NASHVILLE 
|jmrnal ®f |ltbkine antr Hrargenp 
EXTEA. 
DRS. W. K. BOWLING, R. C. FOSTER & G. M. BLACKIE. 
EDITED BY 
[From the Nimiher for 1858.] 
AMERICAN MEDICMj AND NORTH 
AMERICAN MEDICAL REVIEW. 
From the last number of the North American Medical Re- 
view we copy the following remarks from the Senior Editor, 
Dr. Gross, in relation to the late meeting of the American 
Medical Association: 
“The recent meeting of the American Medical Association 
at Washington proved, as was anticipated, to be one of the 
most agreeable, as it was one of the largest, assembles of the 
kind that has ever convened. The number of delegates present 
was nearly or quite five hundred, representing, with two or 
three exceptions, every State in the Union. Even California 
had her member, in the person of Dr. Harvey, who was one of 
the few passengers saved, snd the only one of five physicians on 
the occasion of the sinking of the ill-fated steamer Central 
America, on her way from the Isthmus to New York, a few 
months ago. The proceedings of the meeting, although pos- 
sessing a certain kind ofinterest to those who are fond of med- 
ical politics, we do not think are of sufficient importance to 
justify the space which their publication in our pages would 
require. The number and value of the contributions, as well 
as can be ascertained, will equal if not exceed those of any 
previous session; and when the Transactions shall appear, we 
shall take pleasure in laying before our readers abstracts of the 
the more interesting papers. 2 
“The meeting was held in the lecture-room of the Smithso- 
nian Institute, where the delegates were welcomed to Wash- 
ington in a pleasant speech by Dr. Harvey Lindsley, Chairman 
of the Committee of Arrangements. The retiring President, 
Dr. Paul P. Eve, then delivered an address, consisting mostly 
of a sketh of the history of the Association, and a statement 
of what it had accomplished, closing with a decided, but we 
think rather problematical, assertions concerning its moral 
power. Upon this last theme, and in allusion to the controll- 
ing influence assumed for the Association over medical educa- 
tion, and more particularly over the medical colleges of the 
country, the worthy President made use of the following ex- 
travagant language:—“lt has,” he says, “but to speak on this 
point, and it will be obeyed; for it is now too late for any phy- 
sician to oppose, or any medical college to set at defiance the 
moral power of this body,” Now, if we mistake not, this all- 
powerful body has repeatedly lifted its trumpet-tongued voice 
against the medical schools,—its messengers in the form of 
committee-men, raising themselves as high as the two short 
stirrups of the saddle on which they sit will permit, and in 
true Quixotic tones summoning the windmills to lay down 
their arms and surrender; but the latter, not excepting the one 
in which the President is interested, unimpressible by what 
seems to be a vox et prceterea nihil, continue to turn their sails 
to the favoring breeze, from whatever quarter it may come, 
and go on grinding out doctors in the old tic-tac style, stopping 
only now and then to have a rotten or worn-out cog replaced 
with one of better stuff, or to have the stones set a little closer, 
to suit the increasing demand for a finer product. 
“We have no idea that the Association, as at present or- 
ganized, consisting, as everybody knows, of a large majority of 
what are called, curiously enough, lay members of the profes- 
sion, and evincing as it does, in a greater or less degree, a sen- 
timent of hostility toward the medical colleges, will ever suc- 
ceed in accomplishing its high and worthy object in the matter 
of medical education, until it shall assume a more deferential 
tone toward those in whom the power practically resides. It is 
the purest fustian gravely to announce to the medical faculties 
throughout the country that they dare not disobey the com- 
mands of the National Association; when it is a well known 
fact that the latter, notwithstanding the great moral power 
claimed for it by the late President, has not succeeded, after a 
labor of ten long years, in incorporating a single one of its propo- 
sitions, among the requirements for graduation heretofore agreed 
upon by the leading schools. But we think that the Associa- 
tion is coming to its senses upon this question, for, at the meet- 
ing just held, a committee-resolution was adopted, requesting all the schools to send their delegates next year to a special 
meeting, to be held at the place agreed upon by the Associa- 
tion, one day in advance of the latter, to concert such measures 
as they may deem best for the improvement of the present sys- 
tem of public teaching; the result of their deliberations to be 
presented in a report to the Association, In other words, the 
Association has appointed a committee, consisting of all the 
delegates of the medical schools, to ffiake a report upon the 
subject of medical education at the next meeting. If the 
schools, and more especially those that are generally looked 
upon as the leading institutions of the kind, will take this 
matter into hand, some good may possibly be accomplished; 
and yet it requires no prophetic vision to discern almost insur- 
mountable difficulties in the way. We need refer to only a 
single one, the question of clinical instruction. Besides teach- 
ing is admitted, by all sober-thinking minds, to be essential to 
an adequate course of instruction, before the student applies for 
graduation, and yet not one-half the schools are enabled to offer 
any more in this way than the occasional introduction of a pa- 
tient into the lecture-room of the college. But still, we hope 
for something, undefined though that something be to our 
minds at present, and shall lend our feeble efforts in promoting 
the success of the experiment,” 
We quote the above in extenso that Br. Gross may have the 
full advantage of his argument. Besides it is our habit. 
That Dr. Eve’s address, noble, manly, and to the point as it 
was, a great State paper, emanating from a great brain, under 
the promptings of exalted impulses, should fail to secure the 
good opinion of Dr, Gross, neither astonishes nor puzzles us. 
The horizon of the one, from the altitude of his stand point, 
must forever remain a region of glory shut out from the vision 
of the other. For this the editor of the Review is not to be 
held responsible. The blind can not form any conception of 
light. When Dr. Johnson had exhausted his great descriptive 
abilities upon a blind man, and rejoiced at their success, upon 
his listener declaring that he “understood it,” he was suddenly 
overwhelmed with disappointment upon hearing the blind man 
repeating, “ yes, yes, I now understand it, I am sure it tastes 
like sugary The afflicted deserve consideration for their mis- 
fortunes, and the benevolent will never quote them save as we 
do now, in apology for the sufferer. 
The editor of the Review was present at the late meeting of the Association, and had enacted before him a drama, demon- 
strating a force of moral power, which scores of the oldest and 
most eminent members declared that they had before no idea was 
resident in that body, and which seemed to astonish every one, 
yet Dr. Gross, haying eyes saw not, and left with a full convic- 
tion that all such exhibitions of moral force were sheer moon- 
shine, or “fustian,” It is related of an honest Dutchman that 
having returned whole by a miracle of mercy, from an aerial 
excursion upon which he had been precipitated by the explo- 
sion of a powder mill, he exclaimed, with the most provoking 
sang froid, “111 be drot if powder can do much any how— 
goot for noise and schmoke, but der fire goes out ver quick.” 
We regret exceedingly that our friend of the Review did not 
avail himself of the occasion of the presence of that vast as- 
sembly at Washington, in the heat of the test of moral power, 
to give utterance to the views which he since publishes so 
coolly. He had then and there a fair opportunity to impress 
his views upon that great assembly, but he opened not his 
mouth. When the Association was bearing down with a forty 
locomotive power upon a medical brother, he kept quiet in his 
seat, when the views he subsequently coolly writes out in his 
closet, would have benefitted— 
“One lone, unarmed, unfriended man,” 
who, single-breasted, was battling with the Philadelphia oxy- 
hydrogen blow pipe, backed by the Association, until his very 
marrow seemed in danger of being melted down, the valiant 
knight of the Review sat upon his shield with his lance reposing 
at his feet, and his plumed hat beside him, like Achilles in the 
stern of his boat, oblivious of the clangor of conflict. But when 
the friend with whom he agreed as to the power of the Asso- 
ciation, was hors du combat, after fighting manfully against des- 
perate odds, and the conquerors had diffused themselves over 
thirty States, the hero of the Review claps on his helmet, 
mounts his Rozinante, lance in hand, and defies the power of 
all Israeli 
We ask every member of the American Medical Associ- 
ation, present at the last meeting, if it is not his deliberate 
opinion that had Dr. Gross embodied in a speech before that 5 
body the editorial we have quoted, would he not havo been 
the same hour expelled? For ourself observant as we were of 
the temper and bearing of that body, we have not a doubt of 
it. We do not say it would have been right, and we should 
in that event have resisted it, but we believe it would have 
been done, and we have as little doubt that Dr. Gross thinks 
so himself. At all events he was entirely too prudent to make 
the experiment 
Dr. Wood, of New York, Surgeon to Bellevue Hospital and 
lecturer upon Surgery in the great Amphitheatre of that Insti- 
tution, is a very small man physically, but America has pro- 
duced but few Surgeons that stood so high professionally, and 
among that number Dr, Gross’s admirers will not attempt to 
place him. Well, Dr. Wood was Chairman of the Committee 
upon Medical Education at the late meeting. This gentleman 
is the committeeman to whom Dr. Gross so elegantly refers in 
the plural as “raising themselves as high as the two short stir- 
rups of the saddle on which they sit will permit, and in true 
■Quixotic tones,” &c. We do not think the manners of the edi- 
tor of the Review have improved very much since his return to 
his native atmosphere. While out South he was more respect- 
ful. As to the power, moral or otherwise, of the Association 
over the medical schools, it as a body has no medical schools 
of her own to regulate, but it is absolutely ridiculous in Dr. 
Gross, to pretend that the medical men of the nation, including 
himself can not frown down an organization calling itself a 
school. 
The most amusing part of our editor’s article, however, is 
his allusion to the tic-tac tub-mills employed in grinding out 
Doctors, And he says the one in which Prof Eve is teacher 
is no exception to the rule, “stopping now and then to have a 
rotten or worn out cog replaced by better stuff.” Our friend is 
not the first philosopher who made his own experience the 
measure of that of others. The school of which Dr, Eve is an 
ornament and illustration has never had a cog either worn out 
or “ rotten ” to be replaced. There has been but a single cog 
displaced, and that one by death. This is the experience here, 
but it is very different with Dr. Gross. Dr. Gross’ first experience 
was in a tic-tac tub-mill at Cincinnati; after grinding out the 6 
first grist it was discovered that the principal cog, that of 
Surgery, was worn out, and it was accordingly “replaced by 
better stuff,” not found, however, in the person of Dr. Gross,, 
for the disciplined and microscopic eye of Dr. Drake could find 
no material in Dr. Gross out of which to construct a new one. 
Dr. Parker, of New York, was introduced, and Dr. ,Gross left 
as before to play “bones” in the concert. After grinding oue 
three more grists the motor power, like that of Apple Pit 
Creek, in Swallow Barn, gave out, and the tic-tac tub came to 
a stand-still forever. 
But the cogs of the defunct tic-tac tub-mill were not con- 
demned as rotten or worn out. They were extracted and dis- 
posed of at second hand for what they would bring. A gradu- 
ate from it upon hearing of its sudden demise, wrote us, “Did 
ever school promise so much or do so little?” 
Dr. Gross turned up at Louisville as a Surgeon, and Dr. 
Drake as teacher of Clinical Medicine and Pathological Anat- 
omy! All of their old students were amazed. Had Rodgers, 
the excellent Chemist have turned up as Professor of Consti- 
tutional law they would not have been more astonished. 
At Louisville the cogs of the machine, like the gout in 
Baron Tonsier, were “flying about in every direction.” The 
editor of the Review flew out, flew in, then flew out again. 
His friends, by courtesy, were amazed at his feats of peregrina- 
tion. He had travelled the country all over, and his personal 
history bid fair to become a second edition of the Wandering 
Jew. Medical journals were fatigued with the constantly re- 
turning necessity of chronicling his wanderings, and breathed 
easier when he closed the circle of his ramblings at Jefferson, 
from whence he had set out thirty years before. Hippocrates 
and Drake travelled for knowledge, but Hahnemann and Gross 
travelled to peddle it for what the market afforded. We have 
always maintained and shall continue to do so, that the editor 
of the Review has the application and genius, without which 
there is no true greatness, but in his case they have been pre- 
vented from working out their sublime end by the antagonism 
of a sleepless and petulant jealousy. Goldsmith, when he be- 
trayed this miserable weakness by declaring, upon hearing the 
dexterity of a monkey extolled., that he “could do it himself as well,” but illustrated a trait so prominent in the character of 
the editor of the Eeview, as to swallow up those sterling 
achievements, which unembarrassed would have secured him 
an enviable position in the ranks of his contemporaries. His 
acquaintances, for the most part, either unwilling to undergo 
the labor of an analysis of his character, or from a want of that 
critical acumen which would enable them to compass it, over- 
look his learning and genius, and content themselves with the 
conclusion, which he seems constantly struggling to precipi- 
tate, that he is but a miserable compound of inconsistencies 
blunders, and jealousies. While it has been our misforture as 
the conductor of a medical journal to be compelled to notice 
these elements, as they are yearly scattered broad-cast over the 
medical field, from a vain hope that he might be deterred from 
a repetition, and thus secure nobler ends, yet we believe that 
we this day have a higher regard for him upon the whole, a 
sincerer respect, than any of his medical acquaintances; either 
among those whom he has attempted to destroy by his jealousy,, 
or those he would puff into consequence by his nonsense. 
And our reason for this belief is deduced from the conclusion 
that we understand his virtues and his weaknesses better than 
any other, having studied them longer, and are thus enabled to 
bring out an approximation to symmetry, from which a more 
superficial examination would deduce utter deformity. A re- 
sult of a patient, microscopic turn of mind, which enables us to 
analyse minute matters, and employ much labor for little or 
no profit. He is now in a new field, and instead of bearing 
himself with becoming humility in view of multiplied de- 
feats and disasters, puts on airs, assumes, by self-inflation, the 
proportion of the Goliah of medicine, and1 dares even to dic- 
tate terms to the American Medical Association! In his in- 
sufferable arrogance he proposes to himself to regulate medical 
teaching in the United States, and for fear that the Association 
may become a stumbling block in his way, it is apparent that 
he must demolish that. He takes to himself the credit of mul- 
tiplying schools in the South, in order to break up established 
institutions that Jefferson Medical College may become the 
tic-tac for the multitude of students of the South to graduate, 
or buy a diploma at, Was there ever so egregious a mad- 8 
man? While he is doing all this, as he thinks in the dark, his 
motives and actions are as transparent as glass. To make his 
journal national, as he says, one of the editors goes to New 
Orleans, and thus the huge concern is to bestride the continent 
like a colossus. It is to become a model reaping machine, up- 
rooting or sawing off whatever is its good pleasure not to leave 
standing, and to plant and cultivate whatever is agreeable to 
it. It is to be (we speak it not irreverently), the great 
lam of journals. Its flunkies are to be multiplied and gassed 
up, and scattered broad-cast throughout the Southern lamh 
The sun-shine of its smile is to be necessary for any existence, 
worth having, and its frown as fatal as the exhalation of the 
upas. Its mighty proprietor from some lofty peak of the 
Alleghany is to cry out to the skulking millions, Rats to your 
holes ! and all of the disobedient are expected in a regular 
stampede to flee in hot haste from the glory of his counte- 
nance, while his flunkies are to come up and lick the protecting 
hand of their august master. And this self-elected monarch is 
he whose antecedents we have faithfully chronicled! He pro- 
poses to make and unmake medical schools in the South, he be- 
ing in the North, and a Northern man, when he never had force 
enough to keep one from going to pieces, with which he was 
directly connected. While on the ground he was always de- 
feated, and now he proposes to himself triumphs and laurels 
in the field which he ingloriously abandoned. Had one of the 
Egyptian snakes crept out of the anus of the snake of Moses, 
and, finding itself only half digested, proposed to feed on snakes 
the balance of its life, his snakeship would have been guilty of 
a folly less sublime in height and depth than that of Dr. Gross. 
In abandoning the Association he abandons the last hope of 
medicine, as the profession of an American gentleman, and as- 
sumes the leadership of its irregular and pestilent calumnia- 
tors. His editorial is in manner and style precisely what we 
meet with in the Eclectic, Homoeopath, and Water-cure journals, 
without their honesty or sincerity. 
The insolence of the Review in declaring that the medical 
power is with the schools and not with the representatives of 
the great body of American, working physicians, entitles itself 
to what it will receive—the contempt and scorn of every hono- 9 
rable physician. This declaration of the power of medical 
schools over the people of the profession is now made for the 
first time, and we call upon every independent journal of the 
country to pass the declaration around. Let it be remembered 
that it comes from Jefferson Medical College, against which it 
has been for years a standing charge from Maine to Louisiana, 
that it was a mere corporation of individuals to make money by 
graduating everybody that applied, and regraduating applicants 
from all quarters. It was charged in a public speech by the ven- 
erable Hooker, before the American Medical Association at the 
meeting at Nashville of drawing incompetent students of New 
England who could not graduate in the New England schools, 
and conferring the degree upon them. 
We have reprinted in our journal, and called the attention of 
Jefferson Medical College to the fact, the most offensive quack 
advertisements from persons claiming to have graduated there, 
and not the slightest attention was paid to it. A brother phy- 
sician handed us one the other day of similar character, which 
we decline publishing, on the ground that it would be an ad- 
vantage to Jefferson, to have it advertised that such peo- 
ple could graduate there. Then, Jefferson had not repudiated 
the American Medical Association. Now she has, and we do 
not hesitate to call the attention of such young gentleman as 
design a virtuous future, to these outrages, that they may by 
escaping Jefferson escape the great leveler. Among our sub- 
scribers and contributors, and old office students, are gentlemen 
of spotless purity of character, who graduated at Jefferson, 
whom we would not offend by unfriendly allusions to their 
Alma Mater, but we speak not of Jefferson as she was, but Jef- 
ferson as she is, and with Dr. Gross at her helm, what she is 
likely to become. These gentlemen will not excuse the short- 
comings of the present Jefferson Medical College. Her great 
lights, whom we honored, went down to the tomb embalmed 
in the benedictions of a noble and generous profession, and one 
yet glows with the mellow sun-set radiance of early autumn 
above the horizon, a cog rotted out to make room for better 
stuff, in the person of Dr. Gross! God save the mark! 
This self-made dictator gives the lay members of the profes- 
sion to understand in commendable plainness of speech that 10 
they must learn to be “more deferential” to medical colleges! 
Off with your hats, gentlemen! If the lay members of the 
South do not lay him where he deserve, for his arrogance, to 
be laid, we shall acknowledge our ignorance of their metal. 
We have said that we were prepared to defend the editor of 
the Review from the common belief that he was only a tertiary 
compound of inconsistences, blunders and jealousies. Before 
we undertake it, however, we, from common honesty, have to 
concede the following counts in the bill of indictment:— 
Ist. Br. Gross, in the Western Journal of Medicine charged 
editors of journals with meanly praising any book from no 
higher motive than cupidity, through which they might add 
another book to their libraries. For this offence Dr. Brecken- 
ridge, then editor of a journal, flayed him. 
2nd. Dr. Gross afterwards becoming editor of the Louisville 
Review, the same sentiments appear therein as an editorial, 
with this modification, that such offences existed for the most 
part among editors of the East. For this, his integumentary 
covering having been renewed, the Eastern journals flayed 
him again. 
3rd. Dr. Gross then moved himself, and his journal East, 
and published that the offensive editorial published at Louis- 
ville was written by his junior. He thus dodged the conse- 
quences of his own folly, for the junior in that article had 
copied the sentiments previously published by the senior. 
4th. Dr. Gross, it was notorious, was freezing to become 
President of the American Medical Association. This was be- 
fore he went East. The precedents showed that the place of 
meeting generally selected the President, At Detroit he strug- 
gled to secure the next meeting at Louisville, his then place of 
residence, but it was voted to Nashville. Instantly in his own 
jealous little mind, he saw Eve President. This was gall and 
wormwood. He wanted the meeting to go to Louisville, be- 
cause of the precedent that the place gave the President, but it 
was no sooner voted to Nashville than he commenced strug- 
gling with Nashville men to break up the bad precedent. He 
opened himself to us, having sought us for that purpose. We 
agreed with him, and both Dr. Eve and ourself in this journal 
honestly labored against the precedent. But Dr. Gross, true to 11 
his instincts, thought, measuring us by himself, that it would 
be unsafe to trust us, and to defeat Dr. Eve, against whom his 
jealousy was boiling over, in utter disregard of an implied under- 
standing between him and us, put all of his transparent trickery 
in requisition to make a Nashville President, but not of Dr. 
Eve. To the utmost of his ability he endeavored to excite a 
spirit of rivalry between members of the College Faculty here, 
and we know that he felt sure of the success of his treachery to 
us, because his representative here at the meeting, Dr. Dunglison, 
was innocent enough to express astonishment at the failure of 
the plan. His trickery resulted in the election of Dr. Eve. As- 
tounded that he was caught in his own trap, he declared in his 
own journal that such an election was no honor to any man. 
No honor! Why then did Dr. Gross endeavor to procure a 
precisely similar position for one here he termed “friend?” Is 
that the way he treats a friend? Would it be an honor to one 
Nashville gentleman and no honor to another? 
The first year after Dr. Gross left Louisville, and there was 
therefore, no danger that he would be President, the Association 
by a unanimous vote, indicated Louisville, as the next place of 
meeting. This was too much for his shattered nerves, and he 
is down upon the Association. 
It seems very probable that the Presidentship will never 
prove any honor to him. In commenting upon the election of 
Dr. Eve he reproduced that miserable littleness which charged 
editors with praising a bad book for the sake of the money 
value of the book. He charges the grave members of the As- 
sociation with selling their votes for a mess of pottage; that 
the election of Dr. Eve “was a concession to good eating.” 
Few men, it strikes us, who worship any God but the belly 
would ever have thought of such a motive as influencing the 
votes of honorable men. The only instance we remember has 
occurred since the charge of Prof. Gross, where his fellow- 
citizen, Hon. Jehu G. Jones, of Pennsylvania, is reported 
by the newspapers as charging upon the floor of Congress that 
the opponents of the Administration were influenced in their 
political course, by the fact that the President had refused to 
invite them to dine at the White House. We suppose Mr. 
Jones was indebted for this bright and noble idea to his fellow- 12 
citizen, Prof. Gross. Oar friend of the Review as far back as 
1854, at the meeting of the American Medical Association at St. 
Louis, offered a resolution on gastronomies, the object of which 
was to prevent future meetings from enjoying opportunities for 
gormandizing. His fear that people will make a sacrifice of all 
morals in order to get a bellyful, wonderfully exercises him. 
In view of all these facts and the additional one that our an- 
cient ally has a “Belly” at this time somewhat notorious, we 
should not be surprised should our friend earn the sobriquet 
of the American Belly. 
A man thus habitually attributing the actions of honorable 
men to the basest and most grovelling of motives, must him- 
self live move and have his being in an atmosphere fatal to 
all the generous and ennobling emotions of the human soul. 
His jealousy of Dr. Eve seems by age and fermentations, to have 
become rancorous and malignant. Surely the cause must have 
sunk deep down in the dark cellars of the heart and been po- 
tent for mischief. We agree that it was—such a nature could 
but suffer anguish from such a cause, for Dr. Gross owed his 
place upon his return from Hew York to Louisville to the 
NOBLE SELF-SACRIFICING GENEROSITY OF EVE. 
Dr. Eve accepted the place which Dr. Gross resigned at Lou- 
isville for a single session. He would agree for no longer, owing 
to peculiar circumstances. But at the close of the session these 
circumstances being removed, and Dr. Eve at his home in 
Gergia, he was unanimously recommended to the trustees by 
the students of tne University of Louisville, and unanimously 
elected by the trustees permanent Professor of Surgery in that 
institution. Dr. Gross, sick of New York, wrote to Dr. Eve, 
asking for the place to which Eve had just been elected, taking 
care to say to Dr. Eve that whether he got his old place or not 
he should return to Louisville. Dr. Eve, with that open no- 
bleness of heart that so peculiarly characterizes him, resigned 
his Chair, and was by that act thrown entirely out of the busi- 
ness of teaching in which he had been engaged for twenty 
years. It has been often insinuated that he did not join the 
Faculty here the year after he gave his Chair at Louisville to 
Dr. Gross, until a large bonus had been ensured him. The 
insinuation is utterly false. He never hinted at salary to us. His soul scorned hire, and he took the fees from his tickets as 
his colleagues did, no more. 
But Hr. Gross was under obligation to Dr. Eye for his old 
place at Louisville, and he hated him because of the obligation 
which he was intuitively conscious his own nature was incapa- 
ble of returning save in the coinage of ingratitude. 
But at last Dr. Gross is a President. He has got up at Phil- 
adelphia a little concern called “the Pathological Society of 
Philadelphia,” and the last Review gives twenty-five or thirty 
pages to its proceedings, covering some four or five meetings, all 
opening with the caption—“ The President, Hr. Gross, in the 
Chair.” With these admissions we close this article, hoping to 
have it in our power, when the weather gets a little cooler, to 
show much in favor of our friend Dr. Gross. In the meantime 
we hope he will conclude to sit on in his Chair, attending to 
business of his own, for which he has a decided talent, 
while at it, and let other people’s alone. Let him possess his 
soul in patience. We can tell him once for all that the Uni- 
versity of Nashville cares not a pinch of foul air for his efforts 
to injure her, and defies his most concentrated malignity, A 
University founded half a century ago, numbering among its 
graduates many of the great Southern leaders, John Bell, Gen, 
Gideon J. Pillow, the Ewings’, and a host of living worthies, 
and E. H. Foster and kindred spirits now in Heaven, with a 
solid endowment of nearly half a million of dollars, with a 
Medical Department only seven years old that has instructed 
two thousand chivalrous spirits of the South, may well afford 
to scorn the efforts of any man, or any set of men, North or 
South, whose interest might be promoted by her injury. 
We do not intend to be defrauded out of our just dues, and 
among them is the forecast that induced us to record, at a time 
when Nashville was not so much as a fly-spec on the medical 
map of the United States, that it was destined under ten years 
to become a great medical centre. The prophecy was derided 
by the medical wiseacres of the day. It is now history. We 
predicted that she would rival the Eastern medical centre 
within that time, and though despised at the time as an idle 
boast, that tools history. We predicted that schools would 
multiply in the South with unexampled rapidity, and that now 14 
is history. We knew then that the fulfilment of these pre- 
dictions would establish links in a chain of prophecy that 
would bear toward each other the relation of cause and effect. 
That the fulfilment of the first would ensure that of the others. 
We thought we foresaw the effect of the fulfilment upon the 
absorbent voracity of Jefferson Medical College. We adhere 
to that conclusion, and while her chief is rubbing his hands 
and chuckling over what he esteems the disasters of Southern 
effort to teach medicine, and rejoicing in the anticipation that 
his tic-tac is to be the finishing shop and diploma furnishing es- 
tablishment of the country, and giving himself no little credit 
for his supposed agency in hastening an inevitable result, as to 
professorial changes, and multiplication of schools of the South, 
we do not hesitate to predict that the antecedent and conse- 
quent are antagonistic ideals and that the “Yankee blade,” and 
“Halifax handle” will never harmonize in the construction of 
a reliable instrument. He must hunt up other elements of fu- 
ture money-getting. 
If Dr. Gross will take the trouble of examining our intro- 
ductory lecture of_ 1852, he will see that we prophesied a mul- 
tiplication of medical colleges in the South, and there hailed it 
as a means of keeping Southern students at home, as it has. 
We have never opposed their multiplication. In carrying out 
our prophecy no less than four schools have sprung up in the 
South since 1852, and there are at least two others in contem- 
plation. If Dr. Gross thinks he has had any agency in build- 
ing them up he is mistaken. We know that he hoped, that 
like the Kilkenny cats, they would destroy each other, or that 
at least after students attended one course in them he would 
get the diploma lick at them. But he is mistaken in that too. 
He will find that if there are a thousand schools in the South 
each will graduate a fair proportion of its students. We are as 
friendly to multiplication of medical schools in the South as 
Dr. Gross, and shall never throw a feather in their way. 
One would think that the editor of the Review would have 
enough in his neighborhood to amuse him, and thus save 
him the trouble of hunting recreation so far from home. 
There are three or four regular, two or three irregular, and 
not a few defective schools of medicine in Philadelphia. 15 
Among them is the great old University of Pennsylvania, 
whose fame is coextensive with civilization. At the head of 
her department of Practical Medicine is a man who has forced 
his works to take precedence in rank, even among our preju- 
diced English ancestors, and among her eleves are sought the great 
medical men of the nation, while the Pennsylvania Medical 
College is acknowledged by all judges to have a Faculty not 
surpassed by that of any medical college in the Union. These 
colleges stand firm as adamant in their advocacy of the Ameri* 
can Medical Association, and have lost hundreds of students 
in upholding the glory and dignity of American medicine, 
who have been absorbed by less scrupulous rivals. And when 
the result, in numbers is made known, the cry is raised and 
repeated by silly or unthinking students, physicians and edi- 
tors of journals, “Behold the largest medical school in the 
United States, or in the world/” Daniel Lambert was the 
largest man in England, but we have never been impressed 
with his exalted rank. We believe in the estimation of Eng- 
lishmen Sir Isaac Newton rather out-ranked him. Mr. Darden, 
of Tennessee, was the largest man in the world, but we think 
that the nation would regard Clay, Webster, Jackson, or Cal- 
houn, as rather out-ranking him. We saw some pretty large 
medical brethren at the meeting at Washington, and yet we 
opine that our friend of the Eeview, albeit his Cassius like 
proportions, would esteem himself a match for any of them, 
except in the matter of pulling down, and even at that, in a less 
physical sense, he might be willing to try his hand with the 
best of them. We know that it will be thought that we have 
alluded in pretty swelling terras to large classes here. This is 
true, but it was in response to those who had predicted that we 
could not assemble a class here of respectable size. But our 
readers will bear us witness that we have never assumed to 
ourselves any importance because the profession of the South 
have endorsed by their patronage the sentiments, concerning 
medicine as a profession, which we chose to advocate. THE NASHVILLE JONRNAL OF 
MEDICINE AND SURGERY, 
The largest Medical Monthly in the United 
States. The Original Department has secured 
and will continue to maintain a powerful corps 
of Writers. It has now reached its 15th Vol- 
ume, at $3 per annum. 
All communications should be addressed to 
GEO. 8. BLACKIE, M. D., Medical Journal 
Office, Nashville, Tennessee. 
Printed at the Office of John T. S. Fall, on 
the Corner of College and Union Streets.