INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL 
TO THE 
American Jflefcical Association, 
/ H (U'-Ts-es.z. 
AT 
NEW ORLEANS, 
MAY, 1869. 
BY 
w. It. BOBJPKG, M.D. 
fFROM JUNE NO. OF THE NASHVILlt JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY.) 
Masljuillc, $enn.: 
W. H. F. LIGON. PRINTER, UNIVERSITY PRINTING OFFICE. 
1869. (£Ije tfate Jflcctimj of tb0t Doctors, 
Drs. Briggs, Thompson, McMinn, Hughes, Pinkston and my- 
self left Nashville on Saturday, May 1, for New Orleans, on the 
Edgefield and Kentucky Railroad, not that we went North to se- 
cure a running start South, but because, as we would be out 
two nights, on a journey of only thirty-six hours, we were anx- 
ious to have a sleeping car, and this we secured by telegraph at 
Louisville to take us aboard nearly two hundred miles on this 
side of that city at the Tennessee and Kentucky State Line, or 
Guthrie. At Guthrie we had to wait for our sleeping palace 
only eight hours, which we concluded to employ in a sort of ap- 
prenticeship to sleep, by sleeping, which we fell into all the more 
readily from the reflection that the luxury was to be enjoyed at 
a double cost, hotel and “palace.” When the palace reached us 
we had had sleep enough, it being nearly day-light, and so w 
did not board it, but let it, empty, follow, as a skiff does a steam- 
boat, to be ready for an emergency. Next night we concluded 
that a sleeping car, in point of ventilation, could hardly be 
in harmony with the inexorable laws prescribed by Hygiene, 
and that, as physicians in active practice, we were accustomed 
to loss of sleep, and that the whole subject, examined in the 
light of philosophy, had but one possible conclusion, and that 
was, that loss of sleep was less detrimental to health in well ven- 
tilated apartments, than its enjoyment under improper circum- 
stances. One doctor, indeed, undertook to prove that sleep, un- 
less its recipient was in a proper physical condition, and the cir- 
cumstances during its enjoyment in the most perfect adaptation 
to hygienic requirements, was a verb active, to all intents and 
purposes, as he had demonstrated times without number in his 
own person, and that he was now actively engaged iu an enquiry 
that had for its object the ascertainment of the quantum of this 
verb active sleep necessary to exhaust the vital forces, or so de- 2 
press and irritate the nervous centres as to establish the fons et 
origo of many grave maladies. Now, whatever may be said of 
sleep in a “palace,” talking in a car going twenty miles an hour 
is a verb active, unless some one having a great many books 
should undertake to prove that “talking” was not a verb at all, 
but a participle only ; and so our philosophers, (for we had now 
many on board, all bound for New Orleans, voluntary martyrs 
to science and the elevation of the profession, with tropical fruits, 
green peas and strawberries glimmering in the background,) un- 
able longer to raise their voices above the whir and clatter of 
the thundering train, became quiet and soon began to nod. “I 
can’t hear you,” some one would roar now and then as his neigh- 
bor cross the way would throw his head toward him as an an- 
gler would his rod toward the perch-ruffled waters. It was only 
an elongated nod, lengthened ludicrously out by a sudden careen 
of the car. We had resolved not to sleep so that we could 
study, in the dreamy light of the lamps, the countenances of 
philosophers in repose, as the opportunity was rare, for the fea- 
tures of the sleepers were spiritless and passionless, though their 
bodies were being shaken to pieces. But we were mortal and 
the foreshadower of that sleep that knows no waking caressed us 
with such dalliance as the sweet restorer can alone offer in pro- 
pitiation of its victims, 
“ And swearing we would ne’er consent, consented. 
And such shadows and phantoms as we pursued in that flying 
verb active sleep ! We were dead, and like the shades of the 
suiter train, precipitated into the regions of Pluto by the bow of 
Ulysses, we wandered with kindred professional shades. We 
had familiar conversations with them, for the starch and back- 
bone that enable one to strut his brief hour in life were gone, 
and we were at once struck with the friendliness, sociability and 
communicativeness of shade-life. W : liked it amazingly. We, 
at a glance, saw that it was up to the high mark of “naught ex- 
tenuate, naught set down in malice.” The cardinal points were 
obliterated; shades of the East seemed oblivious of their birth- 
right light, for theirs was the birth-place of light, nor did any 
measure his consequence by the quantum of brick and mortar 3 
he represented, or whether in the olden time when he took any- 
thing to drink it was Croton, Delaware, Cumberland, Ohio, Lake, 
or Mississippi. It seemed a delightful republic where every 
shade-citizen was stamped with his ‘‘status” between his shoul- 
ders in letters seemingly compounded of gold and light, that all 
might read and know the exact value of each, and thus a world 
of pretense and make-believe be saved to the actors. And the 
endorsement upon the backs of all we saw was “nothing !” We 
had long conversations with those who had spent their earth-life 
in elevating themselves and the profession. They told us that 
in the star-spangled world as citizens drew near the end of earth- 
life, and especially doctors, and could not do as they formerly 
did, and, indeed, were not as they formerly were, and whose hori- 
zon was gradually approximating them, and their glory depart- 
ing, it was natural to selfish humanity for them to attribute the 
change they could not conceal, not to themselves but to the 
world they lived in. Just as a man in a boat sees the shores of 
the river and the heavenly bodies constantly changing places, 
but being persuaded of the stability of these objects knows that 
he is deceived by the change of the boat. It was also natural 
that the weak and frivolous, fascinated by the phosphorescent 
light that still lingered, like the perfume of the broken vase, 
about the once magnate, should flatter him into a fixed belief 
that the world instead of himself was tumbling to pieces. But 
in spite of this folly, reenacted generation after generation, the 
world with all its great interests, its arts, sciences and literatures, 
its care for its unfortunates, the development of the masses, its 
magnificent provision against famine, its eradication of pesti- 
lence, the triumphant enthronement of Hygeeia, was advancing 
with the tread of a mammoth crushing out the crimes and follies 
in government and religion that had desecrated it through pass- 
es a8es> that under the guidance of its grand Artificer 
would continue from glory to glory through the coming cycles. 
Look back forty years only and what means had medical teach- 
ers, in the country you and we represent, to turn out what our 
friend Galen yonder in earth-life proclaimed himself to be, “a 
consummate physician?’ Forty years ago ! When your principal 
writers were Dewees and Eberle. Poor Dewees reproducing his 4 
“Females” in his “Practice,” with his “very much better” and 
“very much worse,” and struggling in his lumbering convolu- 
tions to make it appear that it was not so much his object to 
prove that Dr. Eberle was at variance with him, Dr. Dewees, as 
with himself, Dr. Eberle. And poor Eberle in his Therapeutics 
and his Practice torturing his mind for excuses for the relent- 
less repetition of calomel and ipecac in all manner of diseases, 
and quoting Sydenham from the Latin edition of which he knew 
nothing, while an English one was at his elbow that he never 
read. And just before this what had you but Caldwell on top 
of Cullen, and Thomas’ blunderbuss, made heavier by the notes 
of Housack, with Chapman’s Therapeutics, and Rush on Sir 
John Pringle, which he delivers to the students of the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania with a startling “Behold ! an attempt to 
increase and diffuse medical knowledge in the United States.” 
Yet doctors were made by such men and their successors that 
have done many wonderful things. And you, during your two 
courses, what opportunities had you ? We modestly answered 
“none.” Where were you ? “The first session in the Medical 
College of Ohio, and the second in Drake’s School, or the Medi- 
cal Department of the Cincinnatti College.” 
Did you pay your fees ? “Yes, to the last cent.” 
How many operations on live folks did you see the first course? 
We again replied “none.” Was there a hospital accessible to 
the students ? “Yes.” How often did you visit it ? “Twice.” 
What did you see the first time ? “A furious madman chained 
to a ring in the middle of his cell.” What did you see the sec- 
ond time ? “A man with the dropsy.” Was he benefitted by 
the treatment ? “Possibly he was, for he died directly after- 
wards which it seems he conld’nt do before.” What did you see 
the second course ? “We saw two operations.” What were 
they ? “Both on the eye ; one was for cataract and the man was 
benefitted.” This was performed by your professor of surgery, of 
course ? “No, it was performed by the professor of the prac- 
tice of medicine.” Was the second operation successful? “I 
do not know It was performed on the eye of a decapitated 
sheep.” And yet you see, substituting one word for another in 
a place or two, 5 
“And buirdly ctyels and clever hizziea 
Are bred in sic away as this is.” 
With tew books among the school men and comparatively none 
among the students, it would seem to us that college sessions 
ought to have held from year to year. But it is almost incredi- 
ble that the present race of medical celebrities, who make 
books in less time than it took their fathers to read them, are 
clamorous for an increase of the lecture term. Why, where a 
man has written out what he has to say on a subject, is there any 
sense in requiring a student to pay for board and lodging while 
the author of the book tells h m what is in it ? Is the student 
so great a ninny as not to know that he has his teacher “booked” 
in black and white and can devour him at his leisure by his own 
fireside in his old Kentucky or Tennessee home ? How long 
would it take for one of your celebrities at five hours a week to 
say over all he has written in his surgery ? We do not figure 
much here, having neither trade nor traffic, but I should think, 
at a rough guess, allowing some little time for illustrations and 
flourishes, about five years, and during the last year the student, 
(supposing he could live through the infliction), would inevita- 
bly lose the cramming of the preceding four. Why not let him 
go home with the book ? And so with your works upon prac- 
tice and obstetrics and physiology. If men w;ith comparatively 
no books or means of illustration could make such writers and 
physicians as now honor your land, in two sessions of four 
months each, is it not clear to any one who has not bartered his 
common sense for new words and new remedies, that at the pre- 
sent time, two sessions of two months each ought to achieve much 
more, and are, indeed, enough and to spare ? Have a dozen 
teachers or more if you will ; but as each has his own book, or, 
what is generally better, some one else’s, 60 days would (leaving 
out Sundays) give each of nine professors six days or thirty-six 
lectures, and yet devoting but one-fourth of each day to them. 
A very ancient shade here approached ; “I ken his name but 
e’en to mention it would beunlawfu’.” You are in a trance stateij 
said he; you will go back to mundane life and mingle again 
with doctors. Bear with their nonsense, for really there is some- 
thing in your profession that tends to steal away one’s common 6 
sense. I may say so since that profession was mine in the far- 
away star-domed and flower-enameled world, hallowed be its mem- 
ory! so full of life and light and gushing song; rapt in the bewil- 
dering beauty of its fair women, with varied climate and sparkling 
waters ; Alp o’ertowering Alp, venerable in its helmet of virgin 
snow, and looking away down the warm valley, carpeted with 
green sward and rich in the grateful perfume of a thousand flow- 
ers : fringed with stately forest trees, struggling each to lift his 
green foliage above that which makes his neighbor glorious; 
amid song of birds of richest plumage, all bathed in an atmos- 
phere divine ; in that gorgeous world, my friend, I was a phy- 
sician and shades of modern men in the art really conservative 
of all arts, for it is conservative of man, the father of arts, as- 
tonish me daily on arriving here by telling me how often I am 
quoted, and in what esteem I am held. Such has been the pro- 
gress of that art and science since my earth-time that no one 
man can know the half. I wrote that the art was long and life 
was short, but since then the art has been lengthened a hundred 
fold, life remaining the same. I taught it orally. It cannot 
now be taught in colleges or Asclepions. Books have superseded 
talkers and the closet will swallow up tlm college. The dissect- 
ing room, the chemical laboratory must always be crowded, 
demonstrations in surgery and obstetrics full, but all else 
will be acquired in quiet sections with the books. One phi- 
losopher of medicine once a week for tbe two months’ college 
course. It is granted to us here of very long residence to see a 
little of what mortals would call ahead, and to know what is 
passing, if we choose, in your world. Last evening, by your 
time, a young doctor was explaining to you and half a dozen 
other doctors, at an inn, how a certain medical school sent him 
a diploma unasked, he never having even matriculated in it, nor 
was his name to be found on its register, but alone on its list of 
graduates. The man that did this will be at your meeting, will 
there be a high church, ritualistic doctor ; a high ethics man, 
making it impossible for any but such Simon Pures as himself 
to get into a decent medical society! Watch such men ! Others 
who have grown gray in the diploma trade and desired in the 
green room no higher motive for conferring the degree than that 7 
teach uarae lengthened the graduation list, being well 
years and having hut precious few more diplomas to sign, would 
destroy the value of those they have been signing through a loAg 
life, in sheer spleen and miserable pretension t6 moral rectitude. 
Others, again, who had grown gray and rich in defiance of med- 
ical schools and diplomas, by the practice of medicine, could see 
nothing but professional “demoralization” resulting from diplo- 
mas. Watch these men 1 One of you, long since here, who 
spent his long life in signing diplomas, and possibly signed more, 
and profited more by it, than any professor in the world, also 
became professionally pious when retired, and warned others not 
to do as he had done, depress the profession by sending reapers 
to the harvest, and you will hear similar twaddle by letter and 
otherwise at your meeting. All this is intended for Buncombe, 
while the croaking diploma signers will continue to write on 
sheep skin as long as it pays. And what ado you will make 
about medical education at your meeting, likewise as a tub to 
quiet the great lay whale when they will return and do exactly 
what they did before Those from the seaboard will grow elo- 
quent in their attacks upon “one horse schools,” and graphically 
describe how a young man is to be seduced from his plough and 
put through the dootor mill to be at last compelled to renew his 
acquaintance with the plough handles, all owing to the interior 
“one horse” schools. He will describe well from personal obser- 
vation. Such young men as he describes almost invariably grad- 
uate at the schools iu the great cities, for being conscious of 
knowing nothing and of the want of capacity to learn anything, 
they very naturally conclude that it will sound big to graduate 
in the great marts of trade, thinking it will enable them to jump 
into practice, which it never does, aud thus they are forced back 
to the plough. These one-horse orators, blinded by their egre- 
gious egotism, while engaged in the endeavor to blind others 'by 
their rant should have placed before them the troth as a test of 
a one horse school. There are several schools, of small charges, 
some very small, all in full feather and fellowship with the 
“coach and sixes," as these seaboard schools may be called, within 
their own elegant nomenclature. A student attends two courses 
with you and pays for lectures $210 00. He gets one course 8 
West for $20 00, and goes next to a “coach and six" which wel- 
comes him, and, after relieving him of $140 00, graduates him. 
He gets through for $140 and $20 which is $160, fifty dollars 
less than sufficed for your school graduate. And these students 
who go to cheap schools the first session are sure to hunt a very 
dear one to graduate at. The graduates of the $140 schools 
pay, in a majority of instances, fifty dollars less for lectures than 
those who attend at the old nominal price of $105. 
The orators of the interior schools will argue that ability to 
practice or to teach, except by fools, is not to be estimated by 
the fees demanded for either. Ear doctors, eye doctors, and 
other itinerant mountebanks, rambling about the country, skin 
all the fools wherever they stop to rest the soles of their feet. 
They, by long practice, learn to read in a man’s face the amount 
in his purse, and by taking it all under false pretenses, are guilty 
of a villainy which surpasses in magnitude that of the highway- 
man who accomplishes the same end in a less sneaking manner, 
by boldly proclaiming “stand and deliver !” These scoundrels 
ought to be designated by the tide-water professors as a six horse 
institution ! Every sensib’e man ought to know that the inte- 
rior schools in means of illustration and teaching talent at least 
equal the tide water institutions, from Boston to Galveston, no 
matter what they charge. 
You class your great poets with the prophets and seers of the 
olden time. The tallest of them sings : 
“ Great men have always scorned great recompenses : 
Epaminondes saved his Thebes and died, 
Not leaving e’en his funeral expenses ; 
Great Washington had thanks and nought beside, 
Save the all cloudless glory that few men’s is, 
To save nis country 
The once head and center of American Medicine, Dr. Physic, 
has his memory shamed in the medical biography of his country 
for his moderate charges, and your modern bone-setter will boast 
that treble such charges would not satisfy him ! You remember 
that the “ Surgeon of the century” charged a friend of yours 
$20 00 for a “ cure,” for a similar one to which another sur- 
geon, that the next century will be innocent of any knowledge 9 
of, demauded 70 twenties, and absolutely pocketed 60, or 
$1200 00 ! 
As to medical education, or any kind of education, every 
country will have its own system, without exactly knowing, per- 
haps, how that particular plan was generally accepted. But 
this, like its gent ral laws and customs, and everything peculiar 
to it as a country, and which, therefore, distinguishes it from 
other countries, will resist change, and if any occur it must take 
place like the change that time works in the appearance of in- 
dividuals. Possibly what is best for one country is not best tor 
another, and it is as impossible that they should be alike in 
their institutions, manners and customs, as that the climate and 
topography of one should be the exact copy of another. We will 
not say that the American system of medical education is the 
best that could be adopted, but that it suits America best is 
proved by the tact that twenty years hammering upon it by your 
representative men, associated in annual council chiefly tor that 
object, has, so far from making it better in their own judgment, 
that they with great unanimity declare that it is infinitely worse, 
one of them going so far, after failing to improvise a medical 
school for immediate action, without any means of illustration 
whatever, as to declare in a State society that the profession was 
“demoralized,” and will carry that statement to the American 
Medical Association to become an item in the future Toner's 
American Medical Biography. Medical education in your coun- 
try has been continually changing for the better and has made 
such strides upwards in a hundred years as would astonish any 
people beyond the influence of the lather of waters or roar of 
the wild leap of Niagara, and the sickening sensational assertion, 
by pretended friends, to the contrary, should be promptly met 
and rebuked as a slander upon the grandest success, in a benefi- 
cent object, of modern times. Sir, do not your brethren know, 
purblind though they are, that in a free country open and avowed 
rivalry must exist in every struggle of man ? Nothing is too 
sacred to be assailed. Customs hallowed by time and incrusted 
with the respect and admiration of the good through many ages 
are the more violently assailed on that account. What, in the 
despotisms of the Old World, are held up by the bayonet under 10 
royal edicts, surely cannot claim the respect and admiration that 
naturally attach to those which, in a free country, have sufficient 
backbone to stand alone of themselves, without shield of law or 
protection of government, surrounded by malignants, and be- 
coming the brighter and lovelier from the very attrition and 
abrasion of the dirt cast upon them to fall from their polished 
sides and strengthen their foundation. Because of being an in- 
stitution of a free government, they assail medical education 
on all sides by organized medical opposition ; each sepa- 
rate organization in the paraphernalia of chartered college and 
established organ, “in equality before the law,” throws down 
the gauntlet and defies the regular profession, sending numbers 
of their graduates yearly into the field and openlj contending 
for supremacy. Their followers are gathering themselves to- 
gether in State and National associations, and like othei minori- 
ties have no quarrel among themselves that the Herculean 
strength of unity may tell wherever and whenever exerted. 
Your government is a representative one, and can any appeal 
be made to it by medical educators that does not embrace every 
division and sect of medicine ? Certainly not. Whatever the 
national legislature will do for one set of doctors it will do for 
another. Did not the Trustees, having the lawful power, put a 
homceopathist in the Edinburg Medical School, the mother of 
the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, the 
mother of you all P And recently, was one not almost forced on 
the University of Michigan ? And yet at your meeting it will 
be solemnly proposed by the President to appeal to Congress, 
not knowing, or caring to see, that an appeal outside of your- 
selves to any power is a concession of your weakness, and the 
twaddle of your talking, short-sighted brethren about elevating 
the profession, meaning the regular profession of medicine in the 
United States, concedes its depravity and is a testimony in its 
own household to its rottenness, of which the sleepless, organ- 
ized opposers of its grandeur will avail themselves to strike it 
terrible blows. Sir, teach that the American system is the best 
possible system for America, cemented by the labor of a hundred 
years by the devoted co-operation of a class of men who 
for nobleness of character, unrequited labor, and generous en- 11 
thusiasm, cannot be duplicated in the annals of the world. 
Teach them that the system will go on in a natural development 
in full harmony with its surrounding free institutions and in a 
line project! d by itself in its beginning, achieving ne\tf wonders 
and securing the admiration of every American heart. Teach 
that there are fopr reasons why so grand and successful a sys- 
tem as the American is conceded to be abroad, and known to he 
at home, ts assailed by its professed friends. 1st. Under a law 
of nature, men (and medical men constitute no exception to the 
rule,) get old, and when they totter they think the world shakes, 
just as the drunken man when he tumbles headlong upon the 
earth is willing to swear that it rose deliberately up and with- 
out cause or provocation struck him violently in the face. Such 
a man is willing to believe anything, except that he is knee deep 
in his grave, and needs retiring as a change of air for his worn 
out constitution and psycological enfeeblement. 2d. The strong 
young man who lingered abroad in their universities and out of 
them. In the grandeur of his present surroundings he learns to 
look with contempt upon the plain, unpretending institutions of 
his Republican country. George Washington degenerates into 
a Virginia tobacco planter, and Henry Clay is remanded back to 
the old mill of the Hanover slashes. He learns to say “milord,” 
and thinks he saw a live one once coming out of a theatre, or 
some other place. A pen’orth of ribbon on the lappel of a swell 
entrances him. Grand cities, servants in livery, splendid equip- 
ages, whose high polish groups like a mirror the plebian throng 
it cuts in twain «s unceremoniously as a butcher’s cleaver divides 
a joint upon the block. 0, wouldn’t he change things in his plain 
bacon and greens country if he had his way ! Wouldn’t he ? 
How can you reconcile him to the red flannel shirt, blanket, 
overcoat, and butternut trousers of his student days, when he 
loathes red flannel and butternut ? He returns armed with pot 
and brush, determined if he cannot alter the corn bread and com- 
mon doings of things, at least to coat them over with French 
varnish. Class 3d consists of curd-brain folks who, like Noah’s 
doves, can find no place to rest the sole of the foot; like bears 
learning to dance on hot sheets of iron, never stationary, always 
in motion, too impatient to wait, like Micawber, for things to 12 
turn up, but always seeking to turn up things ; who at the bot- 
tom of the wheel of fortune desire to quicken its revolutions that 
by some God-send a projecting nail in its rim may catch a flut- 
tering rag of their garments and elevate them to light and for- 
tune ; like the spirits driven out of the possessed man, wander- 
ing about in dry places seeking rest and finding none. With 
these anything for change. The 4th is a class well known in the 
world—the watchers of the main chance—and some of them get 
into medicine. Cautious, watchful and wary, each is self-poised. 
If he revolve it is upon his own center. You read of self-cock- 
ing revolvers ; but here is a revolver that goes whirling round 
himself uncocked. He has been long acquainted with himself, 
ate with him, drunk with him, slept with him, and he likes him. 
There is nothing honest that he would'nt do for him, and if he 
were in a close place why honesty would have to take care of 
itself till he got him out. Of course he would get him out, for 
he knows the ropes and could pull him through. He writes a 
good resolution and makes speeches at society meetings. He 
tends to specialism. If he had been a butcher he would have 
devoted himself to the specialty of sausage grinding. He likes 
sausage, and what he couldn’t sell he could eat. He wants to 
chop up all the chairs in all the colleges. He will tell you how 
many France has, and how many Germany has. Why, he could 
make four or five chairs out of surgery and as many out of ob- 
stetrics. This would make chairs for many, and many reduced 
and intensified means him. He writes to some old diploma 
signer why he doesn’t have things cut up so as to keep up with 
the times. See how they cut up surgery, he writes, away up in 
New York. A tailor is a patcher, mender and sewer. So is a 
surgeon. If, as some calculate, a tailor is the ninth part of a 
man, so a professor in a New York school would seem the ninth 
part of a surgeon. But the ninth part of a surgeon is better 
than no surgeon. Better be professor of corn and bunion sur- 
gery than no surgery at all. Come, cut up, cut down, and di- 
vide ! The wily old diploma-fa'stf writes that he had been 
thinking of this, and whenever it is done, why the suggester 
knows who will come in. A right pretty little trade is carried 
on in this way. We have heard of men there offering not only 13 
to divide their own chairs with appreciative brethren, but in the 
excess of generosity to offer their colleagues’ chairs to special 
friends, just as the devil, when out at the elbows and not having 
land to bury himself, offered whole empires on the condition that 
the recipient would entertain a very lively respect for him. The 
colleges have prospered while successive generations of these 
barnacles have been scraped from their bottoms by the scythe of 
death, and will be still prospering when a very great many more 
shall, in fossil, have sunk down to the bottom of the sea among 
their predecessors. 
It will be remembered in the beginning of this century, as 
earth-men calculate time, in the wild West, people wanted more 
preachers than the church sent them. The church thought the 
people ought to wait till it could have preachers enough regular- 
ly scienced, Latined and Greeked. The people would not wait, 
but plainly said, if you do not send us some we will make some 
of our own, which they did, and very good ones they were, which 
ended the controversy. In Scotland there would have been no 
necessity for this ; the supply could easily have kept place with 
the demand, and Scotland furnished models both in church mat- 
ters and medicine. Scotland had no interminable forests into 
which populations were pouring in 1S00, as they are still pour- 
ing in 1869. Would a preacher, reared in a bandbox and fed 
on claret and sponge cake, have followed these rough pioneers to 
the wilderness to have saved the souls of a whole “Territory ?” 
Or if he had, could he have exerted any influence upon them 
other than the learned men of France, who accompanied Napo- 
leon into Egypt, had over his soldiery, whom nothing tickled so 
much as their own peremptory order upon each charge of the 
Mamelukes upon them, “Savans and jackasses to the center !” 
Did preacher or doctor follow the adventurous Robertson and 
Donelson with their adherents to your own seat of medical learn- 
ing ? Certainly not. They will tell you in speeches at your 
meeting how doctors are made. Their description can only ex- 
cite the smile of fools. Many rough, half educated graduates 
will follow and bless these forest pilgrims, and become great 
among them, and deservedly so for their conceded usefulness. 
Your cities are already crowded with highly educated young 14 
physicians who cannot or will not go to the “ front.” Would 
the grumblers fill the large towns and cities to repletion and 
leave the hamlets and villages a prey to itinerant quackery ? 
Look at your “great rebellion,” how it was in the beginning that 
a West Pointer was a subject of merriment on both sides. No 
one had then or now much faith in his thorough military edu- 
cation, and each side looked for its coming man among civilians. 
But in a “fit” a rough doctor would be thought better than no 
doctor, and so in a grand fight all who had learned the a b c of 
fighting by “science” were hunted up and brought from the old 
field school and trade shops, wherever they could be found, and 
made officers of, it being enough that they had seen mock fights 
at West Point. So the West Pointers all worked their way to 
fame while the star of the most promising of the civilians save, 
in a few instances, set to rise no more. Precisely so with your 
college taught medical student. He has taken out his ticket 
for the first station on the railroad to fame, and it is within his 
power, Greek or no Greek, Latin or no Latin, to reach the last 
round of the ladder. It will be urged that the licensing power, 
as the diploma is called, should be taken from the .colleges and 
conferred upon those not connected with them, for the reason 
that the latter would be more rigorous in their examinations. 
But who is to judge of qualifications of these examiners ? 
The cat is to be belled, but who is to be trusted with the deli- 
cate mission, or what honest man would trust himself ? In war 
examiners are forced to serve. Where do governments look for 
those qualified for one of the most important trusts in the army? 
Of course among those who have served an apprenticeship 
to teaching, the very men these medical wiseacres propose to take 
it from ! Who did the Confederate Government “so-called.” 
place at the head of the Board of Examiners of applicants for 
surgeons in the army in your own city P Singularly enough the 
very man who now is the bearer of dispatches from the State 
Society to the Association invoking it to take the licensing 
power imagined to reside in a diploma from the schools, he hav- 
ing taken himself away frum them first ! 
An openly avowed bankrupt, repudiating his promises to pay 
and dishonoring his own name, after pocketing gains he thus 15 
publicly acknowledged to be ill-gotten—a bold acknowedgment 
ot having raised money undef false pretenses—an impeachment 
of thousands who had honored and made him ; many of them 
with the ink scarce dry upon their diplomas, and who had fondly 
looked to that name to assist them in an honest effort to live ; 
alas ! toj have it in the day of their struggle thrown in their faces 
that it was only a kiss of Judas, no more, “signifying nothing !” 
A moloch, to suck the blood and grind the bones of its own off- 
spring ! A hypocritical affectation of repentance without ac- 
companying restitution by a self-deputied chief to head the ken- 
nel set upon the diploma holders (except themselves !) as next 
to criminals; while inwardly resolved to sign again should op- 
portunity offer, and that failing, to torce opportunity, if possible! 
The world’s annals afford hut a single instance of a venality so 
impudent, thus paraded publicly as a virtue, and that and this 
shall he coupled together in all future time as kindred outrages 
reciprocally illustrative. W. W. Sanger, M.D., in his book on 
prostitution, gives an account of a very pious woman who prac- 
ticed that profession openly to get means to raise aloft the ban- 
ner of the church ! Natural enough and narrow enough it may 
be, for non-diploma-signers to desire that signing diplomas 
should cease, and make an outcry that “enough is as good as a 
feast ;” but that those who hrd grown gray in signing and were 
then “spreading themselvee” for renewed opportunity to sign, to 
join in the cry of “stop thief,” and head the race, is infamous. 
All this from most sage shadow, “every line, 
For God’s sake, reader take it not for mine!” 
You know you have ever advocated and are so repeatedly re- 
corded through the fifth of a century for a pure profession, mem- 
bers ever honorable in their bearing to each other and to the 
world, taking as a model the true Christian, 
“ Just to himself, his church, and to mankind.” 
This you called “Honorable Medicine.” As it took neither 
Greek nor diploma to make a Christian or a gentleman, so in 
your judgement it took neither to make an honorable physician. 
Though you gave your last dollar for a diploma, you never en- 
quired whether your neighboring doctors had done the same. 16 
Your enquiry was always : “Is he doing his best to heal God’s 
afflicted, honestly pretending to no knoweldge, and remembering 
that the poor we were always to have with us, and ihat upon 
them chiefly fell disease and suffering, that they were God’s pa- 
tients, and that the rich were not to be robbed because they 
were rich, for riches were no crime to be punished, and if they 
were it was the business of law and not medicine. A community 
of such men with you were the profession of medicine. You con- 
tended also that a woman engaged honestly in an effort to heal 
the sick in the line of honorable medicine, slandering no one nor 
praising herself, honoring and magnifying the art and science of 
medicine, oblivious of nomenclatural prefixes or addenda to men 
or systems, diploma or no diploma, under the code is to be treated 
in all respects as a physician by physicians. You have also 
taught that a man may be an unmitigated quack with his head 
full of Latin and Greek and his pockets of diplomas. 
We have been not a little amused at the peculiar dodge of a 
few of your celebrities and a great number of pretentious imita- 
tors concerning the kind of preliminary education that should 
demanded of those who wish to study medicine. The dodge 
consists in getting themselves advertised as “scholars,” for all 
would naturally conclude that they possessed those advantages 
which they make a sine qua non in others, when the truth is 
those very sticklers, had such a rule existed in their young days 
would have been excluded. After scholarly talk they think, like 
Squeers, folks will naturally take them to be scholars. No one 
should underate learning of any kind, for knowledge is power, but 
these very same gentlemen who have made themselves prominent 
in insistng upon the Latin and Greek as essentials in the prelimi- 
nary education of medical students, are living evidences that the 
highest places in medicine may be reached and adorned without 
their aid, and their young echoes, should they hereafter fill their 
places, will not reach them by dint o’ Greek. Skill in the appli- 
cation of the science and art of medicine to the cure of diseases, 
(and all pertaining to them above or below this is merely orna- 
mental), after a thorough medical education, which can be acquired 
without Latin and Greek, is the result of enlightened empyricism 
long exercised, conjoined with the highest powers of reasoning 17 
and observation. A brain not naturally possessing these gifts, 
so to speak, while capable of mastering all the languages of civili- 
zation, living or dead, is no lamp in the labyrinthean walks of 
practical medicine. 
Sylvius to more learning, perhaps, than any physician of his 
generation, added a genius and eloquence which attracted near his 
chair of professor of medicine at Leyden, crowds of ambitious 
medical students from all over Europe. Yet, notwithstanding, 
during an epidemic fever there, just two hundred years ago, in 
bis iaudauii- effort to prove his theory that health consists in a 
balance of acids and alkalies outside and inside of the bodies of 
men, sent here, in a single season, by his own computation, 
two-thirds x of the princij al inhabitants of his city, and 
three years after came on himself to look after his colony. His 
works consist of a few insignificant tracts in defense of his 
chemical theory. 
Dr. Mason Good was so befogged by the dead languages in 
life that even here he is enveloped in a mist. Your generation 
claims to be a live one ; let its chief devotion, then, be to live 
things. The Mohegans were children of nature, yet when the 
last one of them took the language of his tribe into the tomb 
with him, the beauty of their forest home, with hill and plain, 
lake, sky, bird and blossom would find other languages capa- 
ble of painting it in all its exuberance of loveliness. 
Your analogue in the commercial capital of your sister State 
stands alone among his contemporary practitioners of medicine 
on your continent as preeminently the Master of these languages. 
In remarks upon a resolution in a medical society announcing 
the value of Latin and Greek to fit men for a medical education 
and that a Latin and Greek education should be required for 
admission to medical studies, Dr. T. S. Bell* said of the Greek, 
that it was of great advantage to any one who was master of 
it, but a mere smattering was rather an evil than a benefit, and 
when you remember that the great Lexicographer, Dr. Johnson 
was pronounced by Lord Macauly “a smatterer,” can medical men 
as a rule in this branch of learning hope to be any thing more ? 
*Dr. T. S. Bell has learning sufficient to supply two Faculties of Medicine.— 
George D. Prentice. 18 
Another, formerly the guide and honored premier of two 
Faculties of immortals, Prof. L. P. Yandell, in the same discus- 
sion opposed the resolution in its entirety, and pronounced this 
species of education unnecessary to success in medical practice 
and gave numerous instances going to show that while there are 
many great practitioners in medical history who knew nothing 
of Latin or Greek ; there are other instances of vast learning 
in Latin or Greek who were neither respectable in the practice 
of medicine nor as medical writers. Certainly whether my 
Earth-vernacular be important or not to medicine, such of the 
Western continentals as have reached fame and shade-life owed 
nothing to it. 
When in the Legislature of Virginia, a long time ago, a 
starched Simon Tappertit declared that no one ought to be per- 
mitted to become a member of such a body who had not a di- 
ploma in his pocket, a grave old member said, according to his 
experience, one diploma in the head was worth forty in the 
pocket. 
The license to practice, every physician knows, has been effec- 
tually taken from all boards and conferred upon clerks of couuty 
courts and a United States officer, and the only question the ex- 
aminers ask is, “rlave you got the money ? Twenty dollars for 
city and county and ten for United States besides my fee.” In 
Tennessee any man can practice physic by paying these fees to 
these officers. Now let the bear dancers take the licensing 
power from them. Men will tell you that the thing has been 
actually tried, and especially in States as old as the oldest, 
which, by the way, never accomplished any other great medical 
feat, and that the result was charming to behold. That Phila- 
delphia, New York and Baltimore, having utterly and entirely 
failed, when not having the redeeming fear of that State before 
them, to send into it medical men proportioned after her model, 
forced the doctors of that State to appeal to the legislature to 
appoint a board of medical examiners, not to examine them, but 
to examine all who should come after them That this board 
made such thorough work of it the first year as to force the little 
boards of the colleges and universities of Philadelphia, New 
York and Baltimore to so stir themselves as to send into that 19 
State material of satisfactory order, so that the political boards 
after the first year, had no trouble at all with these little 
Of course organized opponents were represented in that 
political hoard of examiners, but we are not informed of the mi- 
ll utjte of their operations upon the application of pig or puppy 
before their highnesses 
“ For privilege to toil.” 
You must excuse my levity, but really Capt. Scott and his 
squirrel, of Kentucky notoriety, would illustrate this grand 
achievement. The squirrel looking straight down the rifled bore 
of Capt. Scott’s gun, raised his right paw deprecatingly and said 
aloud : “Hallo ! is that Scott ?” “Yes,” said Scott. “Captain 
Scott ?” enquired the squirrel. “Yes, Capt. Scott.” “Captain 
Bill Scott ?’ “Yes, Capt. Bill Scott.” “Well, hold on Mr. 
Capt. Bill Scott, I’ll come down.” 
Northern tide-water where students most do congregate, is 
short-sighted. Standing upon the northern arch of the Gulf of 
Mexico, and looking towards Hudson’s Bay, with the Mexican 
Cordilleras and Southern Rocky Mountains on the left, and above 
the thirty-third parallel of North latitude, the Appalachian on 
the right, away on and beyond the St. Lawrence that cuts it 
asunder in its fuss) jouruey to the sea, with the great father of 
waters draining the mighty trough of this region, while the St. 
Lawrence, East and Northeast, receives the drippings of a water- 
shed but little inferior in area, we behold an empire so vast as 
to exceed belief, while the sixty degrees of latitude it stretches 
through diversifies it with all the climates and products of the 
world. The tract of territory constituting the Atlantic slope, 
where the Anglo-Saxon pilgrim and his antagonizing brother, 
the chevalier,—the former in the North and the latter in the 
South—made their home in the beginning of the settlement of 
the country, is too email long to exert any controlling influence 
upon the teeming valley we have sketched. The Pacific coast 
more recently acquired cannot, at any future time, maintain a 
population sufficiently numerous to endanger the geographical 
integrity of the interior, which must ever remain as the body of 
a monster bi*d, the tramontane East and West constituting its 
wings. These while convenient appendages, are but appendages. 20 
There is a city mirroring its rising splendor in a coul de sac of 
the great water axis of the “interior basin,” a congeries of fresh 
water Mediterraneans, destined to rise from the modest designa- 
tion of capital of the basin to capital of the Continent, capital 
of the world ! This, in less than a century, will give laws 
to American Arts, Sciences and Literatures. Meanwhile it would 
be more sensible for all the scnools to charge alike ; for it would 
be to the interests of all. If practitioners find fee-bills regularly 
adopted to promote their interest, there can be no reason why a 
regular fee-bill among schools should not promote theirs. Let 
there be no other rivalry among them than in an effort to sur- 
pass, not analogues only, in ability to teach, but even colleague 
should pit himself against colleague in high effort to discharge 
his whole duty. 
Here we awoke. Our verb active philosopher had anticipated 
us and was proceeding to prove that, whereas our sleeping car, 
lumbering along behind us, courting victims by its very proxim- 
ity, must, by having passed through so vast a space in so short 
a time, be quite thoroughly ventilated which he had concluded 
to test by actual experiment, by lying down in it and counting 
his respirations for an hour or so. Other philosophers agreed to 
follow, to be present when the result was announced, and in 
twenty minutes after, the clatter of the iron wheels and the 
snores in the “palace” were struggling for supremacy. The lat- 
ter soon had it all their own way, for by some unaccountable ac- 
cident the palace became detached from the train, which thun- 
dered on and left it high and dry on the rails, quietly waiting 
for its scientific sleepers to get their naps out, which they seemed 
to be in no great hurry about. Nothing remained but to wait 
for the next train which, after a seeming age, came along, picked 
us up and deposited us at New Orleans. We never enquired 
about the fate of the sleeping palace ; whether it froze to the 
rails to which its snoozing scientific freight pressed it, and when 
awakened, left it to remain till it goes to dust a monument of 
philosophers in repose, we know not. In berth No. 5 should 
any one find a beautiful copy of Mr. Dryden, with a dog-ear at 
the description of the grand life of a bachelor, and an address by 
Dr. Toner, of Washington, he will please send to our address a 
lock of his hair