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AN
ADDRESS
INTRODUCTORY TO A
COURSE  OF LECTURES
AT THE
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS,


     SESSION OF 1850 — 51.
           BY
 VALENTINE MOTT, M, D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF OPERATIVE SURGERY AND SURGICAL ANATOMY,

     THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1850.         ,
PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS
          NEW YORK:
JOSEPH H. JENNINGS, PRINTER, 122 N A S S A U ST R E ET ,
             1850. 
 
a tt   % ft i r i % 0.
Gentlemen :

  Before I proceed to deliver the remarks introduc-
tory to the few lectures which I am to deliver to you,
I cannot refrain  from expressing the satisfaction I
feel in once again addressing the class of the College
of Physicians and Surgeons, as one of its Professors,
nor from acknowledging the kindness of my present
Colleagues, of the Trustees and Regents, who have so
willingly conferred upon me the rank which enables
me  to assume the responsible  duty  of instructing
you.  A considerable period of  time  has elapsed
since my last connection with its Faculty ceased; and
if, during that time, I have been placed in the position
of an opponent to its success, believe me to be can-
did in saying that  I have witnessed its successful
struggles against powerful competition with pleasure,
and with all the interest  and enthusiasm  of an Alum-
nus, for such, almost, I  am, have marked its gradual
progress in usefulness,  and in the esteem and favor
of the profession.   Among its Professors and Trus-
tees are many of my oldest and most valued  friends
and pupils, and I should be callous to the  best feel-
ings of our nature, could I reflect upon my past con-
nection with this School, and not rejoice in its pros-
perity, or feel pleasure in my re-association with its
interests and occupations.
  I  have  arrived,  Gentlemen, at that period  of life
when, to look back, is more pleasant than  to specu-
late on the future ;  you, on the contrary, redolent of 
4
 the present, look on the past only  as a  matter of
 amusing contrast and idle curiosity.   Intimately as-
 sociated as I have been with the progress of this Col-
 lege—sole survivor, with one exception, of the orig-
 inal Faculty—sole survivor of that Faculty of Colum-
 bia College, which, merged in it, may be justly consid-
 ered  as its immediate predecessor, and in some sort
 its origin, I shall not, I trust, be charged either with se-
 nile garrulity, or personal egotism, if I occupy a por-
 tion of your time this evening with a brief notice of
 the early history of the Institution of which you are
 proud to rank yourselves as among the Alumni and
 Students; of some of those who accompanied me in
 its formation and progress ; of the scenes and persons,
 " quceque ipse felicissime vidi  et quorum pars magna
fui;" of the School, with which after so long an inter-
 regnum, I again happily find myself associated.
   There are facts connected with the subject, which
 I am  vain enough to think that I alone can detail—
 facts, which, as matters of Medical History, ought not,
 I think, to remain unrecorded, and which will be new
 to many—nay, even  to most of those  who now hear
 me, many of whom have been my pupils, a few per-
 haps my contemporaries, and more to whom they are
 novelties, even as to the  very names of the dramatis
personam.  I cannot think, then, that either to those
 who review the  past, contrast the present, or specu-
 late on the future, they can be devoid of interest; and
 I will further venture to indulge  the hope that the
 name of him who details them, whose voice  can-
 not, in  the course of natural events, very long  con-
 tinue  to be heard, will not detract from their intrin-
 sic interest in the breasts of his hearers.
  The  patriarch who  relates the  scenes of our
 revolutionary struggle,  while  paying a due tribute 
5
to the glories of a Washington, a Putman, a Gates,
and a Lee, to whose genius the victory of which he
boasts may be  due,  can tell, after  all, but little
of the conflicts  in which he participated, save  the
part which  he immediately  played, and  the leader
under whom he acted.   But I  have  never heard
this  called egotism, and no  such charge,  I trust,
will  be  brought against  me,  even though I use the
ego ipse somewhat  frequently  during  the following
remarks.
  I  graduated  in the year 1806, a student of the
Medical Faculty of Columbia  College, in this city,
at that time the only Medical School, and which had
then existed for many years.  It was originally called
King's College, but at the close of the war, received
the  name of Columbia  College, and  the organiza-
tion of its Medical Faculty was completed  in 1792.
The Faculty at the time of my attendance, was con-
stituted as follows :  The President, and Professor of
Anatomy  and  Surgery, was  Dr. Wright  Post;  Dr.
D. Hosack  occupied  the chair of Materia Medica
and Botany;  Dr. Hamersley, that of the Institutes
and Practice;  Dr. Stringham, that of Chemistry;
and Dr. J. R. B. Rogers, that of Midwifery and the
Diseases of Women and Children.
   The reputation of the two former of these gentle-
men is matter of Medical History, but of all of them
I shall briefly relate my personal reminiscences.
   Wright Post was at that time a man  of about forty
years of age,  tall, handsome, and of fashionable ex-
terior, wore long whiskers  and his hair powdered
and turned back and tied in a queue.  Those  who
recollect  his  thin  worn figure in  his later years,
wrapped in a furred surtout, could scarcely have re-
cognised  in him the elegant gentleman of  my early 
6
days.  Dr. Post had at this time attained to the very
highest rank in his  profession, both as  a physician
and surgeon, and although equalled in the extent and
renown of his surgical practice  by his distinguished
colleague in the  New York Hospital, Dr. R.  S. Kis-
sam, he stood, perhaps, alone in its lucrative  prac-
tice  and in the estimation  and confidence of the
higher walks of society.  He was unrivalled as an
anatomist, a most beautiful dissector, and one of the
most luminous and perspicuous teachers I have ever
listened to, either at home or abroad.  His manners
were grave  and dignified;   he  seldom  smiled, and
never trifled with the serious and responsible duties
in which he was engaged, and  which no man ever
more solemnly respected.  His  delivery was precise,
slow and clear, qualities inestimable in a teacher,
and  peculiarly adapting his  instructions to  the ad-
vancement of the junior portion of the class. He
was one of the first American pupils (precedingDr.
Physick) of the celebrated John Hunter, of London,
from whose lips and those  of  Mr. Shclton, he im-
bibed  those principles  of practice which he  after-
wards so ably and usefully applied in the course of
his brilliant career.  As an  operator he was careful,
slow and elegant, and competent to any emergency
contemplated by the then existing state of Surgical
Science.
   Two great achievements are  upon record to attest
his  powers.   He was the first  in this country to tie,
successfully, on the  Hunterian  principle, the femoral
 artery for popliteal aneurism.   On the second mem-
 orable occasion, I had the  honor to  assist him;  it
 was a case of ligature of the subclavian artery above
 the clavicle,  without the  scaleni muscles, for  an
 aneurism of the brachial, involving the  axilla.  The 
7
patient came to me from New Haven, in company
with an intimate professional friend of mine, the late
Dr. Gilbert;  the aneurism was cracked and oozing,
and  supported by layers of  adhesive  plaster, by
which its rupture was prevented, and life maintained
until the time of the operation.  The brother of the
patient, a  merchant of this city, whose family Dr.
Post attended, naturally  preferred that he  should
perform the  operation, as I was  then quite young.
To this wish I cheerfully acceded, but lost thus the
chance  of gaining a surgical laurel for my brow—
the operation never having been  performed in this
country before, and but once in  Europe, and then
unsuccessfully, by its first projector, Mr. Ramsden,
of  St.  Bartholomew's Hospital,  London.   This is
now, happily, a well recognised surgical procedure,
which six times I have successfully performed. In
this operation, the  American needle for the ligature
of deep-seated arteries was first  used  in this city,
and it belonged to me.
  Dr. Post was  equally eminent as a physician; his
mind was well  stored with clinical facts, a peculiar
characteristic of the truly great  practitioner.  He
was a calm  observer and eminently practical; and
for strict  punctuality, and courtesy towards his jun-
iors and  a scrupulous regard for truth, was never
exceeded.  After  a career of forty years as a Pro-
fessor  of Anatomy, he retired into private  profes-
sional   life,  in  which  he  continued active, with
occasional intervals of ill health,  until his death, in
the sixty-fourth year of his  age.   He died  univer-
sally  esteemed,  deeply  regretted,  and his   name
belongs to posterity.
  I shall next pay a passing tribute to the memory of
his distinguised colleague, cotemporary and medical 
8
 rival—would that I could say his friend—Dr. David
 Hosack.  A pupil of  the  celebrated Bard, in this
 city, and abroad the favorite of Cullen,  Chisholm,
 Blane and  Gregory, no man, in his day, was more
 eminent for his varied learning, his luminous writings,
 always plausible, if not profound—and the very high
 standing he held, both  at home and abroad, in his
 profession, and in  the estimation of  the public.
   Dr. Hosack read  his lectures, and no man was
 ever more  emphatic, 'impressive  and instructive.
 His tall and  bulky form, his piercing black  eye, his
 sonorous voice,  and  the  dignity of his  bearing,
 stamped him at once as a remarkable man, and fully
 qualified him for  the pre-eminence to which, as a
 lecturer  and physician, he proudly aspired, and to
 which he fully attained.  No one better maintained
 the dignity of his  calling, nor preserved more com-
 pletely the decorum of the  lecture  room, nor sus-
 tained the  attention of the student.  Punctual to a
 moment, he was most impatient of interruption after
 his lecture had commenced, and no one ventured to
 enter his room five minutes after the appointed hour,
 without receiving a severe and well-merited rebuke.
 Fixing his  fierce eye sternly on the tardy  student,
 he would invite him down lower and lower  towards
 the desk, and then, after an awful pause, advise him
 to " get  his  buckwheat cakes a little earlier in the
morning."
  For any enterprise calculated to advance the in-
 terests of the profession, or the public welfare, he
was  always  ready;  his skill as an orator and his
tact  for presiding, on all public occasions, was un-
surpassed, and at the bedside, his intimate acquaint
ance with disease, his accurate diagnosis, his won-
derfully quick perception and  his ready resource 
9
 stamped him a practitioner of the highest class.   In
 the decline of his life, he retired  from the active du-
 ties of his profession to  his beautiful country seat at
 Hyde Park, which he adorned with exquisite taste,
 and  enjoyed in his retirement his favorite pursuit of
 horticulture, which, with the science of botany, was
 his greatest hobby; and while in the full possession
 of health,  strength and  intellect, neglectful of  the
 warnings to which he had so energetically directed
 others,  fell a victim to apoplexy,  leaving behind him
 a  reputation second to none of the luminaries of  our
 country.
   The  name  of Dr. Edward Miller, Professor of
 Practice, stands among the highest in the list of
 American contributors  to  Medical  Science.  His
 writings are voluminous.  On the subject of Yellow
 Fever he is an eminent authority.  He strongly sup-
 ported the theory of Non-contagion, in direct oppo-
 sition to the views  of his  distinguished colleague,
 Dr. Hosack.  A report upon the  health of the city,
 transmitted by him to the then Governor  of  the
 State, in which he developed at length his views  on
 this and  other  epidemic  and endemic diseases, their
 causes,  &c. ranks as one of the ablest contributions
 ever made to the history of these important subjects.
 His Essay on  Cholera Infantum evinces great prac-
 tical and pathological  sagacity ;  and the numerous
 productions of his pen, in the form of reviews and
monographs,. to be seen  in the New York Medical
 Repository, of which, with Mitchill and  Smith,  he
was  a  co-editor, are durable  monuments  of  his
talents, his industry and his fame.
   He was of middle stature, very handsome, wore
 powder, and was singularly neat in his attire; a ba-
 chelor,  and his manners were peculiarly mild and 
10
bland, and to all he was  exceedingly affable.  He
was, in short, a perfect gentleman, and a man of sin-
gularly  pure morals.  As a physician  he was of
high repute.   His practice, if not the largest in the
city, was at least unsurpassed by  that of  any one of
his contemporaries in respectability and lucrative-
ness ; and his advice in counsel was anxiously sought
for by those  of  his brethren,  especially, who,  at a
time when Medical theory was discussed with a zeal
that  created  a truly partizan spirit, espoused the
cause which he  so ably and successfully maintained.
His  connection with the  Faculty  of  Columbia Col-
lege  was brief, and he refused to participate  in the
coalition of the schools.   He  died of some  acute
affection of the chest, at the age of about sixty years,
leaving  an  enviable and enduring  reputation.
  Dr. James S. Stringham, though perhaps to most
of you scarcely known by name,  was, nevertheless,
an amiable and worthy gentleman of great accom-
plishments.  Born in New York, he graduated in
Edinburgh, and was  a pupil of the celebrated Black,
of that city, and for the  time at  which he  taught,
a chemist of the highest order.  He was a very pleas-
ing and perspicuous lecturer, and the first teacher
and professor of Medical Jurisprudence in this coun-
try.   A premature death, in  1817, of disease  of the
heart, at St. Croix, blasted the promise given  by his
early years.
  The Professor of Practice, Dr.  Hamersley,  a  gra-
duate of Edinburgh, was  a man of talent, a logical
and eloquent expounder of the theories of the  day,
but irascible in temper, eccentric in his  habits and
manner of teaching,  and,  like many other learned
theorists, an  indifferent  practitioner : requiescat  in
pace !  I well remember that, on  one bitter winter's 
11
morning, in the midst of a terrible snow storm, I
alone, of all the class, had awaited for half an hour,
the arrival of the usually very  punctual Prof. Ham-
ersley,  As I was going away  in despair of his com-
ing, I met him at the gates, battling with the storm,
his arms extended before him,  according to custom,
and his  hands clothed with enormous furred gloves.
" How is the Thermometer to  day," said  he—his
customary salutation, for the state of the atmosphere,
as a cause of disease, was a great hobby of his—and
then, learning that I was the only one of the class
who had braved the inclemency of the weather to
hear him ; " Come back," said he, " and  I will give
you the lecture, as  a reward for your perseverance
and punctuality."   This, however, I stoutly refused
to allow him to do,  assuring him that I could not
consent selfishly to  appropriate to  myself alone, the
valuable doctrines which were so well calculated to
benefit the profession generally.  He, I believe, was
not a little disappointed, and I not a little pleased at
my escape.   He was an honest man.
   The  Obstetrical  Department of the  faculty of
Columbia College was confided to Dr. J. R. B. Rod-
gers, the father of the present  eminent surgeon, Dr.
J  Kearny Rodgers, so many years my colleague in
the New York Hospital, and now one of the Trustees
of this College.   In person Dr. R. was small, grace-
ful, had a face of extreme interest, and was of very
accomplished manners.  He was a  graduate  of Edin-
burgh, a practitioner of eminence and peculiarly
skilled in his own department.   Dr. Rodgers was
also a physician to  the Hospital, and better clinical
teachings than his  have  I never  heard  anywhere.
The facts there observed by him were carefully re-
corded, and made from time  to  time the subject of 
12
distinct clinical lectures with able comments, at his
own house in Cortlandt street, where the obstetrical
lectures were always delivered  to  a class varying
from fifteen  to twenty students, of whom, belonging
to this city,  I believe that the highly respected Drs.
Manley, Jno. Neilson, and your worthy Vice Presi-
dent, Dr. Thomas Cock,  with myself, alone  remain
to tell of by-gone days.
   The  lectures in those days were  delivered in
the old edifice  of the College, where it now stands
—then  a  body without wings, and which has since
been remodeled.   It consisted of three apartments
—one for the Chemistry lectures, which the Senior
class of the  College attended, and well  arranged for
the period ;  one for the Theory and Practice, of very
moderate  size; a  small Anatomical Theatre,  and
some smaller apartments for the Museum and dissect-
ing rooms.   Materiel  for dissection  was  scarce,
and could only be obtained by individual enterprise,
and in many such, now happily by the existing state
of things, rendered unnecessary to your advance-
ment  in knowlege, have I  been engaged.   I  well
remember on one  occasion  driving, in disguise,  a
cart containing eleven subjects, from the old  Pot-
ter's field burying ground,  sitting on  the subjects,
and proud enough of my trophies; but we were not
always so fortunate, being  on many occasions dis-
covered  and pursued,   and obliged to  leave our
spoils  behind us, with only our hard  labor for our
pains.  One little incident  of the times,  also, oc-
curs to me.  A German, who had been hung, was
given  to  the College for dissection, and with the
colored porter, I went in a carriage  in the evening,
to get  the body.  My other associate was a Doc- 
13
tor Buchanan, a Scotchman, and Professor of Ob-
stetrics in the College, residing in the city.
   On calling at his rooms to take him up, I  found
him arranging his pistols, and  complaining of feel-
ing very agueish, and with  difficulty pursuaded him
to proceed.   The night was cold, and on  arriving
on the ground, the Doctor's ague increased so rapidly
and his valor oozed, like Bob Acres', in the Rivals,
so freely from the  tips  of his fingers, that he deci-
 ded to return home, begging  strongly for the  use
of the carriage, which I peremptorily refused him.
 With great difficulty we  exhumed the  body,  but
 then my colored associate also deserted me, declar-
 ing he  could not touch the subject, on account of
 his having been hung.  I had, therefore, to lug the
 body, attired in its white robes, by my own strength,
 to the carriage—for I had great strength  in those
 days—and partly  by force and partly  by  mena-
 ces, compelled the man to assist me in getting the
 body into  the carriage—and what was still more
 difficult, to get in  along with  it, so thoroughly was
 he terrified.  On arriving at the College, I found my
 valorous associate slowly recovering from  his ague
 fit, by the aid of a strong glass of brandy toddy, and
 deeply lamenting  his inability to assist me  on the
  occasion.
    At this time I was Demonstrator of Anatomy  to
  Dr. Post, a fact which may account for some of my
  zeal  in these resurrection  adventures.  I made gra-
  tuitously, all the dissections for the course of Anato-
  my and Surgery, on which latter subject, by the way,
  I should observe, that  only twelve lectures  were
  delivered on practical matters,  and the  operations
  not performed before the  class.  A strong contrast,
  Gentlemen, to the  thorough  manner in which sur- 
14
gery is taught at the present day.  As to the Mu-
seum, it was contained in two rooms,  one  small,
for wet, and one large, for dry  preparations, and
was well  supplied.  Most  of the  specimens Dr.
Post brought with him from Europe, and the rest
were  furnished by  the zeal  of the students and
Alumni.  There are even now in your Museum, a
part of which is the same, specimens of my own
industry in the way of  minute dissection, a pursuit
to which I was very partial and strongly recommend
you to follow—a preparation of the nervous system
in a small  subject  and some of the arteries and
veins.
  Immediately on graduating, I set out for London,
in company with the late  distinguished  Dr.  John
Watts, of this city, at one time President of this In-
stitution, with the  intention of profiting by the in-
structions of the  eminent men who at that time held
the most prominent rank in the  surgical  profession
in that great Metropolis; among whom may be nam-
ed the  two Clines, Sir  Astley  Cooper, John Aber-
nethy, the two Blizards, and Sir Everard Home, not
one of whom, I grieve  to say, survives.  Soon after
my arrival,  I entered myself as a pupil to the cele-
brated Sir A. Cooper, then Surgeon to Guy's Hos-
pital, from whom I received marked private atten-
tions and kindnesses never to be forgotten, and  to
whose precepts and example I owe the fondness for
surgery, which, increasing with my years, has given
me my present position, and which I will relinquish
only with my life.  Although I have  ceased  to
practice it from necessity, I still feel for the  noble
art of  Surgery all the  love,  and in its  pursuit,  I
experience all the pleasure and interest of my ear-
lier days. 
15
  After two years, I repaired to Edinburgh, then the
great seat of Medical learning in Europe, and there
re-joining Dr. Watts, who had gone thither for his
degree, and in company with Dr. Gibson, of Phi-
ladelphia, now the eminent  professor in the  Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, and perhaps others, whom
I have  forgotten,  listened to the  great lessons  of
Gregory, Home, Duncan, Hope, Murray, Playfair,
Jamieson and the justly venerated John Thompson,
the author of the best monograph yet published  on
Inflammation.
  Furnished with a letter of protection from Dr. Jen-
ner, whom I knew, and who assured me that it would
be  sufficient  for my purpose,  I made a fruitless  at-
tempt to be smuggled in a fishing boat to Holland,
intending to walk thence to the Hague, with my pack
on my back.   War was then raging most fiercely
between France and Great Britain, and the precau-
 tions taken by Napoleon to  prevent the entrance of
 foreigners into France were so rigid, that my friends
 restrained me almost by force from my  purpose,
 and fortunately for me, as I thereby, probably,  es-
 caped a long captivity at Verdun.
   Permit me  to digress  for  a  moment.  Five  and
 thirty years  elapsed before  I saw again my respect-
 ed  friend, Sir A. Cooper.  I  called upon him  im-
 mediately on arriving  in London, but he was not at
 home.  I purposely  left  no  card, but called again
 on the following morning.   I  found him at home,
 and awaited my turn with several in an ante-room,
 before being ushered into his study—rather a shabby
 one.   As I  entered I walked up to him,  and said,
 holding out my hand, " do  you recollect me ?"  He
 looked  at me very intently.   " Do not tell me,"  said
 he, and in a moment afterwards added, " Dr. Mott.'' 
16
    The scene that followed I shall leave you to im-
  agine.  Sir A. Cooper, indeed,  stood before me,
  but  alas!  how changed.   He  was, when  I last
  saw him,  magnificently handsome, his  hair pow-
  dered, and  his beard very black.  Now he was infirm
  from gout, his hair and beard gray and dishevelled,and
  careless in his attire.  He was now about sixty-eight
  years  of age, and  still  much engaged  in practice.
  I received much kind attention from him, and even
  saw him again on my second visit to England.  The
  last time I ever saw him, he called  upon me at my
  lodgings,  and  presented me with  a new forceps
  which  he had invented,  for extracting calculi from
 the urethra, which I still retain as  a memento of one
 who is closely  associated with my earliest and most
 pleasant recollections.   He was  a polished gentle-
 man, and his surgical reputation is  engraven in in-
 delible characters on the pages of Medical History.
   On my return to New York,  in the following
 spring, occurred, Gentlemen, an event in my life, to
 which I refer with much pleasure, and for alluding
 to  which, I must ask your good-natured pardon.
 With the consent of the  Faculty, I obtained permis-
 sion from the  trustees of Columbia College to de-
 liver, in the anatomical room of the Medical School,
 a course of  lectures and demonstrations  on Oper-
 ative  Surgery.   The course, though a beginning for
 me, was a thorough one, and the materiel was obtained
 by my own exertions.  Nothing of the kind had ever
 before been attempted in this city : and I may, there-
 fore, Gentlemen, justly claim to have been the first
 person  to deliver private lectures on any medical
 subject, and  the first  to demonstrate  to a  class the
steps of Surgical operations, as then taught and.prac-
tised by the  highest professional authorities..»