MEMOIR 
OF 
WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
BY \ / 
CHAS. H. NICHOLS, D., 
NEW YORK. 
Read at the annual meeting of the Association of 
Medical Superintendents of American Institutions 
for the Insane, held at Old Point Comfort, Va., 
May 15-18,1888. 
Kfjprint 
FROM 
The American Journal of Insanity. 
Utica, October, 1888 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM BENJAMIN GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
Among Dr. Goldsmith's paternal ancestors were several 
clergymen. His father after graduating in arts and letters with 
the first honors of his class, from the University of the City of 
New York, and in theology from the Union Theological Seminary 
in the same city, spent forty-three years in the ministry. His 
second, last and eminently successful pastorate which was closed 
by his death, was of thirty-six years' duration. An obituary 
article which appeared in a public journal soon after his death and 
has the marks of disinterestedness and ability, says that, "pos- 
sessing a judicial mind, his counsel was often sought and the 
wisdom of his advice was constantly recognized by his brethren. 
He was a man of very positive opinions, but had no conflict with 
those who thought differently. He was careful not to wound the 
feelings of any." 
Dr. Goldsmith's mother, born McCrea, was in the paternal line 
of Scotch descent. Her great grandfather, Rev. Jas. McCrea, was 
for many years " an able and successful minister " in the Colony of 
New Jersey. One of the sons of the latter was a Colonel in the 
Colonial Army, two others entered the British Army, one of whom 
rose to the rank of Major General, and his youngest daughter was 
the beautiful Jane McCrea, whose murder by an Indian Chief at 
Fort Edward on the Hudson, in the summer of 1777, will ever 
excite emotions of distress and pity in the heart of every reader 
of the sad story of her tragic fate. Mrs. Goldsmith's father was 
at the time of his death in 1830 a member of the Assembly of the 
State of New York. 
The subject of this memoir was born in Bellona, Yates County, 
N. Y., January 11, 1854. As far as I have learned the most 
distinguished traits of his childhood were, using the language of 
my informant, " a strong will and a disposition to believe nothing 
because others did, but to investigate for himself. When once he 
had decided that a thing was right and true, however, he accepted 
it heartily and without reserve. He also had great calmness and 
power to control others, which made him a leader even among 
those older than himself." 
The common school of the village and home instruction, includ- 
ing his father's library, were his only educational advantages until 
at the age of fourteen he entered the Boys' Academy in Canan- 
daigua where he fitted for college under the care of Prof. Noah 2 
IN MEMORIAM. 
T. Clark, long the able and efficient principal of that institution. 
In an obituary notice of Dr. Goldsmith contributed by Prof. Clark 
to a local paper he says: "An incident in the early life of Dr. 
Goldsmith, occurring while he was a student in our academy, 
revealed the secret of the great power which was so abundantly 
manifest in his subsequent life. The incident did not come to my 
knowledge until he had entered upon his professional work." It 
seems there was among the students a fiery young man who when 
angered, as he often was, became a terror to all about him and so 
furious as to threaten the lives of those who had offended him. 
" On one such occasion Goldsmith went into the hall and found 
the students fastening themselves into their rooms to protect 
themselves from his violence. He walked quietly through the 
hall, and meeting the angry man, put his strong hand gently on 
his shoulder and said in a soft commanding tone, 'sit down on my 
knee until you get over this passion,' and his murderous, violent 
spirit was at once subdued and he sat there as in the spell of a 
mighty unseen power. It was this power, strong, magnetic and 
gentle * * * , that gave to Dr. Goldsmith his great success in 
his treatment of the insane." 
While at the Canandaigua Academy young Goldsmith frequently 
called at Brigham Hall to inquire after a patient in whom his 
mother was interested and in this way came under the notice of 
Dr. John B. Chapin, then one of the physicians of that institution, 
who writes that " he was as a boy reserved, manly, shy and had 
an honest, earnest face " and that he, Dr. C., " came to feel an 
attachment for him then." 
At the age of sixteen he entered Amherst College, from which 
he graduated in 1874 at the age of twenty. He pursued the 
regular course of study, but gave some special attention to 
chemistry. The Hon. Julius H. Seelye, president of the college, 
writes of his characteristics during his college life, that he was 
"quiet and somewhat retiring, but genuine and strong, doing his 
work writh steady fidelity, but without self-assertion; a sincere 
man rather than an evidently brilliant one, he left upon the college 
a profounder impression of his moral earnestness than of his 
intellectual force. But, as I have often noted in other cases, this 
was the basis of a very successful career, with already large 
results, though so brief. His life in his profession, though it could 
not have been predicted by his college associates, could hardly be 
a surprise to those most intimate with him." 
As his college course drew towards its close it is evident that WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
3 
Mr. Goldsmith began to seriously consider what his life work 
should be, and it is altogether probable that his accidental visits 
to Brigham Hall and acquaintance with Dr. Chapin while he was 
fitting for college, made a deeper impression upon his thoughtful 
mind than was apparent to others, and led to his entering upon the 
study of medicine with a view to the career of a mental alienist, 
for in the course of the vacation between his junior and senior 
years, accompanied by his father he sought the opinion of Dr. 
Chapin, then at the head of the Willard Asylum, as to the 
probability of his success in such a career. Having the warrant, 
as he without doubt properly regarded it, of Dr. Chapin's favorable 
opinion upon this important point, in the autumn of 1874, after 
graduating from Amherst, he entered the Willard Asylum as a 
medical student and dispensing clerk, where he remained until the 
fall of 1875, when he matriculated in the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons of New York. He also spent at Willard the 
interval between the two courses of lectures he attended, and in 
the spring of 1877 he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, 
for which he passed a most satisfactory examination. During his 
course of study for his medical degree he exhibited, as one of the 
professors of the college has informed me, the same diligence, 
fidelity and quiet, moral earnestness that had characterized him at 
Amherst, but it was in the course of nature that with more 
maturity and study his mind had developed increased power, and 
the faculty of medicine appears to have been more impressed with 
his intellectual force than the faculty of arts and letters. 
After spending a few weeks as an interne of the Presbyterian 
Hospital of New York, Dr. Goldsmith on the 1st of May upon the 
special recommendation of E. C. Seguin, M. D., then Professor of 
Neurological and Mental Diseases in the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, received the appointment of second assistant physician 
of the Bloomingdale Asylum. When I took charge of that 
institution on the 7th of July, 1877, I found him in that position 
and began his personal acquaintance. I also found that he had 
already begun a diligent, systematic study of the cases then under 
care and of others as they came in, with respect both to their 
nature and treatment, and to the form of disease which each case 
illustrated, by which he rapidly gained both a theoretical and 
practical knowledge of mental disorders. When he finally left 
Bloomingdale early in 1881 his knowledge of the English literature 
of insanity and of the practical value of the views of different 
authors was very extensive and thorough. He did not however 4 
IN MEMORIAM. 
neglect his patients for study, but in making his acquisitions in the 
literature of his profession he was evidently stimulated to verify 
and apply what he read to his practical duty-the comfort and 
relief of the sick. 
By the marked quietude and composure, the diligence and 
fidelity, the ability and sound judgment and the care and complete- 
ness with which he discharged every duty, he soon won my entire 
confidence and very high personal regard. I do not recollect that 
he ever pleaded lack of time or strength to discharge any regular 
or special duty expected of him, or that he ever neglected the 
thorough, painstaking performance of all his duties according to 
his instructions and to the best of his knowledge and ability. His 
sympathy for patients on account of the sufferings and privations 
of their sickness and his consideration for their feelings were quick 
and unfailing and always delicately and unobtrusively manifested. 
It followed that he was never stung by their abusive and often 
plausible accusations, nor led into the use of harsh, much less 
resentful, expressions respecting them or their conduct, in or out of 
their hearing. On the other hand, the respect with which his 
kindness and simple, manly dignity inspired them, evidently went 
far to restrain many patients-particularly women-from the 
indelicate exhibitions of the animal nature to whose powers the 
loss of reason often relegates our composite humanity. 
Not long after I took charge of Bloomingdale he-an ambitious 
young man without fortune and enjoying his first remunerative 
employment-one day, most unxepectedly to me, handed me his 
resignation, saying that he thought that every superintendent 
should have the opportunity of nominating his own assistants. 
In returning it to him, 1 thanked him for the opportunity he had 
afforded me of gladly retaining him as my own nominee in the 
position he occupied. As far as I ever knew, this act, manifestly 
proper under all similar circumstances, was not suggested to his 
mind by any example with which he was acquainted nor by any 
friend or authority, but was prompted by that just sense of the 
proprieties of every situation, with which he was so remarkably 
gifted. 
With the conviction that his usefulness in the sphere of the 
profession which he had chosen might be enhanced by observing 
the arrangements and methods pursued abroad in the treatment of 
the insane, Dr. Goldsmith resigned his position at Bloomingdale 
in August, 1879, and in September sailed for England, where he 
first spent about six months as a volunteer assistant to Dr. Major, 5 
WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
of the West Riding Asylum in Yorkshire, then spent a few weeks 
in study-mostly in London-and in travel, and finally held a 
volunteer position on the staff of Dr. Clouston, of the Royal 
Edinburgh Asylum, when, a vacancy in that position having 
occurred, he was invited to return to Bloomingdale to take the 
place of first assistant physician. He accepted the position and, 
returning at once from abroad, entered upon its duties on the 15th 
of September, 1880; and in his second period of service at 
Bloomingdale he displayed all the high qualities that had so 
eminently characterized him during his first connection with the 
institution, with the added ability in his work which came from a 
broader culture in its duties, and without in the slightest degree 
vaunting the high value at which both Dr. Major and Dr. Clouston 
had estimated his services or the rare and unusual personal 
attentions he had enjoyed while away. 
A vacancy having occurred in the office of Medical Superin- 
tendent of the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane at 
Danvers, Dr. Goldsmith was appointed to it upon the strong 
recommendation of his medical and other friends both in this 
country and Great Britain. He was then barely twenty-seven 
years of age and had been a doctor of medicine two months less 
than four years, but without either shrinking from responsibility 
or offensive assertion of authority, with a calm, judicial mind and 
persistent purpose, his mastery of the medical and administrative 
affairs of that great establishment was soon complete. The people 
of Massachusetts had been much dissatisfied with the position and 
the excessive cost, as they considered, of the Hospital at Danvers, 
and with absurd spite at what they could not help, had transferred 
their dissatisfaction to its administration under authorities that 
were in no way responsible for what they and the public, alike but 
in different degrees, condemned. This blind condemnation had 
become somewhat exhausted when Dr. Goldsmith took charge of 
the institution, but having the confidence and support of the able 
Board of Trustees that appointed him and were close observers 
as well as co-workers in its able and prudent management, those of 
the public authorities and people of the State followed and its 
popularity soon became equal to the former prejudice against it. 
It is perhaps due to the people of Massachusetts that it should 
here be said that they appear to fairly appreciate their great 
indebtedness to Dr. Goldsmith for his agency in creating a favor- 
able sentiment on their part towards this hospital, no part of 
whose cost can be returned into the treasury in money. Such 6 
IN MEMOKIAM. 
beneficent use as is now made of it is the only mode of recover- 
ing the great outlay for its establishment. 
While abroad in 1879-80 Dr. Goldsmith spent his whole time 
in Great Britain. Thirsting for further knowledge which he could 
not acquire while occupied with the details of a large and very 
active hospital service, when he had been in charge of the Danvers 
Hospital for about two and one-half years, believing that he had 
fairly established his administrative capacity and that the institu- 
tion was then in such a favorable condition both as to its reputation 
and actual working that he could leave it with honor, he resigned 
its superintendence with the view of visiting the continent of 
Europe for both literary and professional study. The trustees, 
however, invited him to withdraw his resignation and accept a 
year's leave of absence, which he did. He spent the year in the 
study of the German and French languages, the examination of 
institutions for the insane and in professional study under 
Westphal, Krafft-Ebing, Charcot and others. 
Returning from abroad in July, 1884, Dr. Goldsmith resumed 
the charge of the Danvers Hospital and continued to superintend 
it with the increasing ability and usefulness that in every calling 
will follow the faithful applications of the lessons of study and 
experience, till he entered upon the duties of Superintendent of 
the Butler Hospital for the Insane, to which he had been elected 
by the trustees of that institution to fill the vacancy created by 
the lamented death a short time before of their former superin- 
tendent, Dr. John W. Sawyer. The manner in which he acquitted 
himself as the successor of the illustrious Ray and the sound, 
devoted and laborious Sawyer, is best attested by the eminent 
trustees of that institution, who in a warm but discriminating 
memorial minute adopted by them and entered upon their records, 
pay him the high tribute of saying that "He entered upon his 
duties here on the first day of February, 1886, and at the time of 
his death had discharged them with rare professional skill, with 
unremitting assiduity and with singular success, for the period of 
two years and nearly two months. In this brief period he has 
left upon the administration and interests of the hospital the 
impress of thorough and varied professional knowledge, of sound 
judgment, of great humanity and tenderness and of the highest 
qualities of educated manhood." 
In an obituary notice of Dr. Goldsmith in the Boston Medical 
and Surgical Journal, the remark is made that " He had not been 
quite well since a professional visit to New Orleans, where he had 7 
WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
a febrile attack last autumn, and several times of late he had 
spoken of feeling ill," but the writer was most unprepared for his 
fatal illness, having met him only three weeks before his death 
when he appeared to be in higher health and spirits than usual, 
and expressed himself to that effect. Having for several days had 
what he regarded as an ordinary cold, he on Wednesday, the 14th 
of March, took a long ride in the saddle, his favorite exercise, and 
on his return complained of feeling more ill than he had done 
before. He however fulfilled a social engagement that evening. 
On the morning of the 15th he drove out for a short distance on a 
business errand. On Friday afternoon his physician visited him 
for the first time and informed him that he had pneumonia, when 
he remarked, "one thing is against me, I have a bad heart." The 
disease appears to have been severe and attended with much 
pleuritic pain, but not to have been pronounced hopeless, when on 
the morning of the 20th, after himself looking over the nurse's 
night report he sent for his sister and telling her he "thought the 
•crisis had come," and adding that he "hoped to get well, but that 
there was doubt " whether he should do so, he began, with the 
very sublimity of deliberate calmness and courage, to make his 
preparations for death, and in those last fleeting hours of life, in 
great weakness and pain, sent kind and appropriate messages to 
his particular friends, indicated the disposition he wished made of 
his effects and gave directions for his funeral, which by his express 
desire was conducted with great simplicity and without eulogistic 
remarks. His brief but great life came to its end at 9 o'clock on 
the morning of March 21st. He is buried in his native hamlet at 
his own request. His mother and sister, to whom he was most 
devotedly attached, survive him. He did not marry. 
An antithesis of the problem of "squaring the circle" con- 
stantly recurs to me in seeking an appropriate illustration of the 
qualities of Dr. Goldsmith's character and mind. The degree to 
which he rounded the squares and angles of human character was 
phenomenal. His character was so marked by fullness and 
rotundity that it might have presented a sameness of aspect had 
not his enterprise and exquisite taste given it abundant light and 
shade. 
It is easier to analyze the qualities of a mind whose strong 
elements were fewer and more dominating than were those of Dr. 
Goldsmith. He could not lay claim to genius whose almost 
intuitive acquisitions and powers are apt to be eccentric and fitful, 
but did possess a receptive and capacious mind that was capable 8 
IN MEMORIAM. 
of every solid acquirement; and by the diligent, unremitting use 
of his time and opportunities-some of them self-created, both of his 
visits to Europe for professional observation and study having been 
made upon the means he had accumulated at the time they were 
undertaken- his professional and general culture was remarkably 
wide and thorough, in view of his age and of his having, with the 
exception of the two years he spent abroad, from the day of 
receiving his doctorate to his death, spent almost every working 
hour in the assiduous discharge of the responsible and absorbing 
duties of practice and administration. 
While he loved knowledge for its own sake he acquired and 
digested it with practical aims, and having a retentive memory, 
his intellectual armament was well at his command. With no 
prejudices nor tendencies to extreme views he possessed in a 
remarkable degree the power of distinguishing what was true and 
applicable, in considering any subject, from what was speculative, 
or false, or inapplicable. It follows that he usually reached wise 
conclusions and rarely had reason to reconsider them. Without 
elementary incredulity or captiousness he displayed from boyhood 
what I regard as a constitutional sense of owing it to his 
individuality to "try all things and hold fast that which is good," 
and it was the natural habit of his mind, as sleeping and working 
were the habits of his body, to base his opinions upon his own 
examination of other men's facts and reasonings and such 
original light as was within his own reach. He respected the 
opinions of authors, but did not base his own upon their ipse 
dixits. Having formed his opinions with care he held them with 
contentment and some tenacity, but without dogmatism, until new 
light demanded their modification. 
His sense of honor was one of the dominating elements of his 
character. Indeed, it seemed to be the sum of its primary moral 
elements. In his childhood and youth he honored his parents, 
teachers and superiors by love or respect and by obedience, truth 
and fidelity, without any undue surrender of the claims of his 
individuality. Later, quickened and informed by an enlightened 
conscience, it was the strongest underlying principle of his con- 
tinued assiduity in fitting himself for the duties of life and of his 
faithfulness in discharging them-of his obedience, loyalty and 
efficient support as an assistant and of his zeal, justice, considera- 
tion and patience as a superintendent. There was never a truer 
man to his friends. I have known him to be at much pains to 
serve them with respect to interests of which they had no 9 
WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
knowledge; and such was his fidelity to this principle that I can 
not conceive of his having ever neglected such service when he 
knew of the occasion for it. 
Dr. Goldsmith's moral and physical courage were not less 
remarkable than his other affective principles. If an eminent 
specialist in nervous and mental disorders, Dr. C. H. Folsom, in 
saying that he had " intellectual courage " meant that he did not 
hesitate to follow the convictions of his mind against musty error 
or popular prejudice, I quite agree with the declaration, though it 
seems to me that the power of doing so lies as much in this 
affective principle as that to repel the seductions of ill-founded 
popularity or to pursue the thorny path of right against popular 
condemnation. An eminent friend of another profession writes of 
him, that "he was a brave man. He had great physical courage. 
I have seen it often put to the test. He had great moral courage 
also. Evil never approached without finding his blade un- 
sheathed." In following his convictions, however, against those 
of other men, he displayed so much respect for their right and 
sincerity of opinion, and so little of the spirit of superior wisdom, 
as never to wound a friend nor make an enemy. Neither his 
moral nor his physical courage was attended with the slightest 
bravado nor with other demonstration except as the occasion for it 
arose. When it did arise, however unexpectedly, he always 
appeared to be equal to it. Early in his superintendency of the 
Danvers Hospital, a patient, in attempting to escape from a pur- 
suing attendant, fell and killed himself. The matter was under- 
going investigation by a committee of the legislature, and in the 
course of it a member with as little sense as breeding, after 
making some absurd criticisms of the occurrence, asked Dr. Gold- 
smith a question that implied uncandid self-defense on his part, 
when he quietly but firmly declined to answer any further questions 
put by that member. He was supported in his refusal by the 
other members of the committee. When Dr. Goldsmith's youth 
and inexperience at this time, and the great respect in which he 
held the committee as a sub-representative of the sovereign 
authority of the State, are considered, this must be regarded as 
an act of moral courage as high as it was rare. 
There is not in all history that I recall a sublimer display of 
moral courage than his prognosis of his imminent death twenty- 
four hours before it occurred, and the resignation and calmness 
with which he made preparations for it. Several instances have 
been related to me of his display of physical courage, but, as any 10 
IN MEMORIAM. 
one well acquainted with him would have expected, they were not 
characterized by the slightest fool-hardiness nor by any insensi- 
bility to the danger he encountered. 
That magnetism which attracts men to each other was one of 
the remarkable attributes of Dr. Goldsmith's moral constitution. 
I have never known a man who made more fast friends than he 
did, and I never knew him to lose one, so constant and true was 
he to the obligations of friendship. But he never loved at first 
sight. The magnetism that drew other men to him was not 
marked by any sudden, brilliant, overpowering displays of energy. 
Like that of the pole, it was quiet, unremitting and unrelaxing. 
He therefore formed friendships slowly, not because of a dis- 
trusting, much less a cynical spirit towards men, but partly, as I 
think, from some natural reserve, and partly because it was the 
actual and natural habit of his mind to prepare for every proposed 
undertaking and every event and relation that concerned him, by 
deliberate observation and consideration. When his friendships 
were formed, their stability and fervor were in proportion to the 
depth at which they had been planted and the slowness of their 
steady growth. The poet Whittier, who resides not far from the 
Danvers Hospital, writing on the day of his death to a mutual 
friend, says: "I feel as if I had lost a brother; he was such a true, 
good friend and neighbor." An appreciative lay gentleman, who 
made his acquaintance after he graduated in medicine and who 
made the journey from New York to Providence to attend his 
funeral, wrote me that "the grief of every one, from trustees to 
the laboring men on the place, was most sincere." I forbear to 
make other quotations upon this point, lest they should unduly 
prolong this paper. I cannot, however, proceed without adding 
that a large number of letters has been put into my hands, several 
from abroad, in which, in addition to the warmest eulogiums upon 
his character, ability, attainments and services to humanity, there 
are the most ardent expressions of personal affection for him and 
of grief for his death. 
Dr. Goldsmith was ambitious and appreciated his attainments 
and what he had accomplished. He also appreciated the good 
opinion of his fellow men, as I believe all men do who are in 
sympathy with the highest aims of life. Without prudishness or 
pietism, I believe that his life presented an example of almost 
faultless purity and correctness. As Dr. Charles F. Folsom has 
said of him, he was "a gentleman in the best sense of that much 
abused word." He never forgot nor omitted the consideration 11 
WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
and courtesies due to his associates, high or low. His manners 
were not graceful, but correct. He had a thorough acquaintance 
with the usages of polite society and never failed to observe them. 
These traits and his wide information made him a favorite in the 
best social circles. 
Having briefly presented the history of Dr. Goldsmith's short, 
useful and noble life in narrative and analytical aspects, with such 
quotations and observations as seemed appropriate to the period of 
his life or element of his mind under consideration, and believing 
that it will do his memory better justice and be more satisfactory 
to the audience I address, I will here let other witnesses bear testi- 
mony to his character as one of effective ability, usefulness and 
worth. I shall not, however, quote any sentiment which I do not 
fully endorse. The President of this Association, Dr. John B. 
Chapin, who, as you have been informed, had known him from the 
age of fourteen and has ever since been his warm friend, and, since 
the close of his junior year in college, his frequent adviser, writes: 
"His opinions were honestly formed, and he was content to enter- 
tain them. He was not aggressive nor combative, but was mild in 
his manner, gentle towards his patients, considerate of the feelings 
of others, * * * and of dignified deportment. At an early 
age he had the broad culture and maturity of judgment that as a 
rule men only acquire at a later date in their lives. He was 
faithful to all trusts and to the highest conceptions of his responsi- 
bilities. He possessed in the largest sense the power of 
eliminating from any subject the elements necessary to a wise 
conclusion. We have met with a great loss." 
Dr. W. A. Gorton, who was his assistant for several years and 
then his successor at Danvers, and has now been appointed to 
succeed him at the Butler Hospital, probably knew more of his 
daily life, official and personal, since he assumed the responsibilities 
of the direction of an institution for the insane, than any other 
person. He writes: "No one could meet him without feeling at 
once a sense of his exalted manhood. Not only was he a gentle- 
man in the highest sense of the word, but there was in him so 
strong an element of personal purity and integrity that it im- 
pressed itself irresistibly and from the first upon all who knew 
him. His ideal of life, never obtrusively manifested, was high, 
and in all his daily relations he was true to it. In the performance 
•of the duties of superintendent he was the embodiment of justice, 
and of that kindly dignity which enforce obedience, loyalty and 
respect. No duty was small enough to be evaded; no responsi- 12 
IN MEMOKIAM. 
bility so great that he ever sought to escape it. His judgment 
was wonderfully accurate and never hasty. His patience was 
tireless, and so great was his kindliness that he sometimes seemed 
willing to suffer imposition rather than give pain to a wearisome 
visitor." 
In an obituary notice of Dr. Goldsmith in the American 
Journal of Insanity, it is stated that a former attorney general 
of Massachusetts and now a judge of the Superior Court of that 
State, said of him that he "is an ideal expert witness. His 
opinions are unbiased and deliberate, his knowledge is extensive 
and accurate, and his honesty and sincerity of character are so 
impressed upon all who hear him, that his testimony is almost 
irresistible in weight." 
I will close these quotations wTith a few other wTords from 
Whittier. He writes: "Let it be the consolation of his friends 
that * * * his life, though short, was so rounded and com- 
plete ; so full of worthy achievement and good works." 
We shall do Dr. Goldsmith's memory scant honor and ourselves 
much injustice if we only regard his exalted character wTith 
wonder and admiration. His life was an instructive one to all 
men, but particularly to us as physiologists and psychists. If, as I 
believe, heredity has always the potency of the character that is 
built upon it, the converse is likely to be true, and is so in fact. 
According to circumstances and within moderate limits character 
may be better or worse than the heredity from which it has 
upgrown, but no training will make Websters of the sons of im- 
beciles, nor Howards or Dixes of the children of the selfish and 
depraved. In education the stream of individual human life may 
rise higher than its sources, but in capacity and character it rarely 
does so; and when it does it is always liable to fall back to the 
level from which it sprung. These principles, whose observance 
is so important to the development of our race, the obligations of 
our calling require us to study and practically enforce in every 
proper manner. Dr. Goldsmith's ancestors on both sides appear 
to have been strong, intellectual and cultivated people of the upper 
middle class. They do not appear to have reached those heights 
of wealth, power and luxury at which degeneracy is apt soon to 
begin. His father was noted for his sound judgment, high sense 
of honor and positive opinions, which he held with firmness, but 
not in an aggressive or contentious spirit. His judgment was so 
sound as to be in much request in the church and neighborhood. 
If nothing had been known of his father his son would have been WILLIAM B. GOLDSMITH, M. D. 
13 
graphically described in the same words. " The child is father to 
the man." The boy Goldsmith early began to investigate for 
himself and to show the bent and power ol his mind-his capacity 
for mastery and achievement in a learned profession. The lesson 
is, that when called to advise with reference to the career of the 
sons of ambitious parents, we should not send a boy to college 
who should go to the flail or the hammer or the yardstick. How 
many boys are doomed to be miserable failures in the professions, 
who might have been prosperous and happy in cultivating and 
developing a western farm I And yet the best heredity is only a 
capacity for development, and no one can too highly appreciate or 
be too grateful for such an excellent training as Goldsmith en- 
joyed. Otherwise he might have been only a "village Hampden." 
The other lessons of Goldsmith's life and character are for self- 
application. If we lack the capacity, receptiveness and love of 
culture that he exhibited-if our sense of honor in all its nicest 
applications in our intercourse with our fellow men be not as quick 
and dominating in us as it was in him-if neither our moral nor 
our physical courage be equal to his-if our calmness and devotion 
to duty, our politeness without sycophancy and our gentleness 
without weakness, be inferior to his, the responsible positions we 
have severally attained forbid the belief that by the faithful prac- 
tice of his industry and emulation of his virtues we cannot more 
or less enhance our usefulness in our most responsible calling, and 
further exalt that good name among our fellow men to which it is 
both our duty and I doubt not our ambition to aspire. 
To the assistant physicians of our institutions for the insane I 
wish to particularly commend Dr. Goldsmith's noble example, 
whether they view it from the high standpoint of duty or the low 
one of interest. When only 27 years of age and he had had less 
than four years' experience in his profession, he was, purely upon 
his own merits, recommended for the medical and executive head 
of a very large and important hospital situated near the cultivated 
metropolis of New England, with great confidence that he had the 
ability, wisdom, integrity and firmness necessary to rescue it from 
the perils and difficulties of that crucial period of its history, and 
raise it to the enjoyment of public confidence and support. That 
confidence, which proved to be so well founded, was based upon 
the ability and earnestness and the fidelity and loyalty that he had 
displayed as an assistant. It sometimes happens that responsibility 
develops unexpected practical powers, but as a rule to which the 
exceptions are few, as the character of the assistant so is the 14 
IN MEMORIAM. 
character of the superintendent. If the ripening life of the 
assistant be that of unsullied honor, earnest duty and diligent 
attainment, his mature powers will only be limited by the 
ordinances of Nature with respect to mental and bodily capacity, 
which it is an idle sacrilege to attempt to exceed.