AN ADDRESS 
TO THE 
GRADUATING CLASS 
OF THE 
MEDICAL SCHOOL IN THE UNIVERSITY AT CAMBRIDGE, 
ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1864. 
By JOHN A. ANDREW, LL.D., t 
PRESIDENT (ex officio) OF THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS. 
BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
1864. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE! 
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. CORRESPONDENCE. 
His Excellency, John A. Andrew, 
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
Dear Sir, - The Medical Faculty of Harvard University thank you 
most cordially for your kindness in complying with an invitation which 
your numerous cares and duties might well have excused you from ac- 
cepting. 
They desire to express to you the gratification they have received 
in listening to your Address; a discourse full of noble sentiments, of wise 
counsels, of eloquent exhortation, of felicitous illustration, all recom- 
mended by the dignity and grace of utterance which have so often won 
the applause of larger audiences. 
That they may preserve a faithful record of the hour you have spared 
them from the toils of office, and that their departing students may 
carry away with them the words as well as the spirit of your Valedictory 
Address, they respectfully ask of you a copy for publication. 
D. Humphreys Storer, 
J. Bacon, 
G. C. Shattuck, 
Henry I. Bowditch, 
O. W. Holmes, 
J. B. S. Jackson, 
E. H. Clarke, 
Henry J. Bigelow, 
C. Ellis. 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
Executive Department. 
Boston, March 12th, 1864. 
Gentlemen, - A copy of the Valedictory Address delivered last 
Wednesday to the Graduating Class of the Medical School, accompanies 
this reply to your exceedingly indulgent note of the 9th instant, which IV 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
I have just received. The manuscript is committed to your disposal, with 
a grateful sense of the kindness with which an effort necessarily very in- 
adequate, was received by the Class and by yourselves; and, with my 
best wishes for the prosperity of the School, and with great respect, I am 
Your friend and servant, 
JOHN A. ANDREW. 
To 
Dr. D. Humphreys Storer, 
Dr. J. Bacon, 
Dr. G. C. Shattuck, 
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, 
Dr. 0. W. Holmes, 
Dr. J. B. S. Jackson, 
Dr. E. H. Clarke, 
Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, 
Dr. C. Ellis. ADDRESS. 
I wish it were within my power, by an adequate 
performance of the task, to render a. fit return to the 
gentlemen composing the Faculty of Medicine, for 
their invitation to deliver to the graduating members 
of the Medical School, the last words, in the name 
of the University, addressed to them in their capacity 
of pupils. Indulgent as I know the gentlemen of 
the Faculty to be, I nevertheless regard their depar- 
ture from the annual custom of assigning this honor- 
able duty to one of those who have guided your 
studies and illustrated your inquiries, simply as a 
loyal recognition of the relation of the University, 
in all its branches, to the Commonwealth; and, per- 
haps, as in friendly consideration of the sincere de- 
sire always entertained on my own part to serve 
the advancement of learning and the liberality of 
its diffusion. 
Were my own studies and pursuits better adapted 
than they are to the uses of such an occasion, yet I 
should be compelled to rely on the generosity of 
an audience of scholars to overlook the incomplete- 
ness of the effort. For even then something would 
need to be pardoned, (if that temerity deserves 
your indulgence,) in consideration of the circum- 6 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
stances of care and distraction amid which it is 
undertaken. But I confess, gentlemen, that I felt 
the request to participate in this ceremony of your 
graduation to be in the nature of a command, and 
I accept the performance of this duty as an official 
service, glad to stand in relations so intimate with 
such a number of educated young men, whose ca- 
reers are now beginning in the promotion of human 
welfare by the pursuit of a profession adapted to 
the protection of man against the ills that flesh is 
heir to, the just pursuit of which will contribute 
to elevate mankind as a society of rational beings, 
as well as to improve their sanitary condition and 
their physical development. 
I gladly welcome you, gentlemen, now that you 
are passing out from the retirement of the acad- 
emy to present yourselves among your equals as 
equal candidates for the employments, the efforts, 
the achievements, and fortunes of the active world; 
I welcome you, with kind and cordial words, with 
open hand, and with a heart of cheerful hopeful- 
ness. In behalf of all those with whom you are 
henceforth to share the responsibilities and rewards 
of citizenship, and with a proud sense of the 
strength and honor to the State of your accession 
to the spheres of manhood, I hail your coming, re- 
peat the welcome, and bid you a hearty, brotherly 
God-speed. 
I may not assume to speak of subjects appro- 
priate to the occasion but demanding the treat- 
ment of professional or scientific minds. But 
the physician regarded as a citizen in a free commu- THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
7 
nity, is a subject not unworthy your contemplation, 
nor unbecoming the time or the place; and it is the 
topic of some brief observations you may be willing 
to accept from one not bred to your own profes- 
sion. It is not without some emotion that I call 
up to my mind's eye the good physician in the 
character of the patriotic citizen. It is now about 
three years that it has been a part of my daily duty 
to share in the most grave and responsible task of 
attempting to provide for many thousand men, who 
at one time or another have been in arms, on the 
field or on the deck, for the defence of their coun- 
try, the advice and treatment, in the department 
of medicine and surgery, of able, accomplished, and 
faithful surgeons and assistants, worthy to stand 
guard over the sacred citadel where is enshrined a 
hero's life, competent to assuage the mortal anguish 
of the brave, and to soften the anxieties of kindred 
hearts at home. Of a success which no one could 
have dared to anticipate, in the conduct of a task 
so delicate, I can speak publicly and without em- 
barrassment. For while I claim for the Common- 
wealth the honor of having put into the military 
service a medical staff, up to this day consisting, 
in all, of one hundred and one surgeons and one 
hundred and ninety-eight assistant-surgeons, com- 
prising some men of the most eminent merit, of no- 
ble patriotism, of distinguished professional acquire- 
ments and skill, and presenting, I believe, as a 
whole, a body of medical officers unsurpassed else- 
where by any similar number in any army,-I can 
make the claim for Massachusetts, and for the pro- 8 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
fessors of the healing art themselves, without the 
slightest personal assumption. To your profession, 
gentlemen, belongs the honor of furnishing an array 
of proficients so numerous and respectable; and to 
one of its members, in whom are united the char- 
acters of the amiable gentleman, the good physician, 
and the patriotic citizen, - I mean the Surgeon-Gen- 
eral of the Commonwealth,1 - and to those other 
eminent and most liberal minded exemplars of your 
calling, who have contributed to the State, in the 
capacity of a Board of Examiners,2 their invaluable 
service, - to them belongs the credit of the selec- 
tion. And beside the three hundred members of 
the medical staff of our regiments, more than one 
hundred gentlemen of the profession, including some 
of the most distinguished practitioners of surgery, 
have been sent forward from the head-quarters of 
the Commonwealth, on notice from the Department 
of War, to repair to the battle-ground after some 
of our severest actions. They obeyed our summons 
without hesitation or delay, and gave their efforts 
and their skill while the pressing character of a 
grave exigency continued to need them, receiving 
1 Dr. William J. Dale. 
2 The members of the Medical Commission, from the time of its consti- 
tution in April, 1861, as a Board of Examiners of Candidates for appoint- 
ment as Surgeons and Assistant Surgeons of the Massachusetts Volun- 
teer Regiments, to this date, are as follows: - Dr. James Jackson, 
(resigned). Dr. George Hayward, (died). Dr. S. D. Townsend. 
Dr. John Ware, (resigned). Dr. Samuel G. Howe, (resigned). 
Dr. J. Mason Warren. Dr. Samuel Cabot, Jr. Dr. Richard M. 
Hodges. Dr. George H. Lyman, (resigned). Dr. George H. Gay. 
Dr. William J. Dale. Dr. John C. Dalton, (died). Dr. Robert 
W. Hooper. Dr. Samuel L. Abbot. THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
9 
no reward but that priceless compensation, - the 
thought of a good man's duty nobly done. A large 
number, I know not how many, of civil surgeons 
from Massachusetts, have been employed by the 
Surgeon-General of the United States as contract- 
surgeons in the Army; others have, in like manner, 
served on board our Naval vessels and war steamers; 
and others still have served under the direction of 
the Sanitary Commission; - all devoting them- 
selves to the saving of human life, to diminishing 
the sufferings of war, to restoring the wounded and 
the diseased, and performing, in the spirit of pa- 
triotic citizens, the duties of an enlightened and 
liberal profession. Many of those who marched 
from the Commonwealth as members of the med- 
ical staffs of Massachusetts regiments have found 
promotion to the rank of surgeons of brigade, med- 
ical inspectors of divisions, directors on the staffs 
of corps commanders, or chiefs of army hospitals. 
They have carried with them into the service such 
ideas of public duty, such principles of honor, and 
such proficiency in their humane pursuit, as to have 
attracted universal commendation, reflected credit 
upon the reputation of the schools and profession at 
home, and to have made the very commission of a 
Massachusetts medical officer a passport to confi- 
dence and favor. 
Eight gentlemen, of those who entered the ser- 
vice from this Commonwealth, commissioned on our 
regimental staffs, have yielded up their lives, vic- 
tims to disease, exposure, and over-toil. To one of 
them, who was among the earliest in the spring of 10 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
1861 to offer himself to the work, I must allude by 
name. I can never forget the impression his origi- 
nal offer of service, made in person, produced on 
my own mind. Of mature age, - having passed the 
time when exposure to life in the Army could often 
be expected, - of ripe and large experience in some 
of the most difficult and the most intellectual duties 
of the profession, the possessor of a fame perma- 
nent and wide, a man of great ability and of large 
acquirements, Dr. Luther V. Bell came out, at once, 
from the retirement and comparative leisure his for- 
mer labors had richly earned. With youthful ardor, 
but with the grave and weighty sense of a thought- 
ful, matured, and philosophic mind, he proposed for 
himself the hardest and most active service, pointed 
to his younger brethren the path of duty and honor 
and led the way. In camp, on the march, in hospital 
and on the field, he was alike a model of earnest 
fidelity, of accomplished ability, of modest patience, 
and of that subordination of self to duty which 
renders a great man entirely great. And when he 
had ceased forever from his labors, his remains, 
reclaimed by his kindred and his neighbors, by the 
city where he dwelt and the State he had adorned, 
received those burial rites and funereal honors be- 
coming to one who, as a civilian and a soldier, a 
man of science and a public servant of the Com- 
monwealth, had illustrated civic virtue in the ex- 
ample of his life and of his death. 
Although the surgeons attached to our Army are 
devoted to a duty sacred as humanity, and serve 
alike, when humanity requires it, the needs of ene- THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
11 
mies not less than of friends, we have not, during 
the existing War of the Rebellion, found that either 
they, or the ministers of divine mercy, have been 
permitted to enjoy immunity from captivity and 
death, although present on the field to alleviate suf- 
fering, save the wounded, and soften the travail of 
mortality. In many instances our surgeons have 
suffered the hardships of prisoners of war; the 
wounded and dying been deprived their aid; and 
five of our own medical staff, falling upon the battle- 
field, have breathed their last breath by the side of 
those they had come to rescue or relieve. Thus 
eight by diseases incident to the exposures of mili- 
tary employment, and five by the perils of battle 
-thirteen medical officers1 from our own Common- 
wealth - during these three years of war, have laid 
1 The names of these medical officers and the corps to which they 
were attached, are as follows: - 
Died from disease or accident, in the line of their duty :- Dr. Johnson 
Clarke, Surgeon's Mate 3d Regiment Mass. Vol. Militia, detailed as 
Surgeon of Battalion Massachusetts troops at Fortress Monroe, subse- 
quently organized as 29th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Dr. Luther 
V. Bell, Surgeon 11th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry, promoted to be 
Brigade Surgeon of Volunteers, afterwards to be Medical Director of 
General Hooker's Division. Dr. Ephraim K. Sanborn, Surgeon 31st 
Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Dr. Ariel J. Cummings, Surgeon 42d 
Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry, captured at Galveston, held as prisoner 
by the rebels, died in a rebel prison. Dr. Robert Ware, Surgeon 44th 
Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant .Surgeon Neil K. Gunn, 1st 
Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant Surgeon James Wightman, 
2d Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant Surgeon Nathaniel W. 
French, 55th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. 
Killed by the enemy. - Surgeon S. Foster Haven, Jr., 15th Regi- 
ment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant Surgeon Albert A. Kendall, 
12th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant Surgeon John C. Hill, 
19th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry, died in hospital from wounds re- 
ceived on the battle-field. Assistant Surgeon Edward II. Revere, 12 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
down their lives, giving to their country and to 
mankind the last pledge of patriotism, valor, and con- 
scientious devotion to the behests of duty. Others 
- not a few - broken in health, disabled for such 
exacting labors, responsibilities and exposures, have 
been relieved in season to permit their return, in 
civil life, to less perilous spheres of usefulness. 
I must not omit to mention that three of our 
staff-surgeons have been relieved to accept positions 
more exclusively military. One is a Major of Cav- 
alry; another is a Captain; and the third1 accepted 
a Lieutenantcy of Cavalry, only to die by an ac- 
cidental injury received in the line of his duty 
before he reached the field. Another Massachusetts 
physician, wdio had passed through the war of the 
Crimea as a Surgeon of Omer Pacha, entered the 
First Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers 
as a Captain, afterwards commanded the Thirty-Fifth 
as its Colonel, lost an arm at the battle of South 
Mountain, and is now in command at Norfolk, Vir- 
ginia, as a Brigadier-General of Volunteers. 
Two of the members of the Medical Commission 
of this Commonwealth have died while in its service, 
- Dr. George Hayward and Dr. John C. Dalton. 
20th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry. Assistant Surgeon Franklin L. 
Hunt, 27th Regiment Mass. Vol. Infantry, killed by a rebel assassin. 
Besides these, Dr. E. G. Pierce, of Holyoke, and Dr. J. H. Morse, of 
Lawrence, employed in the service of the United States as contract sur- 
geons, died of disease contracted in the line of their duty; and Dr. James 
M. Newhall, of Sutton, engaged in the same service, was drowned in a 
chivalrous attempt to rescue some women and children from on board 
a sinking transport vessel. 
1 Lieut. Edward B. Mason, 2d Regiment Mass. Vol. Cavalry, for- 
merly Assistant Surgeon 1st Regiment Mass. Vol. Heavy Artillery. THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
13 
The former, an eminent surgeon, a member of the 
Corporation of the University, was among the ear- 
liest of the medical men who came to the assistance 
of the State, and among the most constant, upright, 
and efficient. Dr. Dalton's whole heart, also, was 
in the National cause. When, in 1862, the " Daniel 
Webster " steamed into port with two hundred 
wounded soldiers on board, happening to be aware 
of their arrival he reported to the Surgeon-General 
with cordial offers of help. "What can I do for 
you, Doctor?" he asked. He was answered: "Jump 
on to the box of this ambulance, and help me see 
these wounded soldiers to the hospital." The vene- 
rable patriot, ready to give his heart and hand and 
distinguished professional aid wherever the exigency 
of the moment called for him, mounted the box and 
rode up State Street with his charge. I have heard 
of much younger and inferior men, whose sense of 
their own personal dignity would be contented with 
nothing less than the leading hand in a capital 
operation. 
Another,1 (whose family name is eminent in divinity 
as he has himself made it in medicine,) having given 
his son to his country, (the noble-hearted surgeon 
of the Forty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, who 
died at his post in North Carolina,) was compelled 
to retire from the Commission; though he cannot 
withdraw from the public memory, nor its honor 
and gratitude. 
While I seem to pause in order to pay a respect- 
ful tribute to individual men, cultivators of medical 
1 Dr. John Ware. 14 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
and surgical science, I pray you to remember that 
although no words of human praise can increase 
the great reward of those who have passed beyond 
mortality, and while this passing allusion is only 
just, alike to the dead and to the living, still its 
usefulness and intent are for your own encourage- 
ment and instruction, are to remind you that for 
yourselves, also, the country has its duties and its 
honors. 
The return of peace, which, even if delayed be- 
yond our hopes, must nevertheless be comparatively 
soon, will remit the great body of your profession 
who will have engaged in the service of the Army 
or the Navy, to the employments of civil life, in 
which, after all, the large majority of the whole 
fraternity will have always been occupied. Nor 
will the opportunities of peaceful life present less 
certain, less numerous, or less important, scarcely 
less brilliant, means and opportunities for lasting 
and general usefulness to society. But, whether in 
peace or war, or under whatever circumstances of 
an external character you may live hereafter, your 
relation to human society, your membership of that 
grand corporation, the Civil State, imposes duties 
and confers privileges, needing only to be under- 
stood by all young men, in order to be valued. 
The secret of happiness, of genuine success, I verily 
believe lies in the just appreciation of our lives as 
golden opportunities for industrious, brave, and de- 
voted work. 
In this spirit writes Sir Thomas Browne, in his 
" Religio Medici " : THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
15 
" I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my 
profession ; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice 
at famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacs in expectation of 
malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses : I rejoice not at 
unwholesome springs, nor unseasonable winters : my prayer goes 
with the husbandman's; I desire everything in its proper season, 
that neither men nor the times be out of temper. Let me be sick 
myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease 
unto me; I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own neces- 
sities : when I do him no good, methinks it is scarce honest gain; 
though I confess it is but the worthy salary of our well-intended 
endeavors. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that, be- 
sides death, there are diseases incurable : yet not for my own sake, 
or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake 
of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own." 
The rightful claims of mankind upon those who 
have enjoyed especial advantages of knowledge and 
intellectual culture, are always of commanding im- 
portance. They cannot be disregarded. As the 
gifts of intelligence and of all intellectual wealth 
are more precious than any material riches, so also 
is the capacity of him to whom they are given the 
more especially fitted to use them. And in their 
very use in the spirit of a liberal and enlarged be- 
neficence, while he fulfils his trust he also enlarges 
his store. I beg to remind you, then, that it is not 
for yourselves alone, nor chiefly, that the light of 
science, streaming down through all the ages, that 
the accumulated, concentrated, and select results of 
study, experience, and discovery, have visited and 
instructed your understandings. Do not suspect me 
of preaching, as we sometimes thoughtlessly or even 
derisively call it when we wish to evade an appeal 
to the better side of our nature to which the will is 16 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
inhospitable. There is nothing more practically and 
simply true than that success, abiding and secure, 
the happiness and usefulness of a professional career, 
is proportioned to the purity, singleness and gene- 
rosity of the purpose with which it is pursued. No 
thinking man has lived to middle age who has not 
seen, with his own eyes, brilliant powers thrown 
away, capacity for lasting impression on society 
and for solid happiness as the reward of real good 
accomplished, made the forfeit of the poor and self- 
ish pursuit of changeful Fortune, or uncertain Fame, 
or inglorious Ease. What a defeat is such a life ! 
Will you treat your profession as a trade, out of 
which merely to make your bread, while you indulge 
every whim or fancy of a mind to which duty is 
irksome and fruitful toil a mere fatigue ? Then you 
sacrifice the hope of honorable competence, of solid 
reputation, the sweet and infinite satisfactions of a 
worthy life. Will you use it as a mere instrument 
of sordid gain ? Then you sacrifice your love for 
Science, who stands waiting to feed you with immor- 
tal food, and to open the rich storehouse of all her 
truth, while you dwarf your soul to the worship of 
the very dust she treads under her feet. Will you 
make your profession only a stepping-stone to pre- 
ferment ? Then you strangle the spiritual and in- 
tellectual progeny which might bless your declining 
age, in order to reign for awhile the heartless, aim- 
less pretender of an hour, in a hollow and deceitful 
prosperity. 
The solicitude with which we naturally contem- 
plate the future, if it doos not degenerate into weak THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
17 
anxiety, is not unreasonable. The desire of excel- 
lence is not wholly to be disconnected from a sense 
of the value of other men's good opinion. A certain 
yearning for a proper sphere for generous ambition, 
a true appreciation of the rewards of meritorious 
effort, a manly tone of self-respect, are all, of course, 
desirable, nor are they in any sense unworthy. But 
when one sees so much and so many great and 
good things waiting to be done, lying unaccom- 
plished only for want of the men of faith, patience, 
intellect, and action; when we consider the vastness 
and variety of opportunity opening to the young 
men of America, who have really fitted themselves 
to serve their country and to do their part in 
strengthening or enriching it,-who are willing to 
buckle on their armor and contend for a brave mas- 
tery; I think it seems as if self-interest, even, ad- 
vises only that they should do justice to their own 
capacities and the means lying open before them, 
throw aside all weakness and all narrowness, and be 
faithful to themselves, generous to mankind, consider- 
ing how bountiful is the Divine Providence to them. 
There is a margin for mistake and misadventure for 
which all of us must allow. But it is usually and on 
the whole but a margin only. We must be willing 
to accept our mischances, and even our own errors, 
reckoning them for what in truth they are to cour- 
ageous, persevering men, as illustrations of the limi- 
tations of everything which is simply human and not 
supernatural. Gentlemen, as citizens of a country 
larger than Europe, possessing elements of greater 
wealth and greater power than Europe, of capacity 18 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
to feed and support a population exceeding the 
present numbers of the human race, you have only 
to develop yourselves, and to apply your own pow- 
ers and acquirements. The first duty of the citizen 
is to regard himself as made for his country, not 
to regard his country as made for him. If he will 
but subordinate his own selfhood, his own ambi- 
tions, enough to perceive how great is his country 
and how infinitely less is he, is it not manifest that 
he presently becomes a sharer in her glory, a par- 
taker of her greatness ? He is strengthened by her 
strength, and inspired by her intellectual and moral 
life. While he contributes his little to the grand 
treasury of her various wealth of power and pos- 
session, he draws therefrom vigor and support with 
every breath he breathes. Standing utterly alone, 
what man is anything ? But associated with his 
fellows, he receives the instruments, the means, the 
opportunities, and the facilities for action. 
In no community in the world is there brighter 
promise for competent young men than there is 
here. For the sphere is so vast, the ways are all 
open, and all possibilities are free to all men. 
It is only necessary that a young man of educa- 
tion should be willing to serve faithfully, to waste 
no time in dreams and passionate longings, but 
to make the most of himself, by being useful and 
by proving his capacity, as occasions naturally occur. 
His time will surely come. There is never a surplus 
of competent and trustworthy men. They are always 
in request. Places are always in waiting for them. 
But the men themselves do not always at the right THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
19 
time appear. Suppose that the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts should avail itself of its privilege to 
hold the lead in intellectual enterprise, and should 
establish on a broad foundation, on a liberal plan, 
an institution of science and learning, adapted, in 
the words of the Act of Congress, " to provide 
colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the me- 
chanic arts," "to teach such branches of learning 
as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, 
. ... in order to promote the liberal and practical 
education of the industrial classes in the several 
pursuits and professions of life," - then a staff of 
professors would be demanded, competent to teach, 
competent to erect and maintain a high standard 
of excellence in the college. Suppose, also, a mili- 
tary academy, which ought not longer to be omitted 
from our scheme of public education, and a plan for 
which has been recently delineated and the argu- 
ment ably and clearly set forth by a Commission at 
the head of which is an eminent citizen of Massa- 
chusetts whose whole life is an illustration of how 
much and in how many ways a citizen may serve 
the State,-and suppose that this, too, shall present 
its claim for intellect, manhood, and virtue, embod- 
ied in officers fit to direct the studies and form the 
minds of the youth on whose instructed intelligence, 
cultivated powers, vigorous arms, pure and manly 
hearts, the safety of a National life may one day re- 
pose. Consider how many and how diverse are the 
branches of knowledge which thus would require 
professors for their illustration. Remember, indeed, 
that nearly, if not quite, the whole circle of the 20 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
sciences would demand representatives in the staff 
of lecturers and teachers these institutions ought 
to command. And then, for a moment, imagine 
yourselves set to the task of finding the men - 
even though you were free to select them from the 
entire country - whose services you could control, 
and in whom those offices would find power and 
adornment. I assure you, gentlemen, that I believe 
that while your applicants might be ever so many, 
you would find but few superior candidates not al- 
ready well placed and advantageously occupied. 
In this very connection allow me to remark, that 
the special cultivation of some one or more of the 
natural sciences, such as Natural History, Chemistry, 
(general and agricultural,) Zoology, Animal Physiol- 
ogy, Mineralogy, Botany, and the like, pursued in 
connection with the study and practice of medicine 
and surgery, offers not only the attraction of in- 
trinsic interest, but of appropriateness and use- 
fulness, in such a professional career. Thus, with 
greater effect will the practitioner be able to per- 
form his fitting share in one of the greater duties 
of the citizen, namely, to assist in the unspeak- 
ably grand and ennobling work of the education of 
the people. A faithful and painstaking medical 
adviser, well instructed in his duties, an expert in 
his own calling, is what the sick and anxious patient 
covets by his bedside. One who can hope for him 
when he is himself discouraged, who can seem to 
clear away the mists which disease gathers about 
him. But the jaded, frightened, anxious patient, 
struggling for a straw of promise, clinging to any THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
21 
hope, however flimsy and foundationless, regards 
your profession as a mystery and not a science. 
The mere pretender who promises much, will often 
displace the patient student and watchful practi- 
tioner, to whose clear, instructed mind no promise 
comes which, on his conscience, he can hold out. 
Empiricism, blind, ignorant, reckless, pretending, and 
presumptuous, scatters its pills, spreads its balsams, 
pours out its universal catholicons, promises life, 
health, rejuvenation; and, unconscious indeed how 
bottomless is the abyss of folly out of which all 
such pretensions rise, cheats, ensnares, and at last 
destroys a thousand victims, while honest learn- 
ing, sincerely appreciating the limitations of human 
power to grapple with disease, is devoutly saving a 
single one. The time will come when a better 
state of public information concerning elementary 
truths of natural science will dig the grave of ev- 
ery such superstition-for superstition it is - and 
the trade of the charlatan, who plays for money, 
making human health and human life the forfeit, 
must pass away. But the profession of medicine 
must first be true to the character which belongs 
to it. You must be liberal cultivators of liberal 
studies. You must promote the sciences, you must 
diffuse their knowledge, you must take the unin- 
structed into your confidence. You, you, must break 
the spell, by never playing the quack yourselves. 
You must take plain, simple men and women 
into your confidence. You must break the spell 
of folly, by making war on ignorance, not only 
as doctors, but as citizens and philosophers. Go 22 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
around into the country schools and bear testimony 
against a crowded, heated room, a fetid atmosphere, 
against the confinement of children, crooked down 
behind their desks, without exercise or oxygen; 
insist on vital air for human lungs, on exercise for 
human limbs and muscles, on rest and variety for 
the little frames and brains of children ; condemn, 
condemn the fatal devastating headaches, the lassi- 
tude, the torpor, of violated nature; declare that 
there is in all God's universe no elixir viton but his 
own free air; declare in the name of science, of a 
knowledge which you can demonstrate as you go, 
- and take care that you do demonstrate it to all 
who have the capacity to receive knowledge,-that 
you cannot cure, and cannot even try to cure, by 
drugs or lotions, such disease. In this way alone 
will the terrible evil of senseless, criminal, and de- 
structive tampering with life and health, by ignorant 
drugging and quack remedies, be ever exterminated. 
In this way only will your calling vindicate itself, 
by rising to the height of its own occasion. But if, 
mystifying your own calling, and indulging the 
whims of prejudice and the exaggerations of the 
uninitiated, you exercise yourselves in the spirit of 
empiricism, in the high office you are about to as- 
sume, you will accomplish your own degradation; 
you will invite the competition of every universal 
quacksalver, every conjuror, every healer by magic 
or by second sight, and you will be forever worsted 
in such a contest. In the mutual appeal to heated, 
helpless, perturbed imaginings, to charms and pres- 
tidigitation, the professors of such necromancy can 
always win against you. THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
23 
But, beside presenting a view quite so profes- 
sional, I urge in behalf of the claims of society on 
young men of your calling, upon much more gen- 
eral grounds, the influence of your example and the 
power of your assistance in the cultivation and dis- 
semination of scientific truth. How to observe and 
how to think; how to use and appropriate what 
nature places before our eyes, under our feet, into 
our hands; how to collect and arrange facts, reduce 
them to order, observe their series, extract their 
laws; - of all things that is what we need to know. 
The medical profession can do more to put educa- 
tion in the best direction, by the fact of the ten- 
dency of their proper studies to the cultivation of 
positive knowledge and real science, than can any 
other body of citizens in our American society. If 
I am thought to overrate that class of studies, the 
value of that kind of knowledge, which, alas ! I 
myself can only admire,-standing at the gate of the 
temple I may not enter! - I pray you and every 
objector to remember that there is no province in 
the vast domain of human thought which does not 
depend upon the knowledge learned through the 
sciences of the natural world. Can metaphysical 
inquiry and abstract speculation be relied on without 
the guidance of exact science ? Let some of the 
speculations of Plato, of Aristotle, themselves misled 
by misconceptions of nature, stand for the answer. 
Ask the degradation of religion, of worship, of ideas, 
of the intellect itself; the substitution of gross, vulgar 
superstition for knowledge; the sham miracles, the 
sorcery, the charm-cures of the Middle Ages, from 24 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
which the Christian Church and Christian society 
had to be delivered by the Jews and the Saracens, 
who studied nature, cultivated natural philosophy, 
mathematics, chemistry, and medicine. There is 
scarcely an error of speculative philosophy which a 
more adequate perception or understanding of man 
and nature, in their visible conditions and visible re- 
lations, might not avert or help correct. 
It was Lord Bacon himself, when contemplating 
" the art of interpreting nature," who declared in 
words which you would have deemed the language 
of enthusiasm, if they had not been uttered by the 
Great Master of Philosophy: 
" The introduction of famous discoveries appears to hold by far 
the first place among human actions ; and this was the judgment 
of the former ages. For to the authors of inventions they awarded 
divine honors ; while to those who did good service in the State 
(such as founders of cities and empires, legislators, saviours of their 
country from long-endured evils, quellers of tyrannies, and the like) 
they decreed no higher honors than heroic. And certainly if a man 
rightly compare the two, he will find that this judgment of antiquity 
was just. For the benefits of discoveries may extend to the whole 
race of man, civil benefits only to particular places; the latter last 
not beyond a few ages, the former through all time. Moreover, the 
reformation of a State in civil matters is seldom brought in without 
violence and confusion ; but discoveries carry blessings with them, 
and confer benefits without causing harm or sorrow to any. 
" Again, discoveries are as it were new creations, and imitations 
of God's works; as well sang the poet: - 
" To man's frail race great Athens, long ago, 
First gave the seed whence waving harvests grow, 
And recreated all our life below." 
The power and the habit of observing is one 
which, in the practice of medicine, you will never THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
25 
overrate. The diagnosis of disease will task to the 
utmost the best powers of critical and analytic ob- 
servation. But while you are improving your own 
capacity to observe, enlarging and enriching your 
own stock of knowledge, by cultivating and extend- 
ing the studies of science among the youth at school 
and all learners whom you may influence, the effect 
on the movement of human society, of which you 
may be agents, will be forever immeasurable. You 
may lay mankind under a contribution of gratitude 
which time will never repay. 
A great painter learned his best combinations of 
colors from the wings of butterflies. The best me- 
chanic's bit is said to have been invented by copy- 
ing the tool for piercing or boring wood, supplied by 
nature to a little insect. The invention of the sus- 
pension bridge, by Sir Samuel Brown, sprung from 
the sight of a spider's-web hanging across the path 
of the inventor, observed on a morning walk, when 
his mind was occupied with the idea of bridging the 
Tweed, for which purpose he was endeavoring to 
find the best kind of structure. Following the hint 
of the spider's instinctive ingenuity, Science hangs 
across Niagaras fabrications of human art capable of 
supporting whole armies on their march. A lobster's 
shell on his dining-table suggested to Watt the model 
of the iron tube through which he afterwards carried 
water along the river's bed under the Clyde. The 
little ship-worm taught Brunel how to construct the 
tunnel under the Thames. Galileo, in his youth, no- 
ticed the measured beat of a swinging lamp hanging 
from the roof of the Cathedral at Pisa, whence his 26 
ADDRESS BEFORE 
fertile, keen-eyed genius inferred a method of meas- 
uring time. The idea, half a century later, like the 
fulfilment of a prophecy, reappeared in his inven- 
tion of the pendulum. The old verger had left his 
oil-lamp carelessly swinging, daily, no doubt for 
many a year, and countless visitors had observed 
its motion, but had seen no law of nature in its 
movement, nor even perceived the equality of its 
oscillations. Galileo, but eighteen years old, a stu- 
dent of medicine, then without any knowledge of 
mathematics, studying his Galen and Hippocrates in 
the pursuit of his profession, guided by the predes- 
tination of genius, caught the hint of an idea after- 
wards wrought out in years of progress and ripened 
in the maturity of his greatness, which introduces 
to the knowledge of man the very mysteries of the 
starry spheres. 
The progress now making in agriculture, in the 
application of science to mechanics, in all the use- 
ful arts, is at once proof and encouragement. Down 
from the very skies drop blessings on more fertile 
fields, into happier homes, into wiser councils of 
town and State, - the reward of any people who 
enter into communion with Nature, listen to her 
voice, and study obediently her laws. 
The concurrent pursuit of some department of 
learning not in the direct line of your necessity 
as medibal men, I hold moreover to be wanted, for 
the integrity and health of your own minds. It 
calms, elevates, restores the jaded powers, clears the 
intellect, cools the judgment, and raises the moral 
tone. It makes life less a drudgery, and more a THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
27 
liberty and a joy. From morbid anatomy,- from 
human physiology, which you must perforce study 
always, in connection with disease,-from the thought 
of sick men and mortality, from professional reward 
and anxiety, turn aside for some precious moments, 
every day, and be devout, happy scholars and free- 
men of the universe. 
Gentlemen, to-day, as doctors of medicine, fully 
admitted to the honors of the profession, life opens 
before you, all anew. Having bid you welcome 
to its cares and privileges, it remains for me, in 
behalf of the University, to bid you now farewell. 
Hereafter and elsewhere you will meet those who 
have taught you here, on that broader stage where 
all alike will stand before the criticism of your 
contemporaries, will await the reward of history, and 
the merciful judgments of Heaven. Let me ven- 
ture to advise you that it well befits us younger 
men, in shaping our own careers, to follow some- 
what, with becoming veneration, the examples of 
those who have been permitted by length of days, 
by intellectual and moral eminence in their profes- 
sions, to be crowned with that cordial, grateful honor 
gladly paid by society to venerable age fruitful 
in wisdom and works and made beautiful and serene 
by virtue. I might have spared you these, my many 
words, content with directing your ingenuous minds 
for an example of diligence and fidelity, success 
and honor, to the character and the life of that 
most genuine man and most wise physician, for so 
many years Professor in this Medical School, of the 28 
ADDRESS BEFORE THE MEDICAL CLASS. 
Theory and Practice of Medicine,1- the beloved and 
venerable Nestor of your profession. Of whom, in 
honest eulogy, could ever have been more truly 
written the touching, manly lines, in which John- 
son embalmed the memory of his friend, The Good 
Physician : - 
" When fainting nature called for aid, 
And hovering death prepared the blow, 
His vigorous remedy displayed 
The power of art without the show. 
" In misery's darkest cavern known, 
His useful care was ever nigh ; 
Where hopeless anguish poured his groan, 
And lonely want retired to die. 
" No summons mocked by chill delay; 
No petty gain disdained by pride; 
The modest want of every day 
The toil of every day supplied." 
Your lives, gentlemen, will have been worthy, 
happy, and useful indeed to mankind, if they may 
deserve such an epitaph. 
1 Dr. James Jackson.