Address 
by 
Dr. J. M. Da Costa 
at the Dinner given Friday, April 6, 1888, to 
I)r. 1). Hayes Agnew 
by the Medical Profession, in honor of the 
Fiftieth Anniversary of his entrance 
into the Profession. Fifty years ago, on this very day, there stood, 
with the honors of a University just received, a 
young man on the threshold of his life. His thoughts 
were the pleasant ones of the occasion; his 
aspirations had hardly taken shape; he was the 
popular comrade of the hundred and fifty-five whose 
real life, like his own, was to begin. Fifty years 
have passed, and their Agnew has become our 
Agnew of the many thousands of the American 
profession. 
Honored Guest:—In addressing you to-night 
I feel that I speak not simply for those who are 
gathered around you; nor for those in this Com- 
monwealth whose interest will eentre here; but for 
the whole profession who hold you in sueh esteem, 
and whose sympathetic thoughts, could they reach 
you, would come to you in messages of such good- 
will and affection as to overwhelm you with their 
warmth. 
3 Your career has been, indeed, a remarkable 
one; and you must pardon me, and let the occasion 
be my excuse, if, in your presence, I allude to its 
success, and to the main causes of that success. 
Nor is it wholly unfitting in one to do so who has 
known you, and watched your progress with 
friendly interest, almost since you came .to this city, 
to try your powers in a wider field. The training 
you brought with you as a rural practitioner of 
note was indeed valuable. Self-reliance, cool 
judgment under difficult circumstances, are not 
the least reward of a country physician's hard life. 
You enrolled yourself as a teacher of niedicine in 
its most laborious branch, and fittingly took charge 
of a school which has been the nursery of famous 
anatomists and surgeons, — where Godman’s 
practical skill was displayed, and Joseph Pancoast 
laid the foundation of that intimate knowledge of 
the human frame which made him afterwards so 
great a surgeon. 
This Philadelphia School of Anatomy, in 
College Avenue, has, indeed, left its mark in the 
history of medicine. It has been to us what 
the Windmill Street School was to the London 
of William and of John Hunter, of Hewson, of 
Cruikshank, of Baillie, of Benjamin Brodie, of 
4 Charles Bell. Its rickety structure harbored not 
only anatomists—some of them your own pupils, 
who were to succeed you as celebrated teachers— 
but its dingy walls heard eloquent discourses 
on diverse branches from more than one of 
your future colleagues; in its garret, independent 
and fruitful researches on the textures of the body 
were pursued ; in its cramped lower room, physio- 
logical experiments were carried on, which have 
made their deep impress on the science of our day. 
For ten years working in this school of anatomy 
you lived laborious days and nights, and in its stern 
training your classes grew, until the narrow quar- 
ters would hold them no more, and you became the 
popular, admirable teacher you have proved yourself 
since, on a larger scale and on a different branch, as 
Professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery 
in the famed University with which your reputation 
is forever identified. You learned to present facts 
plainly and impressively, to teach Nature’s truths 
with Nature’s simplicity, and without a deadly 
paralysis of words. 
But in these ten years of unremitting work 
you did something more than teaching. You laid 
by exact knowledge, by steadiness of purpose and 
affability the foundations of that large practice which 
5 you have since enjoyed, developing every day, more 
and more, into the trusted surgeon whose deft hand 
and cool judgment caused his advice to be generally 
sought. Every country shows in its professions the 
national traits. You certainly represent as a surgeon, 
besides much skill, the American characteristic of 
resolute common-sense. 
You have been tried in many a hard case. 
In none harder, than when your reputation caused 
you to be selected among the counsellors at the 
wounded couch of one for whose relief millions 
were anxiously watching. That in these trying 
times you bore yourself with the same calmness 
and dignity we know in you, every one in these 
millions recognized. 
Your success as a surgeon of great repute must, 
indeed, have been gratifying to you. Not only for 
the opportunities it afforded you of doing so much 
active work in your profession; not only because it 
gave a personal value to your writings, especially to 
your opinions expressed in your elaborate work on 
Surgery; but because it enabled you to carry out a 
plan of action, of which I may not speak,—one 
which showed you to be possessed of the same 
high sense of honor for which Sir Walter Scott has 
received the unbounded admiration of mankind. 
6 May you, dear sir, who have these many claims 
to distinction and esteem; may you on this, the 
fiftieth anniversary of entrance into a profession 
which you have graced by your industry, your 
sagacity, your skill, your character; may you 
accept the homage of those who are engaged with 
you in the same pursuit as a sign of widely-felt 
regard and appreciation. May your vigorous frame 
preserve your power of doing good, of teaching 
truths, for many a long year. May there always 
remain with you the assurance that, as age gently 
lays its hand on you, the chilling finger of time 
will not lessen the respect, nor benumb the 
tenderness of feeling, with which old and young- 
alike regard you. 
7 Times Printing House 
725 Chestnut Street 
Philadelphia