ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE LAYING OF THE 
CORNER STONE OF THE NEW YORK ACAD- 
EMY OF MEDICINE, OCTOBER 2. 1880. *> 
Mr. President, Ladies and GentlemeC Fellows of 
the New York Academy of Medicine : 
The New York Academy of Medicine has called upon 
the profession and the public alike to assist it in this cere- 
mony of laying a corner-stone. Where we are now stand- 
ing there will be the home of the Academy, we be- 
lieve, for generations to come. If we be mistaken, if this 
large building will be too small before long, it will be the 
pleasant duty of our successors to provide for their wants. 
That this may become necessary is possible, for the Acad- 
emy has experienced a development rapid beyond expecta. 
tion. Forty-three years ago it was founded,dozens of years it 
held its meetings in hired quarters, ten years ago it occu- 
pied its own building, No. 12 West 31st Street, to-day we 
are preparing accommodations such as the profession of 
New York, or any other city of the country, has never pos- 
sessed. Meanwhile, however, the spirit and the aims of 
the Academy have remained intact. Amongst these aims 
are the cultivation of the science of medicine, and the 
promotion of public health. 
In the words of a circular published nearly two years 
ago in behalf of our building fund, “these purposes are 
accomplished by lectures and discussions in the stated 
meetings of the Academy and its numerous sections ; by 
maintaining reading-rooms which furnish nearly all the 
medical journals of the world, and by collecting a library 
containing about sixty thousand books and pamphlets, 
which are free both to the medical profession and the 
public.” The number of its fellows is nearly six hundred. 
They have been selected from amongst those who have 
practised medicine in New York City or its vicinity three or 
more years. Some time ago fellowship has been extended 
to those residing in the State. 
In its composition the Academy participates in many of 
the peculiar features of our political organization, which 
means to benefit all through the co-operation, if not of all, 2 
still of the best. In Europe an Academy of Medicine means 
a small body comprising a few select men only, appointed 
by the body itself when there is a vacancy, or by the poli- 
tical rulers. Thus the Academies form an aristocracy of 
the mind parallel to the aristocracy of birth, with all its 
exclusiveness, and real or assumed superiority. They are 
representative bodies only in this that the best minds and 
most scientific workers are expected or believed to fill the 
seats. 
The New York Academy of Medicine, however, is a 
democratic institution. It is not limited in numbers—on 
the contrary, it is desirable that the many respectable 
physicians should gather round its flag. Like our political 
commonwealth, it must look for its development and success 
in the co-operation of the competent and cultured masses. 
Like the Union it is a voluntary confederation of peers who 
make their own laws and obey them because they are of 
their own making. 
The members have common interests both scientific and 
professional. Since its foundation, with the changes for 
good and bad appertaining to everything organic, the 
Academy has prospered constantly, in spite of, or as I 
am more inclined to say, in consequence of its very consti- 
tution as an independent and democratic body. In the 
words of the same circular alluded to before, “the Acad- 
emy is not connected with any school or college. It is 
self-supporting and is carried on in the interest of the whole 
profession. There are no fees nor emoluments of a private 
or individual nature. It is not supported nor subsidized by 
the State or municipality.” Whatever has been accom- 
plished by it: its scientific labors most of which are laid 
down it its Bulletins and Transactions, and in the medical 
journals of the country; the hall in West 31st Street ; the 
library and reading-rooms in the upper stories; the wealth 
of books and journals at the disposal of those eager to 
learn, and so numerous that they alone compelled us to 
look for more appropriate quarters—all of that has been 
created, with few exceptions, by the exertions and pecuni- 
ary sacrifices of the medical men themselves. 
All classes of these are represented in the Academy. It shows you the choice of those who are interested and active 
in the promotion of medical science and art; those who 
have earned an international reputation; those who have 
deserved well of the community by a life filled with ser- 
vices rendered to the public; and those who look forward 
for the fulfilling of their dreams and the reaching of their 
aims through coming years of honest labor spent on theo- 
retical study and practical work. In this co-operation of 
the old and young, the illustrious and those yet unknown, 
but promising or anxious to earn renown, the mature and the 
maturing, you have one of the features of a unity of the 
profession. 
3 
Another feature of unity which, moreover, ties the pro- 
fession indissolubly to the community at large, is the labor 
performed in the service of one and all. It is in these labors 
and their results that the community at large ought to take 
a deep interest. Modern medicine is probably the greatest 
benefactor of mankind. The more medicine has been 
founded on the study of the exact sciences, chemistry, 
physics, and physiology with mathematics, the more has 
its field of usefulness enlarged. The more theoretical it 
appeared to become, the more did it develop practical use- 
fulness and dignity. Indeed, the dignity of a science or 
study rises with its ability of being utilized in the service of 
mankind. Now, the promotion of medical science and art 
does not mean only the improvement in diagnosis and in 
the administration of drugs and remedies, but the discov- 
ery of the best means of placing the human being in the 
best possible condition. The labor of the physician is not 
exhausted by carrying you through a severe case of illness, 
he renders you the greater service, less remunerative to 
him though, of preventing you from falling sick. 
The peculiar relations of the individual physician to his 
patient or the family entrusted to his care, are widened in 
the relations of the profession to the public. Great epi- 
demics take the place of a single case, the protection of a 
community that of the guarding a person, the hygiene of 
schools that of a dwelling, the sanitation of a large city that 
of inspecting a suspicious trap or sewer in a private domi- 
cile. The more in your health department the medical 4 
element will predominate over the military and political, 
the more actual benefit will the people derive from it. 
The hygiene of the whole population, the superinten- 
dence of public buildings in which many people old or 
young are gathered, public hospitals, quarantine stations, 
the questions of physical and mental of legal 
responsibility, of the State care of the insane, they all 
belong to the domain of the profession. This is not theory 
only. No grave question of the kind has come up without 
the gratuitous and spontaneous aid of medical men. The 
health board of the city has long appreciated that. 
The Academy has furnished a consulting board to all the 
health department’s hospitals. A committee of the Acad- 
emy was entrusted with the inquiry into and the report on 
the condition of Quarantine. It is to its report that the first 
appi opi iation for the rebuilding of the Quarantine Station 
was due, and to its recommendations that improvements 
aie being carried out at the present time. In this way the 
medical profession excludes epidemics, and guards both 
the physical health and the economic interests of the city. 
Imagine the pecuniary loss to the city if the cholera and 
the yellow fever scare of a year and two years ago had not 
been prevented by the profession, as indeed it was. 
A week s panic would have been a pecuniary calamity 
amounting to the loss of a good many millions. 
These are but a few examples of the value of medical 
services, both paid and unpaid ones, to the public. The 
health of the city is the foundation of its prosperity. Let 
epidemics prevail, and not only will your children die, 
your families be decimated, and the graveyards be filled with 
places where flowers and tears mingle, but your commerce 
will be drawn to other ports. It is due to increased knowl- 
edge and activity on the part of the profession, both official 
and inofficial, that in spite ot the unchanged severity of the 
epidemics and the rapidly increasing population of the city, 
the number of cases of diphtheria shows an absolute dimin- 
ution. 
Such amongst many are the services of the profession, 
not to speak of the gratuitous daily work of hundreds of med- 
ical men in the hospitals and dispensaries. Nobody can count or calculate, but everybody can appreciate how many 
lives are preserved, how many millions are saved for the 
poor and rich alike. From that point of view, a whole- 
souled, generous woman presented to the Academy twenty- 
five thousand dollars, in recognition of the services to the 
public on the part of the profession, and in accordance with 
the esteem her husband held the profession in while he was 
alive. To this consideration we owe the bequest of seventy 
thousand dollars, coming to us under the will of Mrs. Alex- 
ander Hosark, who had spent a large part of her valuable 
life with illustrious examples of professional worth. It is 
the same thought which induced men and women 
of means, intelligence, and public spirit, to tender us 
donations of five, two, or one thousand dollars. All we 
require now is fifty thousand dollars to complete this build- 
*n2"- There must be many who have that sum or a part of 
it to spare in the interest of the profession ; perhaps to 
commemorate the name of a dear one who has passed away, 
or to imprint his or her name—and a legitimate ambition it 
is—-on one of the halls of the new building, or to perpetuate 
the memory of one who has been saved from a premature 
grave by the endeavors of one of those who are now striv- 
ing to erect a home for the most practical and beneficent of 
all sciences and arts. 
5 
It is a home we want, more than merely a house. To 
make the house of the medical profession a home, it requires 
a library. This is to the profession what a tool is to the 
mechanic, an engine to the engineer, a telescope to the 
astronomer. A complete library represents the thoughts, 
experience, genius, and discoveries both of all previous 
centuries and the present time. All of these treasures must 
be accessible to the profession whose knowledge and skill 
is to be the safeguard of the public’s best interests. To 
accomplish that end, the whole medical literature of all 
countries must contribute. New York has never been sat- 
isfied with anything that is second class ; it cannot afford 
to trust itself to a profession without the first order of learning 
and erudition. 
Why do we insist upon physicians being erudite ? Do I 
ask why do you apply to a particular watchmaker, an en- 6 
gineer, an architect, a milliner? You select him because 
you believe or know him to be well informed or skillful. 
And the physician ? His practice is the application of 
knowledge acquired by hard brain work spent on all 
the learning and practice which have been evolved out 
of the labor and efforts of thirty centuries. A learned doc- 
tor may happen to be an unsuccessful practitioner for more 
reasons than one ; but amongst those reasons erudition is 
not. An uninformed man is never a good practitioner; 
under equal circumstances, the more learned man is the 
the better man in practice. Practice and learning do not 
exclude each other ; on the contrary, the former depends 
on the latter. It ought not to suffice for your selection of a 
doctor that you met him at a bar, or a ball, or at a church 
meeting, or at whist, in a concert, or on a hotel piazza, or 
that he be well dressed, pleasant, and tells you he is your 
“friend;” all these are fine opportunities and agreeable 
social and personal qualities which may also be considered 
when you are credibly informed that he burns midnight oil 
over medical literature and that his professional brethren 
speak well of his abilities and achievements. And as far as 
medical friendships are concerned, your best friend is he 
who knows best how to protect you and your children and 
your parents from disease, and to cure them when they are 
sick. 
The erudition we claim for the profession demands a 
large library of constant growth. A fund of one hundred 
thousand dollars will enable us to keep abreast with any 
similar institution. The library of the surgeon-general’s 
office in Washington which contains at present seventy 
thousand volumes and one hundred and thirty thousand 
pamphlets, is the result of industrious and systematic col- 
lections. It is not much over twenty years old, but it is the 
richest and most complete medical library in the world. 
Still its annual appropriations for the purchase of books 
have seldom exceeded five thousand dollars. Thus a fund 
of a hundred thousand dollars will enable us to procure 
nearly everything medical that appears in any land. Of 
that sum we have only ten thousand dollars. One half of 
that sum was set aside by the Academy, the other half is a 7 
donation separately administered in perpetual honor of a 
departed one. Such special funds, or additions to our gen- 
eral library fund, are urgently requested. The citizens of 
New York have developed a metropolis of large size and 
commercial power ; they can well afford to cax themselves 
in the interest of medical science than which there is none 
more cosmopolitan and humanitarian. 
But it is not the medical profession only which will be 
directly benefitted by the endowment of a large and 
complete library. The intimate relations of the medical and 
legal professions are such that much of what we require is 
found in law-books, and that the lawyer has to look for much 
of his information in medical literature. Indeed forensic 
medicine, which originated in law, has its main representa- 
tives in medicine. In both the names of Plenck and Plouguet, 
Parr, Duncan, and Beck, and many others of more modern 
times, are household words. Moreover, our library is a pub- 
lic one, free to the profession and the public. Now, there is a 
class of literature which in a free and public library like 
ours ought to be well represented. Laymen intending 
to avail themselves of it expect to find mental food 
adapted to their comprehension and taste. That sort of liter- 
ature is by no means scarce. Much of it is of fair quality, some 
of it surpassingly good. Books on anatomical and physio- 
logical topics, those on subjects connected with natural 
history, hygiene and statistics, will always be found inter- 
esting and instructive. They ought to be well represented 
in our library, for they cannot be found in large numbers in 
the public and circulating libraries. Indeed the frequenters 
of the latter differ much from the class of readers consult- 
ing ours. 
The additional knowledge acquired in this manner will 
not only improve a man’s ability to protect himself and his 
family, he will also facilitate the work of his doctor. A 
person who has filled his mind with comprehensible ideas 
and sound facts, will no longer study quack advertisements. 
He who has learned something about the functions of his 
body and been taught to consider the correlation of causes 
and effects, can appreciate a disease to be the result of 
either a preventible or an unavoidable cause, and recognize 8 
that whatever disease was not the result of faith cannot be 
cured by faith, not even by faith in panaceas. The business 
of the quack may thus cease, the nostrum mixers may suffer, 
but individual and public health will be the gainers. There 
is less sickness in a man who has some knowledge of his 
body and its requirements; and when he falls sick he 
expects relief from natural and intelligible sources only. 
That man is a better patient, more accessible to reasoning, 
more obedient to the rules imposed in the interest of recov- 
ery. If he knows enough to recognize the superiority or 
inferiority of his physician, so much the better. To-day 
most people have not a sufficient knowledge to guide them 
in their selection ; there are many who are so little in- 
formed that they do not so much as care. If in a matter 
evei so trifling a medical man is called as a witness before 
a court of justice, the first question he is asked refers to his 
membership in a medical society. The uninformed public, 
however, often select their doctor for reasons known to 
nobody, least perhaps to themselves. All this would be 
changed if a small part of what is the basis of a physician’s 
thinking and knowing were made accessible and intelligible 
to every man and woman. A library like that which we 
intend to establish, is destined not only to supply the pro- 
fessional man, but furnish healthy mental food to all those 
who are thirsty for knowledge. Those who have means to 
spai e in the interest of public education, hygiene and health, 
cannot possibly apply them better than by providing for a 
library fund sufficient for the gradual accumulation, from 
year to year, under the supervision of experts, of all the 
good popular literature on the subjects of anatomy, physi- 
ology; hygiene, dietetics, and statistics. 
May all this become true. We are preparing this edifice 
to be the head-center of medical study in the city, an ex- 
ample to the profession of the country, and a resort for the 
brethren who come to us from near or distant parts. This 
building when completed will be an ornament to the 
metropolis. What is still more important is that we mean 
it to become, and feel assured that it will be, an additional 
element of intellectual and ethical power, and in its results 
a blessing to the commonwealth.