has set
up a kymograph and can take a blood pressure observation,
he has personally studied the action of digitalis, of chloro-
form and of ether, he has made his own culture media and
he has " plated " organisms. The young fellow who is
sent on to us in his third year is nowadays a fairly well-
trained man and in a position to begin his life's work in
those larger laboratories, private and public, which nature
fills with her mistakes and experiments.

How can we make the work of the student in the third
and fourth year as practical as it is in his first and second ?

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I take it for granted we all feel that it should be. The
answer is, take him from the lecture-room, take him from
the amphitheatre— put him in the out-patient department
—put him in the wards. It is not the systematic lecture,
not the amphitheatre clinic, not even the ward class — all
of which have their value — in which the reformation is
needed, but in the whole relationship of the senior student to
the hospital. During the first two years, he is thoroughly at
home in the laboratories, domiciled, we may say, with his
place in each one, to which he can go and work quietly under
a tutor's direction and guidance. To parallel this condition
in the third and fourth years certain reforms are necessary.
First, in the conception of how the art of medicine and
surgery can be taught. My firm conviction is that we should
start the third year student at once on his road of life.
Ask any physician of twenty years' standing how he has
become proficient in his art, and he will reply, by constant
contact with disease ; and he will add that the medicine he
learned in the schools was totally different from the
medicine he learned at the bedside. The graduate of a
quarter of a century ago went out with little practical
knowledge, which increased only as his practice increased.
In what may be called the natural method of teaching the
student begins with the patient, continues with the patient,
and ends his studies with the patient, using books and lec-
tures as tools, as means to an end. The student starts, in
fact, as a practitioner, as an observer of disordered machines,
with the structure and orderly functions of which he is
perfectly familiar. Teach him how to observe, give him
plenty of facts to observe, and the lessons will come out of
the facts themselves. For the junior student in medicine

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and surgery it is a safe rule to have no teaching
without a patient for a text, and the best teaching is that
taught by the patient himself. The whole art of medicine
is in observation, as the old motto goes, but to educate the
eye to see, the ear to hear and the finger to feel takes time,
and to make a beginning, to start a man on the right path, is
all that we can do. We expect too much of the student
and we try to teach him too much. Give him good methods
and a proper point of view, and all other things will be
added, as his experience grows.

The second, and what is the most important reform, is
in the hospital itself. In the interests of the medical
student, of the profession, and of the public at large we
must ask from the hospital authorities much greater facili-
ties than are at present enjoyed, at least by the students of a
majority of the medical schools of this country. The work of
the third and fourth year should be taken out of the medical
school entirely and transferred to the hospital, which, as
Abernethy remarks, is the proper college for the medical
student, in his last years at least. An extraordinary
difficulty here presents itself. While there are institutions
in which the students have all the privileges to be desired,
there are others in which they are admitted by side entrances
to the amphitheatre of the hospital, while from too many the
students are barred as hurtful to the best interests of the
patients. The work of an institution in which there is no
teaching is rarely first class. There is not that keen interest,
nor the thorough study of the cases, nor amid the exigencies
of the busy life is the hospital physician able to escape
clinical slovenliness unless he teaches and in turn is taught
by assistants and students. It is, I think, safe to say that

332

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

in a hospital with students in the wards the patients are
more carefully looked after, their diseases are more fully
studied and fewer mistakes made. The larger question, of
the extended usefulness of the hospital in promoting the
diffusion of medical and surgical knowledge, I cannot here
consider.

I envy for our medical students the advantages enjoyed
by the nurses, who live in daily contact with the sick, and
who have, in this country at least, supplanted the former
in the affections of the hospital trustees.

The objection often raised that patients do not like to
have students in the wards is entirely fanciful. In my
experience it is just the reverse. On this point I can claim
to speak with some authority, having served as a hospital
physician for more than 25 years, and having taught
chiefly in the wards. With the exercise of ordinary dis-
cretion, and if one is actuated by kindly feelings towards
the patients, there is rarely any difficulty. In the present
state of medicine it is very difficult to carry on the work
of a first-class hospital without the help of students. We
ask far too much of the resident physicians, whose number
has not increased in proportion to the enormous increase
in the amount of work thrust upon them, and much of the
routine work can be perfectly well done by senior students.

II

How, practically, can this be carried into effect ? Let
us take the third year students first. A class of 100 students
maybe divided into ten sections, each of which maybe called
a clinical unit, which should be in charge of one instructor.
Let us follow the course of such a unit through the

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THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 9 a.m. element-
ary instruction in physical diagnosis. From 10 to 12 a.m.
practical instruction in the out-patient department. This
may consist in part in seeing the cases in a routine way, in
receiving instruction how to take histories, and in becoming
familiar with the ordinary aspect of disease as seen in a
hiedical outclinic. At 12 o'clock a senior teacher could meet
four, or even five, of the units, dealing more systematically
with special cases. The entire morning, or, where it is
customary to have the hospital practice in the afternoon, a
large part of the afternoon, two or three hours at least,
should be spent in the out-patient department. No short six
weeks' course, but each clinical unit throughout the session
should as a routine see out-patient practice under skilled
direction. Very soon these students are able to take
histories, have learned how to examine the cases, and the
out-patient records gradually become of some value. Of
course all of this means abundance of clinical material,
proper space in the out-patient department for teaching,
sufficient apparatus and young men who are able and willing
to undertake the work.

On the alternate days, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Satur-
days, the clinical unit (which we are following) is in the
surgical out-patient department, seeing minor surgery,
learning how to bandage, to give ether, and helping in all
the interesting work of a surgical dispensary. Groups of
three or four units should be in charge of a demonstrator of
morbid anatomy, who would take them to postmortems,
the individual men doing the work, and one day in the week
all the units could attend the morbid anatomy demon-
stration of the professor of pathology. I take it for granted

334

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

that the student has got so far that he has finished his
pathological histology in his second year, which is the case
in the more advanced schools.

Other hours of the day for the third year could be de-
voted to the teaching of obstetrics, materia medica, thera-
peutics, hygiene and clinical microscopy. At the end of
the session in a well-conducted school the third-year
student is really a very well-informed fellow. He knows
the difference between Pott's disease and Pott's fracture ;
he can readily feel an enlarged spleen, and he knows the
difference between Charcot's crystals and Charcot's joint.

In the fourth year I would still maintain the clinical unit
of ten men, whose work would be transferred from the out-
patient department to the wards. Each man should be
allowed to serve in the medical, and, for as long a period as
possible, in the surgical wards. He should be assigned
four or five beds. He has had experience enough in his
third year to enable him to take the history of the new
cases, which would need, of course, supervision or correction
by the senior house officer or attending physician. Under
the supervision of the house physician he does all of the
work connected with his own patients ; analysis of the urine,
etc., and takes the daily record as dictated by the attending
physician. One or two of the clinical units are taken
round the wards three or four times in the week by one
of the teachers for a couple of hours, the cases commented
upon, the students asked questions and the groups made
familiar with the progress of the cases. In this way the
student gets a familiarity with disease, a practical know-
ledge of clinical methods and a practical knowledge of how
to treat disease. With equal advantage the same plan

335

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

can be followed in the surgical wards and in the obstetrical
and gynaecological departments.

An old method, it is the only method by which medicine
and surgery can be taught properly, as it is the identical
manner in which the physician is himself taught when he
gets into practice. The radical reform needed is in the
introduction into this country of the system of clinical
clerks and surgical dressers, who should be just as much a
part of the machinery of the wards as the nurses or the
house physicians.

There is no scarcity of material ; on the contrary, there
is abundance. Think of the plethora of patients in this
city, the large majority of whom are never seen, not to say
touched, by a medical student ! Think of the hundreds of
typhoid fever patients, the daily course of whose disease is
never watched or studied by our pupils ! Think how few
of the hundreds of cases of pneumonia which will enter
the hospitals during the next three months, will be seen
daily, hourly, in the wards by the fourth year men ! And
yet it is for this they are in the medical school, just as much
as, more indeed, than they are in it to learn the physiology
of the liver or the anatomy of the hip- joint.

But, you may ask, how does such a plan work in prac-
tice ? From a long experience I can answer, admirably !
It has been adopted in the Johns Hopkins Medical School,
of which the hospital, by the terms of the founder's will, is
an essential part. There is nothing special in our material,
our wards are not any better than those in other first-class
hospitals, but a distinctive feature is that greater provision
is made for teaching students and perhaps for the study
of disease. Let me tell you in a few words just how the

386

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

work is conducted. The third year students are taught
medicine :

First, in a systematic course of physical diagnosis con-
ducted by Drs. Thayer and Futcher, the Associate Professors
of Medicine, in the rooms adjacent to the out-patient
department. In the second half of the year, after receiving
instruction in history-taking, the students take notes and
examine out-patients.

Secondly, three days in the week at the conclusion of
the out-patient hours, the entire class meets the teacher in
an adjacent room, and the students are taught how to
examine and study patients. It is remarkable how many
interesting cases can be shown in the course of a year in this
way. Each student who takes a case is expected to report
upon and " keep track " of it, and is questioned with refer-
ence to its progress. The opportunity is taken to teach the
student how to look up questions in the literature by setting
subjects upon which to report in connexion with the cases
they have seen. A class of fifty can be dealt with very
conveniently in this manner.

Thirdly, the clinical microscopy class. The clinical
laboratory is part of the hospital equipment. It is in charge
of a senior assistant, who is one of the resident officers of
the hospital. There is room in it for about one hundred
students on two floors, each man having his own work-table
and locker and a place in which he can have his own speci-
mens and work at odd hours. The course is a systematic one,
given throughout the session, from two hours to two hours and
a half twice a week, and consists of routine instruction in the
methods of examining the blood and secretions, the gastric
contents, urine, etc. This can be made a most invaluable

AE, 337 z

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

course, enabling the student to continue the microscopic
work which he has had in his first and second years, and he
familiarizes himself with the use of a valuable instrument,
which becomes in this way a clinical tool and not a mere toy.
The clinical laboratory in the medical school, should be
connected with the hospital, of which it is an essential part.
Nowadays the microscopical, bacteriological and chemical
work of the wards demands skilled labour, and the house
physicians as well as the students need the help and super-
vision of experts in clinical chemistry and bacteriology,
who should form part of the resident staff of the institution.

Fourthly, the general medical clinic. One day in the
week, in the amphitheatre, a clinic is held for the third
and fourth year students and the more interesting cases in
the wards are brought before them. As far as possible we
present the diseases of the seasons, and in the autumn
special attention is given to malarial and typhoid fever,
and later in the winter to pneumonia. Committees are
appointed to report on every case of pneumonia and the
complications of typhoid fever. There are no systematic
lectures, but in the physical diagnosis classes there are set
recitations, and in what I call the observation class in the
dispensary held three times a week, general statements are
often made concerning the diseases under consideration.

Fourth Year Ward Work. — The class is divided into three
groups (one in medicine, one in surgery, and one in obstetrics
and gysenology) which serve as clinical clerks and surgical
dressers . In medicine each student has five or six beds. He
takes notes of the new cases as they come in, does the urine
and blood work and helps the house physician in the general
care of the patients. From nine to eleven the visit is made

338

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

with the clinical clerks, and systematic instruction is given.
The interesting cases are seen and new cases are studied,
and the students questioned with reference to the symptoms
and nature of the disease and the course of treatment.
What I wish to emphasize is that this method of teaching is
not a ward-class in which a group of students is taken into
the ward and a case or two demonstrated ; it is ward-work,
the students themselves taking their share in the work of
the hospital, just as much as the attending physician, the
interne, or the nurse. Moreover, it is not an occasional
thing. His work in medicine for the three months is his
major subject and the clinical clerks have from nine to
twelve for their ward- work, and an hour in the afternoon in
which some special questions are dealt with by the senior
assistant or by the house physicians.

The Recitation Class.— As there are no regular lectures,
to be certain that all of the subjects in medicine are brought
before the students in a systematic manner, a recitation
class is held once a week upon subjects set beforehand.

The Weekly Clinic in the amphitheatre, in which the
clinical clerks take leading parts, as they report upon
their cases and read the notes of their cases brought before
the class for consideration. Certain important aspects of
medicine are constantly kept before this class. Week after
week the condition of the typhoid fever cases is discussed,
the more interesting cases shown, the complications
systematically placed upon the board. A pneumonia com-
mittee deals with all the clinical features of this common
sease, and a list of the cases is kept on the blackboard,
and during a session the students have reports upon fifty
or sixty cases, a large majority of which are seen in the

339

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

clinic by all of them, while the clinical clerks have in the
wards an opportunity of studying them doily.

The general impression among the students and the junior
teachers is that the system has worked well. There are
faults, perhaps more than we see, but I am sure they are
not in the system. Many of the students are doubtless
not well informed theoretically on some subjects, as
personally I have always been opposed to that base and
most pernicious system of educating them with a view to
examinations, but even the dullest learn how to examine
patients, and get familiar with the changing aspects of the
important acute diseases. The pupil handles a sufficient
number of cases to get a certain measure of technical skill,
and there is ever kept before him the idea that he is not in
the hospital to learn everything that is known but to learn
how to study disease and how to treat it, or rather, how to
treat patients.

Ill

A third change is in reorganization of the medical school.
This has been accomplished in the first two years by an
extraordinary increase in the laboratory work, which has
necessitated an increase in the teaching force, and indeed an
entirely new conception of how such subjects as physiology,
pharmacology and pathology should be taught. A corres-
ponding reformation is needed in the third and fourth
years. Control of ample clinical facilities is as essential
to-day as large, well-endowed laboratories, and the absence
of this causes the clinical to lag behind the scientific edu-
cation. Speaking for the Department of Medicine, I should
say that three or four well-equipped medical clinics of fifty

340

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

to seventy-five beds each, with out-patient departments
under the control of the directors, are required for a school of
maximum size, say 800 students. Within the next quarter
of a century the larger universities of this country will
have their own hospitals in which the problems of nature
known as disease will be studied <*s thoroughly as are those
of geology or Sanscrit. But even with present conditions
much may be done. There are hundreds of earnest students,
thousands of patients, and scores of well-equipped young
men willing and anxious to do practical teaching. Too
often, as you know full well, " the hungry sheep look up
and are not fed ; " for the bread of the wards they are
given the stones of the lecture-room and amphitheatre. The
dissociation of student and patient is a legacy of the per-
nicious system of theoretical teaching from which we have
escaped in the first and second years.

For the third and fourth year students, the hospital
is the college ; for the juniors, the out-patient depart-
ment and the clinics ; for the seniors, the wards. They
should be in the hospital as part of its equipment, as an
essential part, without which the work cannot be of the best.
They should be in it as the place in which alone they can
learn the elements of their art and the lessons which will
be of service to them when in practice for themselves.
The hospital with students in its dispensaries and wards
doubles its usefulness in a community. The stimulus of
their presence neutralizes that clinical apathy certain,
sooner or later, to beset the man who makes lonely " rounds "
with his house-physician. Better work is done for the pro-
fession and for the public ; the practical education of young
men, who carry with them to all parts of the country good

341

THE HOSPITAL AS A COLLEGE

methods, extends enormously the work of an institution,
and the profession is recruited by men who have been
taught to think and to observe for themselves, and who
become independent practitioners of the new school of
scientific medicine — men whose faith in the possibilities
of their art has been strengthened, not weakened, by a
knowledge of its limitations. It is no new method which I
advocate, but the old method of Boerhaave, of the elder
Rutherford of the Edinburgh school, of the older men of
this city, and of Boston and of Philadelphia — the men
who had been pupils of John Hunter and of Rutherford
and of Saunders. It makes of the hospital a college in
which, as clinical clerks and surgical dressers, the students
slowly learn for themselves, under skilled direction, the
phenomena of disease. It is the true method, because it is
the natural one, the only one by which a physician grows
in clinical wisdom after he begins practice for himself — all
others are bastard substitutes.

842

XVII

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE
OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY.

343

Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. . . .
and let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good
works : not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the
manner of some is.

EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, Chapter x.

The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons
continue to improve in later years. They have not the will, and
do not know the way. They " never try an experiment " or look
up a point of interest for themselves ; they make no sacrifices for
the sake of knowledge ; their minds, like their bodies, at a certain
age become fixed. Genius has been defined as " the power of
taking pains " ; but hardly any one keeps up his interest in know-
ledge throughout a whole life. The troubles of a family, the
business of making money, the demands of a profession destroy
the elasticity of the mind. The waxen tablet of the memory,
which was once capable of receiving " true thoughts and clear
impressions," becomes hard and crowded ; there is no room for
the accumulations of a long life (Thecet, 194 ff.). The student,
as years advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than
adds to his stores.

JOWETT/S Introductions to Plato.

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XVII

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE
OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY1

AS the Autocrat remarks :
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year.

All the more reason to honour such occasions as the
present in an appropriate manner. The tribute of words
that I gladly bring — and that you may take as expressing
the sentiments of your brethren at large — necessarily
begins with congratulations that your society has passed
into the select group of those that have reached a century
of existence. But congratulations must be mingled with
praise of the band of noble men who, in 1803, made this
gathering possible. It is true they did but follow the lead
of their colleagues of Litchfield County and their own
example when, in 1784, the physicians of this county
organized what is now one of the oldest medical societies
in the land. In the introduction to the volume of Transac-
tions of this Society, published in 1788, the following brief
statements are made as to the objects of the organization,

1 Centennial celebration of the New Haven Medical Association
New Haven, January 6, 1903.

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

which may be transposed from the parent to the child,
and which I quote in illustration of the character of the
men and as giving in brief the chief uses of a medical
society : " This society was formed on the most liberal
and generous principles, and was designed, first, to lay a
foundation for that unanimity and friendship which is
essential to the dignity and usefulness of the profession ;
to accomplish which, they resolved, secondly, to meet
once in three months ; thirdly, that in all cases where counsel
is requisite they will assist each other without reserve ;
fourthly, that all reputable practitioners in the country,
who have been in the practice for one year or more, may
be admitted members ; fifthly, that they will communicate
their observations on the air, seasons and climate, with
such discoveries as they may make in physic, surgery,
botany or chemistry, and deliver faithful histories of the
various diseases incident to the inhabitants of this country,
with the mode of treatment and event in singular cases ;
sixthly, to open a correspondence with the medical societies
in the neighbouring states and in Europe, for which purpose
they have a standing committee of correspondence ;
seventhly, to appoint a committee for the purpose of
examining candidates for the profession, and to give
certificates to the deserving." Changed conditions have
changed some of these objects, but in the main they hold
good to-day.

Some of the paragraphs have suggested to me the subject
of my address — the educational value of the medical
society. There are many problems and difficulties in the
education of a medical student, but they are not more
difficult than the question of the continuous education of

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the general practitioner. Over the one we have some
control, over the other, none. The university and the
state board make it certain that the one has a minimum,
at least, of professional knowledge, but who can be certain
of the state of that knowledge of the other in five or ten
years from the date of his graduation ? The specialist
may be trusted to take care of himself — the conditions
of his existence demand that he shall be abreast of the
times ; but the family doctor, the private in our great
army, the essential factor in the battle, should be carefully
nurtured by the schools and carefully guarded by the
public. Humanly speaking, with him are the issues of
life and death, since upon him falls the grevious responsi-
bility in those terrible emergencies which bring darkness
and despair to so many households. No class of men
needs to call to mind more often the wise comment of
Plato that education is a life-long business. The difficulties
are partly adherent to the subject, partly have to do with
the individual and his weakness. The problems of disease
are more complicated and difficult than any others with
which the trained mind has to grapple ; the conditions
in any given case may be unlike those in any other ; each
case, indeed, may have its own problem. Law, constantly
looking back, has its forms and procedures, its precedents
and practices. Once grasped, the certainties of divinity
make its study a delight and its practice a pastime ; but
who can tell of the uncertainties of medicine as an art ?
The science on which it is based is accurate and definite
enough ; the physics of a man's circulation are the physics
of the waterworks of the town in which he lives, but once
out of gear, you cannot apply the same rules for the repair

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

of the one as of the other. Variability is the law of life,
and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike,
and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under
the abnormal conditions which we know as disease. This is
the fundamental difficulty in the education of the physician,
and one which he may never grasp, or he takes it so tenderly
that it hurts instead of boldly accepting the axiom of
Bishop Butler, more true of medicine than of any other
profession : " Probability is the guide of life." Surrounded
by people who demand certainty, and not philosopher
enough to agree with Locke that " Probability supplies
the defect of our knowledge and guides us when that fails
and is always conversant about things of which we have no
certainty" the practitioner too often gets into a habit of
mind which resents the thought that opinion, not full
knowledge, must be his stay and prop. There is no dis-
credit, though there is at times much discomfort, in this
everlasting perhaps with which we have to preface so much
connected with the practice of our art. It is, as I said,
inherent in the subject. Take in illustration an experience
of last week. I saw a patient with Dr. Bolgiano who
presented marked pulsation to the left of the sternum in
the second, third and fourth interspaces, visible even before
the night-dress was removed, a palpable impulse over the
area of pulsation, flatness on percussion, accentuated
heart sounds and a soft systolic bruit. When to this were
added paralysis of the left recurrent laryngeal nerve,
smallness of the radial pulse on the left side, and tracheal
tugging, there is not one of you who would not make,
under such circumstances, the diagnosis of aneurism of the
aorta. Few of us, indeed, would put in the perhaps, or

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think of it as a probability with such a combination of
physical signs, and yet the associate conditions which had
been present — a small primary tumour of the left lobe of
the thyroid, with secondary nodules in the lymph glands
of the neck and involvement of the mediastinum and
metastases in the brain with optic neuritis — left no question
that the tumour causing the remarkable intrathoracic com-
bination was not aneurismal but malignant. Listen to the
appropriate comment of the Father of Medicine, who twenty-
five centuries ago had not only grasped the fundamental
conception of our art as one based on observation, but had
laboured also through a long life to give to the profession
which he loved the saving health of science — listen, I say,
to the words of his famous aphorism : " Experience is
fallacious and judgment difficult ! "

But the more serious problem relates to the education of
the practitioner after he has left the schools. The founda-
tion may not have been laid upon which to erect an intel-
lectual structure, and too often the man starts with a total
misconception of the prolonged struggle necessary to keep
the education he has, to say nothing of bettering the
instruction of the schools. As the practice of medicine
is not a business and can never be one,1 the education of

1 In every age there have been Elijahs ready to give up in despair
at the progress of commercialism in the profession. Garth says
in 1699 (Dispensary}—

How sickening Physick hangs her pensive head
And what was once a Science, now's a Trade.
Of medicine, many are of the opinion expressed by one of Aken-
side's disputants at Tom's Coffee House, that the ancients en-
deavoured to make it a science and failed, and the moderns to
make it a trade and have succeeded. To-day the cry is louder
than ever, and in truth there are grounds for alarm ; but, on the

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

the heart— the moral side of the man— must keep pace with
the education of the head. Our fellow creatures cannot
be dealt with as man deals in corn and coal ; "the human
heart by which we live " must control our professional
relations. After all, the personal equation has most to

do with success or failure in medicine, and in the trials

•

of life the fire which strengthens and tempers the metal
of one may soften and ruin another. In his philosophy
of life the young doctor will find Rabbi Ben Ezra * a better
guide, with his stimulating

Then, welcome each rebuff

That turns earth's smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go !

than Omar, whose fatalism, so seductive in Fitzgerald's
verses, leaves little scope for human effort.

For better or worse, there are few occupations of a more
satisfying character than the practice of medicine, if a
man can but once get orientirt and bring to it the philosophy
of honest work, the philosophy which insists that we
are here, not to get all we can out of the life about us,
but to see how much we can add to it. The discontent
and grumblings which one hears have their source in the
man more often than in his environment. In the nature
of the material in which we labour and of which, by

other hand, we can say to these Elijahs that there are many more
than 7,000 left who have not bowed the knee to this Baal, but who
practise caute caste et probe.

1 See Browning's poem. A good little edition has just been
issued (with an introduction by William Adams Slade), which I
commend to young graduates.

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OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

the way, we are partakers, there is much that could
be improved, but, as Mrs. Poyser remarks, we must
accept men as the Lord made them, and not expect too
much. But let me say this of the public : it is rarely
responsible for the failures in the profession. Occasionally
a man of superlative merit is neglected, but it is because
he lacks that most essential gift, the knowledge how to use
his gifts. The failure in 99 per cent, of the cases is in the man
himself ; he has not started right, the poor chap has not
had the choice of his parents, or his education has been
faulty, or he has fallen away to the worship of strange gods,
Baal or Ashtoreth, or worse still, Bacchus. But after all
the killing vice of the young doctor is intellectual laziness.
He may have worked hard at college, but the years of
probation have been his ruin. Without specific subjects
upon which to work, he gets the newspaper or the .novel
habit, and fritters his energies upon useless literature.
There is no greater test of a man's strength than to make
him mark time in the " stand and wait " years. Habits
of systematic reading are rare, and are becoming more
rare, and five or ten years from his license, as practice
begins to grow, may find the young doctor knowing less
than he did when he started and without fixed educational
purpose in life.

Now here is where the medical society may step in and
prove his salvation. The doctor's post-graduate education
comes from patients, from books and journals, and from
societies, which should be supplemented every five or
six years by a return to a post-graduate school to get rid
of an almost inevitable slovenliness in methods of work.
Of his chief teachers, his patients, I cannot here speak:

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

Each case has its lesson — a lesson that may be, but is not
always, learnt, for clinical wisdom is not the equivalent
of experience. A man who has seen 500 cases of pneumonia
may not have the understanding of the disease which comes
with an intelligent study of a score of cases, so different
are knowledge and wisdom, which, as the poet truly says,
" far from being one have ofttimes no connexion." Nor
can I speak of his books and journals, but on such an occa-
sion as the present it seems appropriate to say a few words
on the educational value of the medical society.

The first, and in some respects the most important,
function is that mentioned by the wise founders of your
parent society — to lay a foundation for that unity and
friendship which is essential to the dignity and usefulness
of the profession. Unity and friendship ! How we all
long for them, but how difficult to attain ! Strife seems
rather to be the very life of the practitioner, whose warfare
is incessant against disease and against ignorance and
prejudice, and, sad to have to admit, he too often lets his
angry passions rise against his professional brother. The
quarrels of doctors make a pretty chapter in the history
of medicine. Each generation seems to have had its own.
The Coans and the Cnidians, the Arabians and the Galenists,
the humoralists and the solidists, the Brunonians and the
Broussaisians, the homoapaths and the regulars, have, in
different centuries, rent the robe of ^Esculapius. But these
larger quarrels are becoming less aiid less intense, and in
the last century no new one of moment sprang up, while
it is easy to predict that in the present century, when
science has fully leavened the dough of homoepathy, the
great breach of our day will be healed. But in too many

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OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

towns and smaller communities miserable factions prevails,
and bickerings and jealousies mar the dignity and useful-
ness of the profession. So far as my observation goes,
the fault lies with the older men. The young fellow, if
handled aright and made to feel that he is welcomed and
not regarded as an intruder to be shunned, is only too
ready to hold out the hand of fellowship. The society
comes in here as professional cement. The meetings in a
friendly social way lead to a free and open discussion of
differences in a spirit that refuses to recognize differences
of opinion on the non-essentials of life as a cause of per-
sonal animosity or ill-feeling. An attitude of mind habi-
tually friendly, more particularly to the young man, even
though you feel him to be the David to whom your king-
dom may fall, a little of the old-fashioned courtesy which
makes a man shrink from wounding the feelings, of a
brother practitioner— in honour preferring one another;
with such a spirit abroad in the society and among its
older men, there is no room for envy, hatred, malice or
any uncharitableness. It is the confounded tales of patients
that so often set us by the ears, but if a man makes it a
rule never under any circumstances to believe a story told
by a patient to the detriment of a fellow-practitioner
—even if he knows it to be true !— though the measure he
metes may not be measured to him again, he will have the
satisfaction of knowing that he has closed the ears of his
soul to ninety-nine lies, and to have missed the hundredth
truth will not hurt him. Most of the quarrels of doctors
are about non-essential, miserable trifles and annoyances
—the pin pricks of practice— which would sometimes try
the patience of Job, but the good-fellowship and friendly
AE- 353 A A

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

intercourse of the medical society should reduce these to a
minimum.

The well-conducted medical society should represent a
clearing house, in which every physician of the district
would receive his intellectual rating, and hi which he could
find out his professional assets and liabilities. We doctors
do not " take stock " often enough, and are very apt to
carry on our shelves stale, out-of-date goods. The society
helps to keep a man " up to the times," and enables him
to refurnish his mental shop with the latest wares. Rightly
used, it may be a touchstone to which he can bring his
experiences to the test and save him from falling into the
rut of a few sequences. It keeps his mind open and recep-
tive, and counteracts that tendency to premature senility
which is apt to overtake a man who lives in a routine.
Upon one or two specially valuable features of the society
I may dwell for a moment or two.

In a city association the demonstration of instructive
specimens in morbid anatomy should form a special feature
of the work. After all has been done, many cases of great
obscurity in our daily rounds remain obscure, and as post-
mortems are few and far between, the private practitioner
is at a great disadvantage, since his mistakes in diagnosis
are less often corrected than are those of hospital physicians.
No more instructive work is possible than carefully demon-
strated specimens illustrating disturbance of function and
explanatory of the clinical symptoms. It is hard in this
country to have the student see enough morbid anatomy,
the aspects of which have such an important bearing upon
the mental attitude of the growing doctor. For the crass
therapeutic credulity, so widespread to-day, and upon which

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our manufacturing chemists wax fat, there is no more
potent antidote than the healthy scepticism bred of long
study in the post-mortem room. The new pathology, so
fascinating and so time-absorbing, tends, I fear, to grow
away from the old morbid anatomy, a training in which
is of such incalculable advantage to the physician. It is a
subject which one must learn in the medical school, but
the time assigned is rarely sufficient to give the student
a proper grasp of the subject. The younger men should be
encouraged to make the exhibition of specimens part of the
routine work of each meeting. Something may be learned
from the most ordinary case if it is presented with the
special object of illustrating the relation of disturbed
function to altered structure. Of still greater educational
value is the clinical side of the society. No meeting should
be arranged without the presentation of patients,, par-
ticularly those illustrating rare and unusual forms of
disease. Many diseases of the skin and of the joints, a
host of nervous affections, and many of the more remark-
able of general maladies, as myxoedema, cretinism, achon-
droplasia, etc., are seen so rarely and yet are so distinctive,
requiring only to be seen to be recognized, that it is in-
cumbent upon members to use the society to show such
cases. A clinical evening devoted to these rarer affections
3 of very great help in diffusing valuable knowledge.
The importance of a clinical demonstration was never better
illustrated than at the International Congress in London
in 1881, when Dr. Ord and others presented one morning
the Clinical Museum a group of cases of myxcedema.
There were men from all parts of the world, and the
general recognition of the disease outside of England dates

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

from that meeting. The physiognomy of disease is learned
slowly, and yet there are a great many affections which can
be recognized, sometimes at a glance, more often by careful
inspection, without any history. The society should be a
school in which the scholars teach each other, and there
is no better way than by 'the demonstration of the more
unusual cases that happen to fall in your way. I have
gone over my history cards of private patients brought or
sent to me by last-year physicians, in which the disease
was not diagnosed though recognizable de visu. Gout,
pseudo-hypertrophic muscular paralysis, hysterical lordosis,
spondylitis deformans, preataxic tabes (myosis, ptosis,
etc.), Graves' disease, Parkinson's disease, anorexia
nervosa, Raynaud's disease, pernicious anaemia, spastic
diplegia, spastic hemiplegia and cyanosis of chronic emphy-
sema were on the list. Some of these are rare diseases,
but at an active society in the course of a few years every
one of them could be demonstrated.

The presentation of the histories of cases may be made
very instructive, but this is often a cause of much weariness
and dissatisfaction. A brief oral statement of the special
features of a case is much to be preferred to a long, written
account. The protocol or daily record of a long case should
never be given in full. The salient points should be brought
out, particularly the relation the case bears to the known
features of the disease and to diagnosis and treatment.
The volume of the Transactions of the New Haven County
Medical Society, 1788, contains many admirably reported^
cases. I select one for special comment, as it is, s.o far
as I know, the first case on record of a most remarkable
disease, to which much attention has been paid of late —

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OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

the hypertrophic stenosis of the pylorus in children (see
full discussion in the Lancet of December 20, 1902). Dr.
Hezekiah Beardsley reports a Case of Schirrhus of the
Pylorus of an Infant. Every feature of the disease as we
know it now is noted — the constant puking, the leanness,
the wizened, old look of the child are well described, and
the diagnosis was made four months before death ! The
post-mortem showed a dilated and hypertrophied stomach
and " the pylorus was invested with a hard, compact
substance or schirrosity which so completely obstructed
the passage into the duodenum, as to admit with the greatest
difficulty the finest fluid." If other men had been as
accurate and careful as Dr. Beardsley, and if other societies
had followed the good example set so early by the New
Haven County Medical Association, not only would this
rare disease have been recognized, but by the accumulation
of accurate observations many another disease would have
yielded its secret. But it illustrates the old story — there
is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation,
and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an
observation in brief and plain language.

In no way can a society better help in the education of
its members than in maintaining for them a good library,
and I am glad to know that this is one of your functions.
It is most gratifying to note the growing interest in this
work in all parts of the country. In the last number of
the Bulletin of the Association of Medical Librarians there
is a list of twenty-five societies with medical libraries.
An attractive reading-room, with the important weekly
journals,' and with shelves stocked with the new books in
different departments, becomes an educational centre

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ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE

in which the young man can keep up his training and to
which the older practitioner can go for advice when he is
in despair and for reassurance when he is in doubt. The
self-sacrifice necessary to establish and maintain such a
library does good to the men who take part in it ; harmony
is promoted, and, in the words of your fathers, the dignity
and usefulness of the profession are maintained:

Why is it that a large majority of all practitioners are
not members of a medical society ? Dr. Simmons estimates
that there are 77,000 physicians in the United States who
do not belong to any medical society whatever ! In part
this is due to apathy of the officers and failure to present
an attractive programme, but more often the fault is in the
men. Perhaps given over wholly to commercialism a
doctor feels it a waste of time to join a society, and so it
is if he is in the profession only for the money he can get
out of patients without regard to the sacred obligation
to put himself in the best possible position to do the best
that is known for them. More frequently, I fear, the
*' dollar-doctor " is a regular frequenter of the society,
knowing full well how suicidal in the long run is isolation
from the general body of the profession. The man who
knows it all and gets nothing from the society reminds
one of that little dried-up miniature of humanity, the pre-
maturely senile infant, whose tabetic marasmus has added
old age to infancy. Why should he go to the society and
hear Dr. Jones on the gastric relations of neurasthenia
when he can get it all so much better in the works of
Einhorn or Ewald ? He is weary of seeing appendices;
and there are no new pelvic viscera for demonstration:
It is a waste of time, he says, and he feels better at home,

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and perhaps that is the best place for a man who has
reached this stage of intellectual stagnation.

Greater sympathy must be felt for the man who has
started all right and has worked hard at the societies,
but as the rolling years have brought ever-increasing
demands on his time, the evening hours find him worn
out yet not able to rest, much less to snatch a little diver-
sion or instruction in the company of his fellows whom he
loves so well. Of all men in the profession the forty-
visit-a-day man is the most to be pitied. Not always an
automaton, he may sometimes by economy of words and
extraordinary energy do his work well, but too often he
is the one above all others who needs the refreshment of
mind and recreation that is to be had in a well-conducted
society. Too often he is lost beyond all recall, avnd, like
Ephraim joined to his idols, we may leave him alone.
Many good men are ruined by success in practice, and need
to pray the prayer of the Litany against the evils of
prosperity. It is only too true, as you know well, that a
most successful — as the term goes — doctor may practise
with a clinical slovenliness that makes it impossible for
that kind old Mend, Dame Nature, to cover his mistakes.
A well-conducted society may be of the greatest help in
stimulating the practitioner to keep up habits of scientific
study. It seems a shocking thing to say, but you all know
it to be a fact that many, very many men in large practice
never use a stethoscope, and as for a microscope, they have
long forgotten what a leucocyte or a tube cast looks like.
This in some cases may be fortunate, as imperfect or half
knowledge might only lead to mistakes, but the secret of
this neglect of means of incalculable help is the fact that

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he has not attained the full and enduring knowledge which
should have been given to him in the medical school.
It is astonishing with how little outside aid a large practice
may be conducted, but it is not astonishing that in it
cruel and unpardonable mistakes are made: At whose
door so often lies the responsibility for death in cases of
empyema but at that of the busy doctor, who has not time
to make routine examinations, or who is " so driven " that
the urine of his scarlet fever or puerperal patients is not
examined until the storm has broken ?

But I hear it sometimes said you cannot expect the general
practitioner, particularly in country districts, to use the
microscope and stethoscope — these are refinements of
diagnosis. They are not ! They are the essential means
which can be used and should be used by every intelligent
practitioner. In our miserable, antiquated system of
teaching we send our graduates out wholly unprepared
to make a rational diagnosis, but a man who is in earnest
— and, thank heaven ! most of the young men to-day
in the profession are in earnest — can supply the defects
in his education by careful study of his cases, and can
supplement the deficiency by a post-graduate course.
A room fitted as a small laboratory, with the necessary
chemicals and a microscope, will prove a better investment
in the long run than a static machine or a new-fangled
air-pressure spray apparatus.

It is not in the local society only that a man can get
encouragement in his day's work and a betterment of
mind and methods. Every practitioner should feel a
pride in belonging to his state society, and should attend
the meetings whenever possible, and gradually learn to

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OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY

know his colleagues, and here let me direct your attention
to an important movement on the part of the American
Medical Association, which has for its object the organiza-
tion of the profession throughout the entire country.
This can be accomplished only by a uniformity in the
organization of the state societies, and by making the
county society the unit through which members are ad-
mitted to the state and national bodies. Those of you
interested will find very instructive information on this
subject in the Journal of the association in a series of papers
by Dr. Simmons, the editor, which have been reprinted
in pamphlet form. As now managed, with active sections
conducted by good men from all parts of the country, the
meeting of the National Association is in itself a sort of
brief post-graduate course. Those of you at the receptive
age who attended the Saratoga meeting last June must have
been impressed with the educational value of such a
gathering. The Annual Museum was itself an important
education in certain lines, and the papers and discussions
in the various sections were of the greatest possible value,
But I need say no more to this audience on the subject
of medical societies ; you of New England have not " for-
saken the gathering of yourselves together as the manner
of some is," but have been an example to the whole country.
In the dedication of his Holy War, Thomas Fuller has
some very happy and characteristic remarks on the bounden
duty of a man to better his heritage of birth or fortune,
and what the father found glass and made crystal, he urges
the son to find crystal and make pearl. Your heritage
has been most exceptional, and, I believe, from all that
I know of the profession in this city and State, that could

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EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MEDICAL SOCIETY

your fathers return they would say that oi their crystal
you had made pearl. One cannot read their history as told
by Bronson, or as sketched by your distinguished citizen,
my colleague, Dr. Welch, without a glow of admiration
for their lofty ideals, their steadfastness and devotion,
and for their faith in the profession which they loved.
The times have changed, scondition of practice have altered
and are altering rapidly, but when such a celebration takes
us back to your origin in simpler days and ways, we find
that the ideals which inspired them are ours to-day —
ideals which are ever old, yet always fresh and new, and
we can truly say in Kipling's words :

The men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
They're God's own guides on the Long Trail, the trail that is
always new.

362

XVIII
THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

363

If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic
education of after-life, some such counsels as the following may
be offered to him : That he shall choose the branch of knowledge
to which his own mind most distinctly inclines, and in which he
takes the greatest delight, either one which seems to connect with
his own daily employment, or, perhaps, furnishes the greatest
contrast to it. He may study from the speculative side the pro-
fession or business in which he is practically engaged. He may
make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Bacon the friends and
companions of his life. He may find opportunities of hearing
the living voice of a great teacher. He may select for inquiry
some point of history, or some unexplained phenomenon of nature.
An hour a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will
furnish as many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him
" a pleasure not to be repented of " (Timceus, 59 D). Only let
him beware of being the slave of crotchets, or of running after a
Will o' the Wisp in his ignorance, or in his vanity of attributing
to himself the gifts of a poet, or assuming the air of a philosopher.
He should know the limits of his own powers. Better to build up
the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from one thing
to another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests in
knowledge, than to form vast schemes which are never destined
to be realized.

JOWETT, Introductions to Plato.

Contend, my soul, for moments and for hours ;
Each is with service pregnant, each reclaimed
Is like a Kingdom conquered, where to reign.

ROBEET Louis STEVENSON.

In the case of our habits we are only masters of the beginning,
their growth by gradual stages being imperceptible, like the growth
of disease.

ABISTOTLE, Ethics.

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I

BEFORE proceeding to the pleasing duty of addressing
the undergraduates, as a native of this province and
as an old student of this school, I must say a few words on
the momentous changes inaugurated with this session, the
most important, perhaps, which have taken place in the
history of the profession in Ontario; The splendid labora-
tories which we saw opened this afternoon, a witness to the
appreciation by the authorities of the needs of science in
medicine, makes possible the highest standards of educa-
tion in the subjects upon which our Art is based. They
may do more. A liberal policy, with a due regard to the
truth that the greatness of a school lies in brains not bricks,
should build up a great scientific centre which will bring
renown to this city and to our country. The men in charge
of the departments are of the right stamp. See to it that
you treat them in the right way by giving skilled assistance
enough to ensure that the vitality of men who could work
for the world is not sapped by the routine of teaching. One
regret will, I know, be in the minds of many of my younger
hearers. The removal of the depa lent of anatomy and

1 University of Toronto, 1903.
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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

physiology from the biological laboratory of the university
breaks a connexion which has had an important influence
on medicine in this city. To Professor Ramsay Wright is
due much of the inspiration which has made possible these
fine new laboratories. For years he has encouraged in
every way the cultivation of the scientific branches of medi-
cine and has unselfishly devoted much time to promoting
the best interests of the Medical Faculty. And in passing
let me pay a tribute to the ability and zeal with which Dr.
A. B. Macallum has won for himself a world- wide reputation
by intricate studies which have carried the name of this
University to every nook and corner of the globe where the
science of physiology is cultivated. How much you owe
to him in connexion with the new buildings I need scarcely
mention in this audience.

But the other event which we celebrate is of much greater
importance: When the money is forthcoming it is an easy
matter to join stone to stone in a stately edifice, but it is
hard to find the market in which to buy the precious cement
which can unite into an harmonious body the professors of
medicine of two rival medical schools in the same city. That
this has been accomplished s^ satisfactorily is a tribute to
the good sense of the leaders of the two faculties, and tells
of their recognition of the needs of the profession in the pro-
vince. Is it too much to look forward to the absorption or
affiliation of the Kingston and London schools into the
Provincial University ? The day has passed in which the
small school without full endowment can live a life bene-
ficial to the students, to the profession or to the public. I
know well of the sacrifice of time and money which is freely
made by the teachers of those schools ; and they will not
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misunderstand my motives when I urge them to commit
suicide, at least so far as to change their organizations into
clinical schools in affiliation with the central university, a?
part, perhaps, of a widespread affiliation of the hospitals of
the province. A school of the first rank in the world, such
as this must become, should have ample clinical faculties
under its own control. It is as much a necessity that the
professors of medicine and surgery, etc., should have large
hospital services under their control throughout the year,
as it is that professors of pathology and physiology should
have laboratories such as those in which we here meet. It
should be an easy matter to arrange between the provincial
authorities and the trustees of the Toronto General Hospital
to replace the present antiquated system of multiple small
services by modern well-equipped clinics — three in medicine
and three in surgery to begin with; The increased effi-
ciency of the service would be a substantial quid pro quo, but
there would have to be a self-denying ordinance on the part
of many of the attending physicians. With the large num-
ber of students in the combined school no one hospital can
furnish in practical medicine, surgery and the specialties a
training in the art an equivalent of that which the student
will have in the science in the new laboratories. An affilia-
tion should be sought with every other hospital in the city
and province of fifty beds and over, in each of which two
or three extra-mural teachers could be recognized, who
would receive for three or more months a number of stu-
dents proportionate to the beds in the hospital. I need
not mention names. We all know men in Ottawa, King-
ston, London, Hamilton, Guelph and Chatham, who could
take charge of small groups of the senior students and make

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of them good practical doctors. I merely throw out the
suggestion. There are difficulties in the way ; but is there
anything worth struggling for in this life which does not
bristle with them ?

Students of Medicine : May this day to be each of you,'
as it was to me when I entered this school thirty-five years
ago, the beginning of a happy life in a happy calling. Not
one of you has come here with such a feeling of relief as that
which I experienced at an escape from conic sections and
logarithms and from Hooker and Pearson. The dry bones
became clothed with interest, and I felt that I had at last
got to work. Of the greater advantages with which you
start I shall not speak. Why waste my words on what you
cannot understand. To those of us only who taught and
studied in the dingy old building which stood near here is
it given to feel the full change which the years have
wrought, a change which my old teachers, whom I see here
to-day — Dr. Richardson, Dr. Ogden, Dr. Thorburn and Dr.;
Oldright — must find hard to realize. One looks about in
vain for some accustomed object on which to rest the eye
in its backward glance — all, all are gone, the old familiar
places. Even the landscape has altered, and the sense of
loneliness and regret, the sort of homesickness one experi-
ences on such occasions, is relieved by a feeling of thankful-
ness that at least some of the old familiar faces have been
spared to see this day. To me at least the memory of those
happy days is a perpetual benediction, and I look back upon
the two years I spent at this school with the greatest de-
light. There were many things that might have been im-
proved— and we can say the same of every medical school
of that period — but I seem to have got much more out of it

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than our distinguished philosopher friend, J. Beattie Crozier;
whose picture of the period seems hardly drawn. But after
all, as someone has remarked, instruction is often the least
part of an education, and, as I recall them, our teachers in
their life and doctrine set forth a true and lively word to the
great enlightenment of our darkness. They stand out in
the background of my memory as a group of men whose in-
fluence and example were most helpful. In William R.
Beaumont and Edward Mulberry Hodder, we had before
us the highest type of the cultivated English surgeon; In
Henry H. Wright we saw the incarnation of faithful devo-
tion to duty — too faithful, we thought, as we trudged up to
the eight o'clock lecture in the morning. In W. T. Aikins,
a practical surgeon of remarkable skill and an ideal teacher
for the general practitioner. How we wondered and de-
lighted in the anatomical demonstrations of Dr. Richard-
son, whose infective enthusiasm did much to make ana-
tomy the favourite subject among the students. I had
the double advantage of attending the last course of Dr:
Ogden and the first of Dr. Thorburn on materia medica and
therapeutics. And Dr. Oldright had just begun his career
of unselfish devotion to the cause of hygiene;

To one of my teachers I must pay in passing the tribute
of filial affection. There are men here to-day who feel as
I do about Dr. James Bovell — that he was of those finer
spirits, not uncommon in life, touched to finer issues only
in a suitable environment. Would the Paul of evolution
have been Thomas Henry Huxley had the Senate elected
the young naturalist to a chair in this university in 1851 ?
Only men of a certain metal rise superior to their surround-
ings, and while Dr. Bovell had that all-important combina-

AE. 3^9 BB

THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

tion of boundless ambition with energy and industry, he
had that fatal fault of diffuseness, in which even genius is
strangled. With a quadrilateral mind, which he kept spin-
ning like a teetotum, one side was never kept uppermost
for long at a time. Caught in a storm which shook the
scientific world with the publication of the Origin of Species,
instead of sailing before the wind, even were it with bare
poles, he put about and sought a harbour of refuge in writ-
ing a work on Natural Theology, which you will find on the
shelves of second-hand book shops in a company made re-
spectable at least by the presence of Paley. He was an
omnivorous reader and transmutor, he could talk plea-
santly, even at times transcendentally, upon anything in
the science of the day, from protoplasm to evolution ; but
he lacked concentration and that scientific accuracy which
only comes with a long training (sometimes, indeed, never
comes,) and which is the ballast of the boat. But the bent
of his mind was devotional, and early swept into the Trac-
tarian movement, he became an advanced Churchman, a
good Anglican Catholic. As he chaffingly remarked one
day to his friend, the Rev. Mr. Darling, he was like the
waterman in Pilgrim's Progress, rowing one way towards
Rome, but looking steadfastly in the other direction to-
wards Lambeth. His Steps to the Altar and his Lectures
on the Advent attest the earnestness of his convictions ;
and later in life, following the example of Linacre,
he took orders and became another illustration of what
Cotton Mather calls the angelic conjunction of medicine
with divinity. Then, how well I recall the keen love with
which he would engage in metaphysical discussions, and
the ardour with which he studied Kant, Hamilton, Reed, and

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Mill. At that day, to the Rev. Prof. Bevan was intrusted
the rare privilege of directing the minds of the thinking
youths at the Provincial University into proper philoso-
phical channels. It was rumoured that the hungry sheep
looked up and were not fed. I thought so at least, for cer-
tain of them, led by T. Wesley Mills, came over daily after
Dr. Bovell's four o'clock lecture to reason high and long
with him

On Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,
Fixed Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge absolute.

Yet withal, his main business in life was as a physician,
much sought after for his skill in diagnosis, and much be-
loved for his loving heart. He had been brought up in the
very best practical schools. A pupil of Bright and of Ad-
dison, a warm personal friend of Stokes and of Graves, he
maintained loyally the traditions of Guy's, and taught us
to reverence his great masters. As a teacher he had grasped
the fundamental truth announced by John Hunter of the
unity of physiological and pathological processes, and, as
became the occupant of the chair of the Institutes of Medi-
cine, he would discourse on pathological processes in lec-
tures on physiology, and illustrate the physiology of
bioplasm in lectures on the pathology of tumours to the
bewilderment of the students. When in September, 1870,
he wrote to me that he did not intend to return from the
West Indies I felt that I had lost a father and a friend ; but
in Robert Palmer Howard, of Montreal, I found a noble
step-father, and to these two men, and to my first teacher,
the Revs W.; A. Johnson, of Weston, I owe my success in
life— if success means getting what you want and being
satisfied with it.

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«•

II

Of the value of an introductory lecture I am not alto-
gether certain. I do not remember to have derived any
enduring benefit from the many that I have been called
upon to hear, or from the not a few that I have inflicted in
my day. On the whole, I am in favour of abolishing the
old custom, but as this is a very special occasion, with
special addresses, I consider myself most happy to have
been selected for this part of the programme. To the audi-
ence at large I fear that what I have to say will appear trite
and commonplace, but bear with me, since, indeed, to most
of you how good soever the word, the season is long past in
which it could be spoken to your edification. As I glance
from face to face the most striking single peculiarity is the
extraordinary diversity that exists among you. Alike in
that you are men and white, you are unlike in your fea-
tures, very unlike in your minds and in your mental train-
ing, and your teachers will mourn the singular inequalities
in your capacities. And so it is sad to think will be your
careers ; for one success, for another failure ; one will tread
the primrose path to the great bonfire, another the straight
and narrow way to renown ; some of the best of you will be
stricken early on the road, and will join that noble band of
youthful martyrs who loved not their lives to the death ;
others, perhaps the most brilliant among you, like my old
friend and comrade, Dick Zimmerman (how he would have
rejoiced to see this day !), the Fates will overtake and whirl
to destruction just as success seems assured. When the
iniquity of oblivion has blindly scattered her poppy over
us, some of you will be the trusted counsellors of this com-

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

munity, and the heads of departments of this Faculty ;
while for the large majority of you, let us hope, is
reserved the happiest and most useful lot given to man
— to become vigorous, whole-souled, intelligent, general
practitioners.

It seems a bounden duty on such an occasion to be honest
and frank, so I propose to tell you the secret of life as I have
seen the game played, and as I have tried to play it myself.
You remember in one of the Jungle Stories that when
Mowgli wished to be avenged on the villagers he could only
get the help of Hathi and his sons by sending them the
master-word. This I propose to give you in the hope, yes,
in the full assurance, that some of you at least will lay hold
upon it to your profit. Though a little one, the master-
word looms large in meaning. It is the open sesame to
every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philo-
sopher's stone, which transmutes all the base metal of hu-
manity into gold. The stupid man among you it will make
bright, the bright man brilliant, and the brilliant student
steady. With the magic word in your heart all things are
possible, and without it all study is vanity and vexation.
The miracles of life are with it ; the blind see by touch, the
deaf hear with eyes, the dumb speak with fingers. To the
youth it brings hope, to the middle-aged confidence, to the
aged repose. True balm of hurt minds, in its presence the
heart of the sorrowful is lightened and consoled. It is di-
rectly responsible for all advances in medicine during the
past twenty -five centuries. Laying hold upon it Hippo-
crates made observation and science the warp and woof of
our art. Galen so read ite meaning that fifteen centuries
stopped thinking, and slept until awakened by the De Fa-

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

brica of Vesalius, which is the very incarnation of the
master- word. With its inspiration Harvey gave an im-
pulse to a larger circulation than he wot of, an impulse
which we feel to-day. Hunter sounded all its heights and
depths, and stands out in our history as one of the great
exemplars of its virtue. With it Virchow smote the rock,
and the waters of progress gushed out ; while in the hands
of Pasteur it proved a very talisman to open to us a new
heaven b medicine and a new earth in surgery. Not only
has it been the touchstone of progress, but it is the measure
of success in e very-day life. Not a man before you but is
beholden to it for his position here, while he who addresses
you has that honour directly in consequence of having had
it graven on his heart when he was as you are to-day. And
the master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but
fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it
on the tablets of your hearts, and bind it upon your fore-
heads. But there is a serious difficulty in getting you to
understand the paramount importance of the work-habit
as part of your organization. You are not far from the
Tom Sawyer stage with its philosophy " that work consists
of whatever a body is obliged to do," and that play con-
sists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

A great many hard things may be said of the work-habit:
For most of us it means a hard battle ; the few take to it
naturally ; the many prefer idleness and never learn to love
labour. Listen to this : " Look at one of your industrious
fellows for a moment, I beseech you," says Robert Louis
Stevenson. " He sows hurry and reaps indigestion ; he
puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a

large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a
recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot,
or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, hi a con-
traction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some
temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much
or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other
people's lives,'2 These are the sentiments of an over-
worked, dejected man ; let me quote the motto of his saner
moments : " To travel hopefully is better than to arrive,
and the true success is in labour." If you wish to learn of
the miseries of scholars in order to avoid them, read Part I,
Section 2, Member 3, Subsection XV, of that immortal
work, the Anatomy of Melancholy ; but I am here to warn
you against these evils, and to entreat you to form good
habits hi your student days.

At the outset appreciate clearly the aims and objects
each one of you should have in view— a knowledge of dis-
ease and its cure, and a knowledge of yourself. The one,
special education, will make you a practitioner of medi-
cine ; the other, an inner education, may make you a truly
good man, four square and without a flaw. The one is ex-
trinsic and is largely accomplished by teacher and tutor,
by text and by tongue ; the other is intrinsic and is the
mental salvation to be wrought out by each one for himself.
The first may be had without the second ; any one of you
may become an active practitioner, without ever having
had sense enough to realize that through life you have been
a fool ; or you may have the second without the first, and,
without knowing much of the art, you may have the en-
dowments of head and heart that make the little you do
possess go very far in the community. With what I hope

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

to infect you is a desire to have a due proportion of each:
So far as your professional education is concerned, what I
shall say may make for each one of you an easy path easier.
The multiplicity of the subjects to be studied is a difficulty,
and it is hard for teacher and student to get a due sense of
proportion in the work. We are in a transition stage in
our methods of teachings, and have not everywhere got
away from the idea of the examination as the " be-all and
end-all ; " so that the student has constantly before his
eyes the magical letters of the degree he seeks. And this
is well, perhaps, if you will remember that having, in the
old phrase, commenced Bachelor of Medicine, you have
only reached a point from which you can begin a life-long
process of education.

So many and varied are the aspects presented by this
theme that I can only lay stress upon a few of the more es-
sential. The very first step towards success in any occupa-
tion is to become interested in it. Locke put this in a very
happy way when he said, give a pupil " a relish of know-
ledge " and you put life into his work. And there is no-
thing more certain than that you cannot study well if you
are not interested in your profession. Your presence here
is a warrant that in some way you have become attracted
to the study of medicine, but the speculative possibilities
so warmly cherished at the outset are apt to cool when in
contact with the stem realities of the class-room. Most of
you have already experienced the all-absorbing attraction
of the scientific branches, and nowadays the practical
method of presentation has given a zest which was usually
lacking in the old theoretical teaching. The life has be-
come more serious in consequence, and medical students

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

have put away many of the childish tricks with which we
used to keep up their bad name. Compare the picture of
the " sawbones " of 1842, as given in the recent biography
of Sir Henry Acland, with the representatives to-day, and
it is evident a great revolution has been effected, and very
largely by the salutary influences of unproved methods of
education. It is possible now to fill out a day with prac-
tical work, varied enough to prevent monotony, and so
arranged that the knowledge is picked out by the student
himself, and not thrust into him, willy-nilly, at the point of
the tongue. He exercises his wits and is no longer a pas-
sive Strasbourg goose, tied up and stuffed to repletion.

How can you take the greatest possible advantage of
your capacities with the least possible strain ? By culti-
vating system. I say cultivating advisedly, since some of
you will find the acquisition of systematic habits very hard.;
There are minds congenitally systematic ; others have a
life-long fight against an inherited tendency to diffuseness
and carelessness in work. A few brilliant fellows try to
dispense with it altogether, but they are a burden to their
brethren and a sore trial to their intimates. I have heard
it remarked that order is the badge of an ordinary mind.
So it may be, but as practitioners of medicine we have to be
thankful to get into that useful class. Let me entreat
those of you who are here for the first time to lay to heart
what I say on this matter. Forget all else, but take away
this counsel of a man who has had to fight a hard battle,
and not always a successful one, for the little order he has
had in his life ; take away with you a profound conviction
of the value of system in your work. I appeal to the fresh-
men especially, because you to-day make a beginning, and

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THE MASTER WORD IN MEDICINE

your future career depends very much upon the habits you
will form during this session. To follow the routine of the
classes is easy enough, but to take routine into every part
of your daily life is a hard task. Some of you will start out
joyfully as did Christian and Hopeful, and for many days
will journey safely towards the Delectable Mountains,
dreaming of them and not thinking of disaster until you
find yourselves in the strong captivity of Doubt and under
the grinding tyranny of Despair. You have been over
confident. Begin again and more cautiously. No student
escapes wholly from these perils and trials ; be not dis-
heartened, expect them. Let each hour of the day have
its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration
which grows with its exercise, so that the attention neither
flags nor wavers, but settles with a bull-dog tenacity on
the subject before you. Constant repetition makes a good
habit fit easily in your mind, and by the end of the session
you may have gained that most precious of all knowledge —
the power to work. Do not underestimate the difficulty
you will have in wringing from your reluctant selves the
stern determination to exact the uttermost minute on your
schedule. Do not get too interested in one study at the
expense of another, but so map out your day that due al-
lowance is given to each. Only in this way can the average
student get the best that he can out of his capacities. And
it is worth all the pains and trouble he can possibly take
for the ultimate gain — if he can reach his doctorate with
system so ingrained that it has become an integral part of
his being. The artistic sense of perfection in work is
another much-to-be-desired quality to be cultivated. No
matter how trifling the matter on hand, do it with a feeling

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

that it demands the best that is in you, and when done look
it over with a critical eye, not sparing a strict judgment of
yourself. This it is that makes anatomy a student's touch-
stone. Take the man who does his " part " to perfection,
who has got out all there is in it, who labours over the tags
of connect've tissue and who demonstrates Meckel's gan-
glion in his part — this is the fellow in after years who is apt
in emergencies, who saves a leg badly smashed in a railway
accident, or fights out to the finish, never knowing when he
is beaten, in a case of typhoid fever.

Learn to love the freedom of the student life, only too
quickly to pass away ; the absence of the coarser cares of
after days, the joy in comradeship, the delight in new work,
the happiness in knowing that you are making progress;
Once only can you enjoy these pleasures. The seclusion
of the student life is not always good for a man, particularly
for those of you who will afterwards engage in general prac-
tice, since you will miss that facility of intercourse upon
which often the doctor's success depends. On the other
hand sequestration is essential for those of you with high
ambitions proportionate to your capacity. It was for such
that St. Chrysostom gave his famous counsel, " Depart
from the highways and transplant thyself into some en-
closed ground, for it is hard for a tree that stands by the
wayside to keep its fruit till it be ripe."

Has work no dangers connected with it ? What of this
bogie of overwork of which we hear so much ? There are
dangers, but they may readily be avoided with a little care.
I can only mention two, one physical, one mental. The
very best students are often not the strongest. Ill-health,
the bridle of Theages, as Plato called it in the case of one of

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his friends whose mind had thriven at the expense of his
body, may have been the diverting influence towards books
or the profession. Among the good men who have studied
with me there stands out in my remembrance many a young
Lycidas, " dead ere his prime," sacrificed to carelessness in
habits of living and neglect of ordinary sanitary laws. Me-
dical students are much exposed to infection of all sorts, to
combat which the body must be kept in first-class condi-
tion. Grossteste, the great Bishop of Lincoln, remarked
that there were three things necessary for temporal salva-
tion— food, sleep and a cheerful disposition. Add to these
suitable exercise and you have the means by which good
health may be maintained. Not that health is to be a
matter of perpetual solicitation, but habits which favour
the corpus sanum foster the mem sana, in which the joy of
living and the joy of working are blended in one harmony.
Let me read you a quotation from old Burton, the great
authority on morbi eruditorum. There are " many reasons
why students dote more often than others. The first is
their negligence ; other men look to their tools, a painter
will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his hammer, anvil,
forge ; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and
grind his hatchet, if it be dull ; a falconer or huntsman will
have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs,
etc. ; a musician will string and unstring his lute, etc. ; only
scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits (I
mean) which they daily use." 1

Much study is not only believed to be a weariness of the
flesh, but also an active cause of ill-health of mind, in all
grades and phases. I deny that work, legitimate work,

1 Quotation mainly from Mar$iliib» Fidnus.
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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

has anything to do with this. It is that foul fiend Worry
who is responsible for a large majority of the cases. The
more carefully one looks into the causes of nervous break-
down in students, the less important is work per se as a
factor. There are a few cases of genuine overwork, but
they are not common. Of the causes of worry in the stu-
dent life there are three of prime importance to which I
may briefly refer.

An anticipatory attitude of mind, a perpetual forecast-
ing, disturbs the even tenor of his way and leads to disaster.
Years ago a sentence in one of Carlyle's essays made a last-
ing impression on me : " Our duty is not to see what lies
dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." I
have long maintained that the best motto for a student is,
" Take no thought for the morrow." Let the day's work
suffice ; live for it, regardless of what the future has in
store, believing that to-morrow should take thought for the
things of itself. There is no such safeguard against the
morbid apprehensions about the future, the dread of ex-
aminations and the doubt of the ultimate success. Nor is
there any risk that such an attitude may breed careless-
ness. On the contrary, the absorption in the duty of the
hour is in itself the best guarantee of ultimate success. " He
that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regard-
eth the clouds shall not reap," which means you cannot
work profitably with your mind set upon the future;

Another potent cause of worry is an idolatry by which
many of you will be sore let and hindered. The mistress of
your studies should be the heavenly Aphrodite, the mother-
less daughter of Uranus. Give her your whole heart, and
she will be your protectress and friend. A jealous creature,

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brooking no second, if she finds you trifling and coquetting
with her rival, the younger, earthly Aphrodite, daughter of
Zeus and Dione, she will whistle you off and let you down
the wind to be a prey, perhaps to the examiners, certainly
to the worm regret. In plainer language, put your affec-
tions in cold storage for a few years, and you will take them
out ripened, perhaps a bit mellow, but certainly less subject
to those frequent changes which perplex so many young
men. Only a grand passion, an ill-absorbing devotion to
the elder goddess can save the man with a congenital ten-
dency to philandering, the flighty Lydgate who sports with
Celia and Dorothea, and upon whom the judgment ulti-
mately falls hi a basil-plant of a wife like Rosamond.

And thirdly, one and all of you will have to face the or-
deal of every student in this generation who sooner or later
tries to mix the waters of science with the oil of faith. You
can have a great deal of both if you only keep them se-
parate. The worry comes from the attempt at mixture;
As general practitioners you will need all the faith you can
carry, and while it may not always be of the conventional
pattern, when expressed in your lives rather than on your
lips, the variety is not a bad one from the standpoint of St.
James ; and may help to counteract the common scandal
alluded to in the celebrated diary of that gossipy old pastor-
doctor, the Rev. John Ward : " One told the Bishop of
Gloucester that he imagined physitians of all other men the
most competent judges of all other affairs of religion — and
his reason was because they were wholly unconcerned with
it,?J

III

Profestionai wor* of any sort tends to narrow the mind,

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

to limit the point of view and to put a hall-mark on a man
of a most unmistakable kind. On the one hand are the
intense, ardent natures, absorbed in their studies and
quickly losing interest in everything but their profession,
while other faculties and interests " fust " unsued. On
the other hand are the bovine brethren, who think of no-
thing but the treadmill and the corn. From very different
causes, the one from concentration, the other from apathy,
both are apt to neglect those outside studies that widen the
sympathies and help a man to get the best there is out of
life. Like art, medicine is an exacting mistress, and in the
pursuit of one of the scientific branches, sometimes, too, in
practice, not a portion of a man's spirit may be left free for
other distractions, but this does not often happen. On
account of the intimate personal nature of his work, the
medical man, perhaps more than any other man, needs that
higher education of which Plato speaks, — " that education
in virtue from youth upwards, which enables a man eagerly
to pursue the ideal perfection." It is not for all, nor can
all attain to it, but there is comfort and help in the pursuit,
even though the end is never reached. For a large ma-
jority the daily round and the common task furnish more
than enough to satisfy their heart's desire, and there seems
no room left for anything else. Like the good, easy man
whom Milton scores in the Areopagtiica, whose religion was
a " traffic so entangled that of all mysteries he could not
skill to keep a stock going upon that trade " and handed it
over with all the locks and keys to " a divine of note and
estimation," so it is with many of us in the matter of this
higher education; No longer intrinsic, wrought in us and
ingrained, it has become, in Milton phrase, a "dividual

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THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

movable,'* handed over nowadays to the daily press or to
the haphazard instruction of the pulpit, the platform or
the magazines. Like a good many other things, it comes
in a better and more enduring form if not too consciously
sought. The all-important thing is to get a relish for the
good company of the race in a daily intercourse with some
of the great minds of all ages. Now, in the spring-time of
life, pick your intimates among them, and begin a systema-
tic cultivation of their works. Many of you will need a
strong leaven to raise you above the dough in which it will
be your lot to labour. Uncongenial surroundings, an ever-
present dissonance between the aspirations within and the
actualities without, the oppressive discords of human so-
ciety, the bitter tragedies of life, the Iwrymae rerum, be-
sides the hidden springs of which we sit in sad despair — all
these tend to foster in some natures a cynicism quite foreign
to our vocation, and to which this inner education offers
the best antidote. Personal contact with men of high pur-
pose and character will help a man to make a start — to
have the desire, at least, but in its fulness this culture — for
that word best expresses it — has to be wrought out by each
one for himself. Start at once a bed-side library and spend
the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints
of humanity. There are great lessons to be learned from
Job and from David, from Isaiah and St. Paul. Taught by
Shakespeare you may take your intellectual and moral
measure with singular precision. Learn to love Epictetus
and Marcus Aurelius. Should you be so fortunate as to be
born a Platonist, Jowett will introduce you to the great
master through whom alone we can think in certain levels,
and whose perpetual modernness startles and delights,

884

THE MASTER- WORD IN MEDICINE

Montaigne will teach you moderation in all things, and to
be " sealed of his tribe " is a special privilege. We have in
the profession only a few great literary heroes of the first
rank, the friendship and counsel of two of whom you can-
not too earnestly seek. Sir Thomas Browne's Edigio
Medici should be your pocket companion, while from the
Breakfast Table Series of Oliver Wendell Holmes you can
glean a philosophy of life peculiarly suited to the needs of a
physician. There are at least a dozen or more works which
would be helpful hi getting wisdom in life which only comes
to those who earnestly seek it. *

A conscientious pursuit of Plato's ideal perfection may
teach you the three great lessons of life. You may learn to
consume your own smoke. The atmosphere is darkened by
the murmurings and whimperings of men and women over
the non-essentials, the trifles that are inevitably incident
to the hurly burly of the day's routine. Things cannot al-
ways go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor
aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume
your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so
that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust
and soot of your complaints. More than any other the
practitioner of medicine may illustrate the second great
lesson, that we are here not to get all we can out of life for our-
selves, but to try to make the lives of others happier. This is
the essence of that oft-repeated admonition of Christ, " He
that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life
for my sake shall find it," on which hard saying if the
children of this generation would only lay hold, there would
be less misery and discontent in the world. It is not pos-

* Note p. 389 «' Bedside Library for Medical Students."
AE 385 c c

THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

sible for anyone to have better opportunities to live this
lesson than you will enjoy. The practice of medicine is an
art, not a trade ; a calling, not a business ; a calling in which
your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often
the best part of your work will have nothing to do with
potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence
of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the
wicked, of the wise upon the foolish. To you, as the trusted
family counsellor, the father will come with his anxieties,
the mother with her hidden grief, the daughter with her
trials, and the son with his follies. Fully one-third of the
work you do will be entered in other books than yours.
Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the
rough places of life, but will enable you to bring comfort
and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the
sad hours when, like Uncle Toby, you have " to whistle
that you may not weep."

And the third lesson you may learn is the hardest of all —
that the law of the higher life is only fulfilled by love, i.e.
charity. Many a physician whose daily work is a daily
round of beneficence will say hard things and think hard
thoughts of a colleague. No sin will so easily beset you as
uncharitableness towards your brother practitioner. So
strong is the personal element in the practice of medicine,
and so many are the wagging tongues in every parish, that
evil-speaking, lying, and slandering find a shining mark
in the lapses and mistakes which are inevitable in our work.
There is no reason for discord and disagreement, and the
only way to avoid trouble is to have two plain rules. From
the day you begin practice never under any circumstances
listen to a tale told to the detriment of a brother practi-

386

THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE

tioner. And when any dispute or trouble does arise, go
frankly, ere sunset, and talk the matter over, in which way
you may gain a brother and a friend. Very easy to carry
out, you may think ! Far from it ; there is no harder battle
to fight. Theoretically there seems to be no difficulty, but
when the concrete wound is rankling, and after Mrs. Jones
has rubbed in the cayenne pepper by declaring that Dr. J.
told her in confidence of your shocking bungling, your at-
titude of mind is that you would rather see him in purga-
tory than make advances towards reconciliation. Wait
until the day of your trial comes and then remember my
words.

And in closing, may I say a few words to the younger
practitioners in the audience whose activities will wax not
wane with the growing years of the century which opens so
auspiciously for this school, for this city, and for our coun-
try. You enter a noble heritage, made so by no efforts of
your own, but by the generations of men who have unsel-
fishly sought to do the best they could for suffering man-
kind. Much has been done, much remains to do ; a way
has been opened, and to the possibilities in the scientific
development of medicine there seems to be no limit.
Except in its application, as general practitioners, you will
not have much to do with this. Yours is a higher and more
sacred duty. Think not to light a light to shine before men
that they may see your good works ; contrariwise, you be-
long to the great army of quiet workers, physicians and
priests, sisters and nurses, all over the world, the members
of which strive not neither do they cry, nor are their voices
heard in the streets, but to them is given the ministry of
consolation in sorrow, need, and sickness. Like the ideal

387

THE MASTER- WORD IN MEDICINE

wife of whom Plutarch speaks, the best doctor is often the
one of whom the public hears the least ; but nowadays, in
the fierce light that beats upon the hearth, it is increasingly
difficult to lead the secluded life in which our best work is
done. To you the silent workers of the ranks, in villages
and country districts, in the slums of our large cities, in the
mining camps and factory towns, in the homes of the rich,
and in the hovels of the poor, to you is given the harder task
of illustrating with your lives the Hippocratic standards of
Learning, of Sagacity, of Humanity, and of Probity. Of
learning, that you may apply in your practice the best that
is known in our art, and that with the increase in your
knowledge there may be an increase in that priceless en-
dowment of sagacity, so that to all, everywhere, skilled
succour may come in the hour of need. Of a humanity, that
will show in your daily life tenderness and consideration to
the weak, infinite pity to the suffering, and broad charity
to all. Of a probity, that will make you under all circum-
stances true to yourselves, true to your high calling, and
true to your fellow man.

388

BED-SIDE LIBRARY FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS.

A LIBERAL education may be had at a very slight cost of time
and money. Well filled though the day be with appointed
tasks, to make the best possible use of your one or of your
ten talents, rest not satisfied with this professional training,
but try to get the education, if not of a scholar, at least of a
gentleman. Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and
in the morning have a book open on your dressing table.
You will be surprised to find how much can be accomplished
in the course of a year. I have put down a list of ten books
which you may make close friends. There are many others ;
studied carefully in your student days these will help in the
inner education of which I speak.

I. Old and New Testament.

II. Shakespeare.

III. Montaigne. l

IV. Plutarch's Lives. l
V. Marcus Aurelius. 2

VI. Epicteus. 2

VII. Religio Medici. »

VIII. Don Quixote:

IX. Emerson

X. Oliver Wendell Holmes— Breakfast-Table Series.

1 The Temple Classics, J. M. Dent & Co.

2 Golden Treasury Series, MacMillan Company.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
389

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