faculty valedictory 
OF THE 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
OF THE 
1MSII! OP NASHVILLE and VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE GRADUATES, 
SESSION OF 1875-71), 
BY 
T . A.. A. T C L I I S 6 N , M . 13 ., 
PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDIOA AND 
Reprinted from the Nashville Journal op Medicine and£ 
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: 
PRINTED AT “THE AMERICAN” BOOK AND JOB ROOMS. 
1876. FACULTY VALEDICTORY 
OF THE 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
OF THE 
mn B inn mi won man, 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE GRADUATES, 
SESSION OE 1875-76, 
BY 
T. Al. ATCHISON, M.D., 
PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDIOA AND THERAPEUTICS. 
Keprinted from the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery. 
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: 
PRINTED AT “THE AMERICAN” BOOK AND JOB ROOMS. 
1876. FACULTY VALEDICTORY, 
OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NASHVILLE AND THE VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, 
Delivered before the Graduates at the close of the Session of 1875-76, 
BY T. A. ATCHISON, M.D., 
PEOFESSOE OF MATEEIA MEDIOA AND THEEAPETJTIOS. 
Gentlemen Graduates—I am delegated by my colleagues 
to give you the parting' word, seasoned with admonition and 
counsel. It is usual, on such occasions, to paint the future in 
roseate hues, and strew your pathway with flowers, but such a 
course comports neither with my age and experience, nor with 
my views of life and its duties. I know full well that your 
paths will not be “ primrose paths of pleasure,” and that 
clouds will often obscure, for a time, the sunshine of hope. 
It is best it should be so. We want no doctors “ dubbed 
on carpet consideration,” but would have you win your spurs 
by knightly feats of arras. The parchment you hold in your 
hands only gives you the right to work in the noblest, as it is 
the most ancient, of professions, and to garner the glorious 
fruits of your toil; this, and nothing more. 
I have said that ours is the most ancient of professions, and 
so it is. It dates 
“ From man’s first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought 
Death into the world, and all our woe. ” 
Our high mission, then, is to prevent or palliate some of the 
woes incident to man’s fall. And our armies, whose martial 
tread comes sounding down the ages, were first recruited at 
the very gates of Eden. True, our march has not been an 
unbroken triumph. Blind guides have lost us in the wilder- 4 
Faculty Valedictory. 
ness; usurped authority has often led us into dangerous am- 
buscades; ignorance and fanaticism have trailed our banners 
in the dust; while unscrupulous camp-followers have hung 
upon our march, and ever and anon, with stolen fragments of 
our cyclopian armor, and under some specious guise of ism or 
pathy, claimed to be the true soldiers of humanity. But I 
charge you, yield nothing to sect or school. Our profession is 
the soul of catholicity—every thing, material or immaterial, 
from the highest heavens to the profoundest depths of the 
earth, which may contribute to the relief of human suffering, 
belongs to us. 
“ No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, 
For the whole boundless continent is yours.” 
Then assert your right to every therapeutic truth, whether 
found in the walks of science, or in the possession of beldame 
or quack; for truth, like the fabled jewel in the toad’s head, 
shines the more brightly for its hideous setting. 
Such has been the audacity of our foes, that, in the recent 
past,, a self-styled sect of hydropaths attempted to wrest from 
us that priceless remedy, water—a remedy, I dare say, of 
more value in the treatment of disease and the preservation of 
health than the whole materia medica combined. And even 
now, another sect, with equal effrontery, would usurp the in- 
herent, right to “do nothing,” when the powers of nature are 
equal to the task of cure. 
Allow me, gentlemen, in this connection, to warn you 
against the evils of poly-pharmacy; in plain words, do not 
rely too much on medicines, especially spoliative medicines. 
Whenever you enter a sick-room, and find mantel and tables 
groaning beneath the weight of prescription bottles and boxes, 
you may be sure the patient has had a fool for a doctor. Ne- 
ver forget that every vital organism is provided with the most 
effective means of resisting its enemies. The ancients called 
this force vis medicatrix naturae. Without the constant pre- 
sence and exertion of this force, you will never witness a re- 
covery. Without it, the race of man, with all his vices, follies Faculty Valedictory. 
5 
and crimes, thick upon his head, would be snuffed out like a 
candle. You should, therefore, diligently study the natural 
history of disease. By so doing, you will find that they are 
not mere accidents, but are regulated by law. They have 
their periods of accession, acme, and decline, and tend, in a 
large majority of instances, to recovery, under proper hygienic 
conditions. 
The profession of medicine is the happy union of science 
land art; science points the way, which art pursues, with noise- 
less step, and gentle touch, and voice of love. Therefore, 
God has joined together, let no man put asunder. I re- 
••'gret'tb\be obliged to admit that the highest resources of our art 
hay# been criminally neglected. While we have, with most 
.commendable zeal and success, ransacked earth, air, and ocean, 
'for. material agents, we have utterly neglected the vast re- 
sources of psycho-therapeutics. The Psalmist says “ man is 
fearfully and wonderfully made.” How fearfully and how 
wonderfully, who can tell ? Man has spanned the ocean with 
pulsating cords of thought; he has covered all seas with the 
white wings of commerce, and harnessed steam and lightning 
to his triumphal car of progress; and, by the aid of •spectrum 
analysis, has compelled the sunbeam to write the flaming his- 
tory of the solar system; yet he knows but little of the in- 
fluence of his own mind upon the functions of his own body. 
It is this ignorance, shared alike by wise men and fools, 
that makes, even the most cultivated, easy dupes to the 
shallowest impostures. Quacks, nostrum vendors, spiritual- 
ists, et id omne genus, “ play upon us as upon the stops of a 
pipe.” It is this ignorance of our own powers which stretches 
a veil of superstition across our beautiful temple of science. 
Let it be rent, as was the veil of the temple, when the Son of 
Man suffered that truth may be made manifest. 
The evidences of the power of the mind to induce, as well 
as heal, disease, are too abundant and too well attested, to ad- 
mit of doubt. Grief and fear—those thunderbolts of the 
passions—-have often crushed out life in an instant; and even 
too sudden joy has not been without its victims; while dreams 6 
Faculty Valedictory. 
—those prophets of the night—have pointed thousands, with 
shadowy finger, to the grave. But these passions may be cu- 
rative as well as causative. Herodotus relates a striking in- 
stance of the recovery of speech, from the effects of fright, in 
the mute son of Croesus, who, seeing a soldier about to shoot 
his royal father by mistake, shouted, “ Don’t kill the king V7 
and ever after retained his speech. 
Lord Bacon, the greatest philosopher of his own or any 
subsequent age, tells, naively, of the removal of twenty-one 
inveterate warts from his own hands by a lady, who solemnly 
counting them, touching each with her jeweled finger, and then, 
writing down the number, and folding the paper with great 
care, seriously assured him that his old enemies would leave 
him in ten days; and her prediction proved true. Bacon at- 
tempted to account for it by supposing that some virtue had 
actually gone out of the lady’s finger. Philosopher as he was, 
he did not rise above the prejudices of his age—a prejudice 
still in active force. He failed to see that the Sybilline man- 
ner and utterances of the lady directed a current of expectant 
attention to the warts—at first consciously, but soon becoming 
automatic; the effect of this steady current of nervous fluid 
was to arouse the activity of the absorbents, and thus remove 
the excrescences. As his faith, so was it unto him. 
When faith can be aroused to the therapeutic point, it is 
irresistible, and disease, drug-defying, and of the gravest type, 
yields like magic. Such are the so-called miracle-cures since 
the Apostolic days, the only recognized age of true miracles. 
That princely priest, Hohenloe, pretending to have received a 
divine commission to heal, wrought the most instant and as- 
tounding cures by merely stretching forth his hand and mum- 
bling a brief prayer. The healing of the king’s touch, and 
of the seventh son of the seventh son—the efficacy of which 
is still credited by intelligent people—are but examples of the 
power of faith to heal. 
But perhaps the most remarkable exertion of this power 
was exhibited by the good St. Andrew; he not only healed 
while living, but the virtue inhered in the sod which covered Faculty Valedictory. 
7 
his remains—for it is said there were enough crutches and 
splints left at his tomb, by those who were restored to their 
proper faculties, to build a monument to his memory as high 
as the spire of St. Peter’s. 
But we need not go from home to find proofs of the power 
of faith, lifted to the height of expectant attention, to break 
up morbid organic or functional processes, and restore normal 
action. Our New Hampshire friend, Dr. Elihu Perkins, with 
his metallic tractors, curing paralysis and many nervous dis- 
eases of long standing, is a striking illustration; when, how- 
ever, the London surgeons experimented with tractors made 
of wood, of the same size and appearance, and obtained like 
results, the charm was broken, and exeunt tractors. 
The same power energizes the worthless trash sold under 
such pretentious titles as “ Catholicon,” “ Indian Cholagogue,” 
“ Liver Regulator,” “ Pectorals,” u Globe Flower Syrup,” and 
the like, heralded by flaming advertisements of wonderful 
cures, and backed up by a stunning array of certificates of 
governors, judges, and ministers of the Gospel. By the way, 
many of our good friends among the ministry have a wonder- 
ful penchant for appearing in the doubtful role of certificate- 
makers, considering the courtesies which have ever been ex- 
tended them by our profession. 
It is this same inherent psychical force which potentializes 
the dynamic infinitesimals of which we hear so much now-a- 
days. 
These proofs might be multiplied ad infinitum, but enough 
has been said to justify the assertion that psycho-therapeutics 
should be advanced to the front rank in the healing art, and 
that, in all the neuroses, psychical may well supercede somati- 
cal remedies, while they should be made to cooperate in all 
diseases. 
You will infer, from what I have said, that your first duty 
is to get the confidence of your patients ; to this end, several 
things are necessary— 
First. You must win the confidence of the community in 
which you reside, and especially of the ladies, who are ever 8 
Faculty Valedictory. 
forward in good works; indeed, they are the autocrats of the 
sick-room and the repositors of the popular pharmacy, If 
your prescriptions do not accord with their views, they will 
often give you a piece of their mind, and sometimes the whole 
of it. You must ever be deferential, polite, and assiduous, 
for, as Colonel Sellers would say, “ there is millions in it.” 
There is another class whose confidence you must not only 
win, but merit. I allude to the clergy. Make them your 
allies in every critical case. I have often dated convalescence 
from the visit of the minister; indeed, they are better psycho- 
therapeutists than we, for there is no febrifuge like prayer, no 
anodyne like the loving tones of some good old hymn, and no 
tonic like hope, born of the promises of God. 
Second. You must cultivate the closest and most friendly 
relations with your professional brethren. You must guard 
their professional reputation with the same jealous care that 
you would your own ; never aggrandize yourself at the expense 
of another. In short, let your code of ethics be, “ Do unto 
others as you would have them do unto you.” 
These combined influences will at once enable you to com- 
mand the confidence of the sick, which you can only hold by 
exhibiting a thorough knowledge of your profession, a sym- 
pathetic heart, and a hand tireless in gentle ministrations. 
It is not alone in the sick-room that the influence of the 
physician should be felt. He should be forward in all public 
enterprises looking to the elevation and advancement of the 
race; and chief amongst these is preventive medicine, or 
public hygiene. For this great work, the magnitude and 
importance of which dwarfs all other human interests, 
your education, habits, and duties of life, peculiarly fit you. 
This is no new thought, born of the pruriency of the age in 
which we live, but a conception of the oldest civilizations of 
the world. The sesthetic Greeks chose Hvgiea, the blue-eyed 
and rosy-cheeked daughter of Esculapius, as the type of phy- 
sical perfection and beauty, and, as the Goddess of Health, 
decreed her divine honors. They also paid like homage to 
her father, because they esteemed him the founder of the Faculty Valedictory. 
9 
science of medicine. Thus gracefully did this wonderful peo- 
ple recognize the value of health and the means of its preser- 
vation. 
The Romans, less poetic, but more practical, constructed, at 
vast expense of toil and treasure, aqueducts of hewn stone, 
adequate to the supply, daily, of three hundred gallons of pure 
water per capita of population, while the most favored cities 
of the United States and'Europe must be content with thirty- 
three. They did not stop here. For the removal of effete 
matter and poisonous exhalations, they constructed immense 
cloaca, or sewers, which are, to this day, marvels of architec- 
ture. The Jews were but little behind the Romans in their 
ample and costly means of water-supply, as the magnificent 
pools of Solomon attest. 
But the aqueducts of Rome and the pools of Solomon, vast 
though they were, fade into insignificance compared with those 
the ruins of which have been found upon our own continent. 
In Peru, an aqueduct, built of solid masonry, three hundred 
and fifty miles long, and large enough to receive a horse and 
his rider, has been found in a state of good preservation. It 
sweeps in unswerving line across yawning chasm, through 
darkening tunnel, and over undulating plain, an imperishable 
monument to the grandeur and glory of a prehistoric people 
whose very existence has faded from the traditions of men. 
With these colossal and enduring records before us, no one 
can doubt the high estimate in which the ancients held public 
hygiene. 
When man’s social instincts first drew him from his nomadic 
and savage life into communities, three great socio-logical pro- 
blems must have forced themselves upon his attention. I 
mean government, currency, and the public health, because 
they underlie all human progress. For thousands of years 
they have engaged the attention of the profoundest thinkers. 
Different forms of government have arisen and faded away, 
like the moving scenes of a panorama, until the culmination 
of the sublime spectacle, in our own country, of a free and 
self-governing people. Is our boasted republic, “ the land of 10 
Faculty Valedictory. 
the free and the home of the brave,” destined, like the old 
empires, to fall beneath the weight of official corruption and 
unhallowed ambition ? God knows—I do not. 
The second great problem is no nearer solution than the 
first. The want of a uniform standard of values must have 
been coeval with the race; yet man, in his most advanced 
civilization, has never been able to supply the want. Every 
conceivable substance has been, in turn, tried and abandoned. 
The base as well as the precious metals, skins, bits of leather, 
feathers of birds, paper, the wampum of the Indian, and the 
beads of the African, all have been, in times not remote, 
clothed with the functions of money. And how is it to-day 
with the most powerful nations of the earth ? France has her 
paper assignats and rentes; England has her paper consols and 
pounds; our own country her greenbacks, and not enough at 
that; promises, all—hollow and deceitful as the Dead-Sea ap- 
ple, turning to ashes on the lip of want. 
But since the science of optics has thrown a flood of light 
upon the primordial forms of life, and chemistry, now advanced 
to the position of an exact science, has revealed the laws and 
relations of matter, public hygiene (or, as it has been aptly 
called, State medicine,) has awakened to a new and vigorous 
life. Already have the active causes of some of the most de- 
vastating epidemics been brought to light, and the means of 
prevention successfully applied. Asiatic cholera and yellow 
fever, those insatiable cormorants, have been met, upon their 
fierce march of death, by the blue-eyed “ Hygiea,” and hurled 
back, defeated, or obliged to seek other and unguarded passes. 
The city of New York, with its admirable sanitary system, 
successfully resisted the approach of cholera in 1866 and 1873, 
while New Orleans has had like success, for a period of ten 
years, in excluding both yellow fever and cholera from her 
borders. Failing to break through her sanitary cordon, they 
held their unobstructejd way up the Mississippi River, until 
they reached the borders of our own lovely State, where they 
held a carnival of death. 
Dare our law-makers, State and Municipal, allow the horrors Faculty Valedictory. 
11 
of 1873 to be repeated? If they do, in the face of the de- 
monstrated knowledge of their preventibility, thejr ought to 
be hanged as high as Haman. Why, our organic law, which 
they are sworn to support, guarantees to every citizen the en- 
joyment of life, liberty, and property, and yet they have never 
lifted a hand in defence of this the most sacred of our inalien- 
able rights. 
Not alone has this cordon sanitarium proven successful in 
arresting the march of epidemics. St. Louis, Louisville, Cin- 
cinnati, Chicago, and other cities, have demonstrated the prac- 
ticability of stamping out cholera by segregation and disin- 
fection, after it has gained admission. 
Malaria, another zymotic poison, annually spreading itself 
over two-thirds of the habitable globe, and swelling the sum 
of human suffering and death to a fearful extent, has, I verily 
believe, met its antidote in the Eucalyptus Globulus, the great 
fever tree of Australia, sole surviving giant of a giant age. 
Already has forest-planting of this magnificent tree banished 
malaria from the deadliest portions of the African coast and 
the Spanish peninsula. It is, therefore, no longer an hypo- 
thesis, but a proven fact. Let us, then, importune our citi- 
zens and authorities, State and Municipal, to encourage the 
extensive growth of a tree which gives salubrity to the fairest 
and most fertile portions of earth, superior wood to our indus- 
tries, grandeur to o,ur landscapes, and a balm to the air sweeter 
than the breath of violets. Wherever the conditions are fa- 
vorable to the production of malaria, there, too, will the Eu- 
calyptus Globulus grow and flourish. 
What ,has already been accomplished is only a prelude to 
other victories of preventive medicine, if properly aided by 
the civil arm. 
Acute minds long since conceived the idea that all zymotic 
diseases, and especially the cyclical epidemics, owed their ori- 
gin to a causcim vivam, a living germ, which, like the grain of 
wheat in the catacombs, may remain dormant for a millenium, 
but, on meeting with conditions favorable to development, 
springs into astonishing activity, and multiply by myriads. 12 
Faculty Valedictory. 
Being infinitely minute, invisible, and imponderable organ- 
isms, they lurk in the crystal drops of water which we quaff, 
or are borne on the “ viewless wings ” of the air which we 
breathe, and tints finding ingress into our systems, they behave 
precisely as all other forms of life are known to do—they 
enter upon the battle of life by appropriating everything 
in their reach adapted to their wants. This happens to be 
our elixir of life—our blood—which is thus ruthlessly spo- 
liated, corrupted, and rendered unfit for the performance of its 
office in the vital economy. Analogy, drawn from the study 
of the habits of fungi, parasites, and ferments, furnishes proof 
in support of this theory almost amounting to demonstration. 
It remains, then, for us to ascertain the conditions favorable 
for the evolution of the causam vivam of scarlatina, cerebro- 
spinal meningitis, diphtheria, typhoid and typhus fevers, and, 
by removing, prevent. Indeed, much has already been ac- 
complished in this direction, and unless the world is remanded 
to another millenium of intellectual night, I dare predict that, 
before the close of this century, epidemic diseases will be 
banished from all countries where the science of preventive 
medicine is permitted to guide the hand of civil power. 
Will the State stand by us? That is the pregnant question. 
Ultimately it will. Dr. Henry D. Baker, in his very able 
report to the American Medical Association, touching this 
subject, says: “ Surely it needs no argument to prove that the 
very highest function of a government is the protection of 
the lives of its people; for the highest interest of each indi- 
vidual citizen is in his own life, and in the lives of those dear 
to him. No question of finance, of taxation, of class monopo- 
lies, of civil rights, or even of personal liberty, can, for a 
moment, compare with the question of health; for without 
health there can be no degree of happiness.” And Mr. D’ls- 
raeli hits the nail squarely on the head when he declares that 
“ sanitary reform is the great question for the statesmanship 
of the day.” 
But our task does not end here. Preventive medicine com- 
prehends the removal of every cause which retards human Faculty Valedictory. 
13 
progress or diminishes the sum of human life. Prominent 
among these causes is alcoholism, or the habitual use of alco- 
holic stimulants as a beverage. To such colossal proportions 
has this great social evil attained, that, comet-like, it has 
drawn in its long and blackening train the moral nebulae of 
crimes diabolical, official corruption unprecedented, hopeless 
pauperism, stolid ignorance, suffering without pity, and death 
without the hope of mercy. How much responsibility at- 
taches to the medical profession for this appalling picture of 
human misery ? I answer, much; for we, as a profession, 
have encouraged it, both by precept and example. If we 
would rise to the true dignity of our high mission, we must 
hold no uncertain language upon this subject, but boldly de- 
clare the truth, that alcohol is never food, rarely therapeutical, 
but evil, and evil only. 
Marriage is one of those sacred relations, half human, half 
divine, which would seem too holy for the profane touch of 
science; and yet, through this channel, the healthful fountains 
of life have been tainted with the dark current of disease and 
death to an appalling and ever increasing degree. It becomes 
our duty, then, to “ cry aloud and spare not,” against the con- 
tinued violation of physiological laws, which threaten to en- 
gulph the race in one wide ruin of hereditary disease. 
The laws of crime is another subject with which we must 
grapple. To politicians and law-makers it has proved an in- 
soluble problem. They have cried, “ out, damned spot!” but 
it would not “ out ” at their bidding; and, in spite of fierce 
Draconic laws, it has continued to fester in society, now flam- 
ing out in epidemic horrors, and anon shrinking back to its 
normal proportions. 
The “ powers that be ” needs be taught that harsh punitive 
measures are not always, nor generally, the remedy; that crime 
is often a neuropathy—a disease, not seldom hereditary, often 
acute and emotional—a psycho-pathological condition, the re- 
sult of preventable causes already named. 
Our American system of public education is an inviting 
field for your labor. “ As the twig is bent, the tree is in- 14 
Faculty Valedictory. 
dined/’ is a plain and pertinent truth; and yet our whole 
scholastic system, (if that can be called a system which embo- 
dies only the three ideas of cramming, flogging, and sala- 
ry,) is directed mainly to the object of bending or breaking 
our tender little twigs of humanity. Ill lighting and ventila- 
tion and over-crowding of school-rooms (a common occur- 
rence), is a double-acting engine of death; on the one hand 
are withheld those vital stimulants, pure air and sunshine, 
upon which depend the healthful performance of the animal 
functions, and on the other, carbonic acid gas (a deadly poison) 
is forced back upon the respiratory organs. But the evils do 
not end here. Little mercurial children, to whom motion is 
not only the poetry, but the law of life, are often glued by 
fear, for hours, to a hard and inflexible bench, to the immi- 
nent risk of spinal and pelvic injury; and still, in spite of 
aching limbs and throbbing temples and swimming eyes (the 
fruits of physical restraint and foul air), there stands the awful 
pedagogue, unloving and stern, cramming with words—mean- 
ingless words—which the memory, and not the mind, must 
appropriate. And, added to all the horrors of childhood, but 
too often comes the harsh rebuke or degrading blow, for the 
sole and supreme oflence of being a child. 
Think what a price humanity pays for its shallow and pre- 
tentious education! — hecatombs of slaughtered innocents, 
whose death had been falsely charged to scrofula, colds, and 
fevers; millions fitted for the career of criminals, by the utter 
extinction of the divine sentiments of love and mercy, under 
the cruel sting of the master’s lash ! Think of it, mothers!— 
think of it, fathers!—when you are leading your little ones as 
lambs to the slaughter, think of it; and then ask, “ How 
long, oh! School Boards and teachers, will you abuse our pa- 
tience ?” I am proud to recognize the fact that there are many 
noble teachers, who have exchanged brute force for the law of 
love; but still the truth remains that our system of school 
government is a legacy of barbarism injected into the Christian 
civilization of the nineteenth century. 
Neither time, nor the proprieties of the occasion, will per- Faculty Valedictory. 
15 
mit a fuller amplification of the subject, and we cannot do 
better than close our somewhat extended remarks with the 
following quotation from a paper read by Francis Bacon be- 
fore the American Social Science Association, held at the 
Lowell Institute, Boston : 
“ These cities of the future, with sunlight and fresh air and 
pure water coming to every citizen ; with no man standing in 
his neighbor’s way; Avith no noisome or pernicious occupation 
suffered within their limits; with all rainfall and water waste 
carried quickly away to the unharmed river, while all refuse, 
at once more dangerous and valuable, goes with due dispatch 
to the hungry soil; with preventible diseases prevented; and 
with inevitable ones skillfully cared for; with the vigilant go- 
vernment, that does not stand apart and look coldly at ruth- 
less greed and needy ignorance, and utter only an indifferent 
1 caveat em.ptor,’ but says to the butcher, ‘ This trichinous pork, 
this pathological beef, goes to the rendering vat, and not into 
the mouths of my children ’; and to the brewer, " Burn this 
coculus indicus and lobelia, and let me see no bitter but hops 
hereafter ’; and to the apothecary, ‘ Successor of Herod, you 
shall not poison my infants at wholesale with your narcotic 
soothing-syrup’; and to the water company, 1 Your reservoir 
shows foulness this week to my microscope and test-tube; let 
it continue at your peril.’ These cities of the minimum 
death-rate, shall they not be our cities? Are these things of 
impracticable costliness ? say you. Nothing is so cheap as 
health; it is the truest economy ; it is cheaper—than dirt. 
Dirt cheap. What an abuse of language ! Dirt means waste 
and disease, widowhood, orphanage, pauperism, high taxation, 
costly production. Nothing costs so much. Besides, the ob- 
jection, even if it were not unfounded, is unworthy. ‘ All 
parsimony in war is murder,’ is the judicious maxim of the 
Marechal de Belleisle. Not less, I say, when we fight against 
an impersonal foe of mankind.” 
And now, gentlemen graduates, it only remains for me to 
wish you that measure of success which waits on merit, and 
that wealth of health and happiness, the fruits of temperance 
and virtue.