ijelitoereu at tlje Vesication of tlje pall of tlje 
_>oston /FleDical library association, on Veceinber in., 
MDcccLxxvni., bp Vliber ftHenbell polities, fill. V., 
presibent. fl Report of <E. Putnam, /Fl. V. fl IRemarbS 
of 3|. £>. 'Killings, /Fl. V., prof, jjustin aiinsor, ds. p. Lpman, 
jH. V., pres. <E.an. uBliot, p. /tl. C. (Buis, /FI. ?©., 
p. I. Totutntcb, /Ft. >. fl epbibition of /HcOical portraits, 
fl ISeport of tbe librarian, Raines IB. <£ljaoiiiicfi, /tl. ©., read at 
tbe annual /Fleeting, Ijeio on flDctober iv., mdccclxxxi. 
fl Report of f. €. /Ft. ©., on tlja directory for purses. DEDICATION 
OF THE 
NEW BUILDING AND HALL 
OF THE 
Boston jWetiical 3Litnarg Association, 
19 Boylston Place, 
December 3, 1878. 
ORDER OF EXERCISES. 
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
REPORT OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE. 
REMARKS BY 
DR. J. S. BILLINGS, U. S. A., Librarian of the 
National Medical Library in Washington. 
PROF. JUSTIN WINSOR, Librarian of Har- 
vard University. 
DR. GEORGE H. LYMAN, President of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society. 
CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL. D., President of 
Harvard University. 
DR. DAVID P. SMITH, of Springfield, Vice- 
President of the Massachusetts Medical So- 
ciety. 
DR. CALVIN ELLIS, Dean of the Harvard 
Medical School. 
DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH, Vice-President of 
the Medical Library Association; Ex-Presi- 
dent of the American Medical Association. 
LIST OF LOAN EXHIBITION OF MEDICAL PORTRAITS.' 
CAMBRIDGE: 
prints at tfje Htfoergifce ®reM DEDICATORY ADDRESS. 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D., 
President of the Association. 
It is my appointed task, my honorable privilege, this evening, to 
speak of what has been done by others. No one can bring his tribute 
of words into the presence of great deeds, or try with them to embellish 
the memory of any inspiring achievement, without feeling and leaving 
with others a sense of their insufficiency. So felt Alexander when he 
compared even his adored Homer with the hero the poet had sung. 
So felt Webster when he contrasted the phrases of rhetoric with the 
eloquence of patriotism and of self-devotion. So felt Lincoln when on 
the field of Gettysburg he spoke those immortal words which Pericles 
could not have bettered, which Aristotle could not have criticised. So 
felt he who wrote the epitaph of the builder of the dome which looks 
down on the crosses and weathercocks that glitter over London. 
We are not met upon a battle-field, except so far as every laborious 
achievement means a victory over opposition, indifference, selfishness, 
faintheartedness, and that great property of mind as well as matter, - 
inertia. We are not met in a cathedral, except so far as every build- 
ing whose walls are lined with the products of useful and ennobling 
thought is a temple of the Almighty, whose inspiration has given us un- 
derstanding. But we have gathered within walls which bear testimony 
to the self-sacrificing, persevering efforts of a few young men, to whom 
we owe the origin and development of all that excites our admiration 
in this completed enterprise; and I might consider my task as finished 2 
Dedicatory Address. 
if I contented myself with borrowing the last w'ord of the architect's 
epitaph and only saying, Look around you I 
The reports of the librarian have told or will tell you, in some detail, 
what has been accomplished since the 21st of December, 1874, when 
six gentlemen met at the house of Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch to 
discuss different projects for a medical library. In less than four years 
from that time, by the liberality of associations and of individuals, this 
collection of nearly ten thousand volumes, of five thousand pamphlets, 
and of one hundred and twenty-five journals, regularly received, - all 
worthily sheltered beneath this lofty roof, -has come into being under' 
our eyes. It has sprung up, as it were, in the night, like a mushroom ; 
it stands before us in full daylight as lusty as an oak, and promising to 
grow and flourish in the perennial freshness of an evergreen. 
To whom does our profession owe this already large collection of books, 
exceeded in numbers only by four or five of the most extensive medical 
libraries in the country, and lodged in a building so well adapted to its 
present needs ? We will not point out individually all those younger 
members of the profession who have accomplished what their fathers 
and elder brethren had attempted and partially achieved. We need 
not write their names on these walls, after the fashion of those civic dig- 
nitaries who immortalize themselves on tablets of marble and gates of 
iron. But their contemporaries know them well, and their descendants 
will not forget them, - the men who first met together, the men who 
have given their time and their money, the faithful workers, worthy 
associates of the strenuous agitator who gave no sleep to his eyes, no 
slumber to his eyelids, until he had gained his ends; the untiring, im- 
perturbable, tenacious, irrepressible, all-subduing agitator' who neither 
rested nor let others rest until the success of the project was assured. 
If, against his injunctions, I name Dr. James Read Chadwick, it is only 
my revenge for his having kept me awake so often and so long while Dedicatory Address. 
3 
he was urging on the undertaking in which he has been preeminently 
active and triumphantly successful. 
We must not forget the various medical libraries which preceded 
this : that of an earlier period, when Boston contained about seventy 
regular practitioners, the collection afterwards transferred to the Bos- 
ton Athenseum ; the two collections belonging to the University ; the 
Treadwell Library at the Massachusetts General Hospital; the collec- 
tions of the two societies, that for Medical Improvement and that for 
Medical Observation; and more especially the ten thousand volumes 
relating to medicine belonging to our noble public city library, - too 
many blossoms on the tree of knowledge, perhaps, for the best fruit 
to ripen. But the Massachusetts Medical Society now numbers nearly 
four hundred members in the city of Boston. The time had arrived 
for a new and larger movement. There was needed a place to 
which every respectable member of the medical profession could ob- 
tain easy access ; where, under one roof, all might find the special in- 
formation they were seeking; where the latest medical intelligence 
should be spread out daily as the shipping news is posted on the bulle- 
tins of the exchange; where men engaged in a common pursuit could 
meet, surrounded by the mute oracles of science and art; where the 
whole atmosphere should be as full of professional knowledge as the 
apothecary's shop is of the odor of his medicaments. This was what 
the old men longed for, - the prophets and kings of the profession, 
who 
" desired it long, 
But died without the sight." 
This is what the young men and those who worked under their guid- 
ance undertook to give us. And now such a library, such a reading 
room, such an exchange, such an intellectual and social meeting-place, 
we behold a fact, plain before us. The medical profession of our city, 4 
Dedicatory Address. 
and, let us add, of all those neighboring places which it can reach with 
its iron arms, is united as never before by the commune vinculum, the 
common bond of a large, enduring, ennobling, unselfish interest. It 
breathes a new air of awakened intelligence. It marches abreast of the 
other learned professions, which have long had their extensive and val- 
uable centralized libraries ; abreast of them, but not promising to be 
content with that position. What glorifies a town like a cathedral ? 
What dignifies a province like a university ? What illuminates a coun- 
try like its scholarship, and what is the nest that hatches scholars but 
a library ? 
The physician, some may say, is a practical man and has little use 
for all this book-learning. Every student has heard Sydenham's reply 
to Sir Richard Blackmore's question as to what books he should read, - 
meaning medical books. " Read Don Quixote," was his famous an- 
swer. But Sydenham himself made medical books and may be pre- 
sumed to have thought those at least worth reading. Descartes was 
asked where was his library, and in reply held up the dissected body of 
an animal. But Descartes made books, great books, and a great many 
of them. A physician of common sense without erudition is better 
than a learned one without common sense, but the thorough master of 
his profession must have learning added to his natural gifts. 
It is not necessary to maintain the direct practical utility of all kinds 
of learning. Our shelves contain many books which only a certain 
class of medical scholars will be likely to consult. There is a dead 
medical literature, and there is a live one. The dead is not all ancient, 
the live is not all modern. There is none, modern or ancient, which, 
if it has no living value for the student, will not teach him something 
by its autopsy. But it is with the live literature of his profession that 
the medical practitioner is first of all concerned. 
Now there has come a great change in our time over the form in Dedicatory Address. 
5 
which living thought presents itself. The first printed books - the in- 
cunabula- were enclosed in boards of solid oak, with brazen clasps 
and corners; the boards by and by were replaced by pasteboard cov- 
ered with calf or sheepskin ; then cloth came in and took the place of 
leather; then the pasteboard was covered with paper instead of cloth; 
and at this day the quarterly, the monthly, the weekly periodical in its 
flimsy unsupported dress of paper, and the daily journal, naked as it 
came from the womb of the press, hold the larger part of the fresh 
reading we live upon. We must have the latest thought in its latest 
expression ; the page must be newly turned like the morning bannock; 
the pamphlet must be newly opened like the ante-prandial oyster. 
Thus a library, to meet the need of our time, must take, and must 
spread out in a convenient form, a great array of periodicals. Our act- 
ive practitioners read these by preference over almost everything else. 
Our specialists, more particularly, depend on the month's product, on 
the yearly crop of new facts, new suggestions, new contrivances, as 
much as the farmer on the annual yield of his acres. One of the first 
wants, then, of the profession is supplied by our library in its great ar- 
ray of periodicals from many lands in many languages. Such a num- 
ber of medical periodicals no private library -would have room for, no 
private person would pay for, or flood his library with if they were sent 
him for nothing. These, I think, with the reports of medical societies 
and the papers contributed to them, will form the most attractive part of 
our accumulated medical treasures. They will be also one of our chief 
expenses, for these journals must be bound in volumes and they require 
a great amount of shelf-room ; all this, in addition to the cost of sub- 
scription for those which are not furnished us gratuitously. 
It is true that the value of old scientific periodicals is, other things 
being equal, in the inverse ratio of their age, for the obvious reason 
that what is most valuable in the earlier volumes of a series is drained 6 
Dedicatory Address. 
off into the standard works with which the intelligent practitioner is 
supposed to be familiar. But no extended record of facts grows too old 
to be useful provided only that we have a ready and sure way of get- 
ting at the particular fact or facts we are in search of. 
And this leads me to speak of what I conceive to be one of the prin- 
cipal tasks to be performed by the present and the coming generation 
of scholars, not only in the medical, but in every department of knowl- 
edge. I mean the formation of indexes, and more especially of indexes 
to periodical literature. 
This idea has long been working in the minds of scholars, and all who 
have had occasion to follow out any special subject. I have a right to 
speak of it, for I long ago attempted to supply the want of indexes in 
some small measure, for my own need. I had a very complete set of 
the American Journal of the Medical Sciences; an entire set of the 
North American Review, and many volumes of the reprints of the three 
leading British quarterlies. Of what use were they to me without 
general indexes? I looked them all througn carefully and made classi- 
fied lists of all the articles I thought I should most care to read. But 
they soon outgrew my lists. The North American Review kept filling 
up shelf after shelf, rich in articles which I often wanted to consult, 
but what a labor to find them, until the index of Mr. Cushing, published 
a few months since, made the contents of these hundred and twenty vol- 
umes as easily accessible as the words in a dictionary 1 I had a copy of 
good Dr. Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia, a treasure-house to my boyhood 
which has not lost its value for me in later years. But where to look 
for what I wanted ? I wished to know, for instance, what Dr. Burney 
had to say about singing. Who would have looked for it under the 
Italian word cantare ? I was curious to learn something of the etch- 
ings of Rembrandt, and where should I find it but under the head 
"Low Countries, Engravers of the,"-an elaborate and most val- Dedicatory Address. 
7 
uable article of a hundred double-columned close-printed quarto pages, 
to which no reference, even, is made under the title Rembrandt. There 
was nothing to be done, if I wanted to know where that which I spe- 
cially cared for was to be found in my Rees's Cyclopaedia, but to look 
over every page of its forty-one quarto volumes and make out a brief 
list of matters of interest which I could not find by their titles, and this 
I did, at no small expense of time and trouble. 
Nothing, therefore, could be more pleasing to me than to see the 
attention which has been given of late years to the great work of index- 
ing. It is a quarter of a century since Mr. Poole published his Index 
to Periodical Literature, which it is much to be hoped is soon to ap- 
pear in a new edition, grown as it must be to formidable dimensions by 
the additions of so long a period. The British and Foreign Medical 
Review, edited by the late Sir John Forbes, contributed to by Huxley, 
Carpenter, Laycock, and others of the most distinguished scientific men 
of Great Britain, has an index to its twenty-four volumes, and by its 
aid I find this valuable series as manageable as a lexicon. The last 
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had a complete index in a sepa- 
rate volume, and the publishers of Appleton's American Cyclopaedia have 
recently issued an index to their useful work, which must greatly add to 
its value. I have already referred to the index to the North American 
Review, which to an American, and especially to a New Englander, is 
the most interesting and most valuable addition of its kind to our liter- 
ary apparatus since the publication of Mr. A'.libone's Dictionary of Au- 
thors. I might almost dare to parody Mr. Webster's words in speaking 
of Hamilton, to describe what Mr. Cushing did for the solemn rows of 
back volumes of our honored old Review which had been long fossilizing 
on our shelves : " He touched the dead corpse of the " North American, 
" and it sprang to its feet." A library of the best thought of the best 
American scholars during the greater portion of the century was brought 8 
Dedicatory Address. 
to light by the work of the index-maker as truly as were the Assyrian 
tablets by the labors of Layard. 
A great portion of the best writing and reading - literary, scientific, 
professional, miscellaneous - comes to us now, at stated intervals, in 
paper covers. The writer appears, as it were, in his shirt-sleeves. As 
soon as he has delivered his message the book-binder puts a coat on his 
back, and he joins the forlorn brotherhood of " back volumes," than 
which, so long as they are unindexed, nothing can be more exasperat- 
ing. Who wants a lock without a key, a ship without a rudder, a bin- 
nacle without a compass, a check without a signature, a greenback 
without a goldback behind it ? 
I have referred chiefly to the medical journals, but I would include 
with these the reports of medical associations, and those separate pub- 
lications which, coming in the form of pamphlets, heap themselves into 
chaotic piles and bundles which are worse than useless, taking up a 
great deal of room, and frightening everything away but mice and mous- 
ing antiquarians, or possibly at long intervals some terebrating specialist. 
Arranged, bound, indexed, all these at once become accessible and 
valuable. I will take the first instance which happens to suggest itself. 
How7 many who know7 all about osteoblasts and the experiments of Ollier, 
and all that has grown out of them, know w'here to go for a paper by 
the late Dr. A. L. Peirson, of Salem, published in the year 1840, under 
the modest title, Remarks on Fractures? And if any practitioner who 
has to deal with broken bones does not know that most excellent and 
practical essay, it is a great pity, for it answers very numerous questions 
which will be sure to suggest themselves to the surgeon and the patient 
as no one of the recent treatises, on my own shelves, at least, can do. 
But if indexing is the special need of our time in medical literature, 
as in every department of knowledge, it must be remembered that it is 
not only an immense labor, but one that never ends. It requires there- Dedicatory Address. 
9 
fore the cooperation of a large number of individuals to do the work, 
and a large amount of money to pay for making its results public through 
the press. When it is remembered that the catalogue of the library of 
the British Museum is contained in nearly three thousand large folios 
of manuscript, and not all its books are yet included, the task of index- 
ing any considerable branch of science or literature looks as if it were 
well nigh impossible. But many hands make light work. An " Index 
Society " has been formed in England, already numbering about one 
hundred and seventy members. It aims at " supplying thorough in- 
dexes to valuable works and collections which have hitherto lacked 
them; at issuing indexes to the literature of special subjects; and at 
gathering materials for a general reference index." This society has 
published a little treatise setting forth the history and the art of index- 
ing, which I trust is in the hands of some of our members, if not upon 
our shelves. 
Something has been done in the same direction by individuals in our 
own country, as we have already seen. The need of it in the depart- 
ment of medicine is beginning to be clearly felt. Our library has already 
an admirable catalogue with cross references, the work of a number of 
its younger members cooperating in the task. A very intelligent medi- 
cal student, Mr. William D. Chapin, whose excellent project is endorsed 
by well-known New York physicians and professors, proposes to publish 
a yearly index to original communications in the medical journals of the 
United States, classified by authors and subjects. But it is from the 
National Medical Library at Washington that we have the best promise 
and the largest expectations. That great and growing collection of fifty 
thousand volumes is under the eye and hand of a librarian who knows 
books and how to manage them. For libraries are the standing armies 
of civilization, and an army is but a mob without a general who can 
organize and marshal it so as to make it effective. The " Specimen 10 
Dedicatory Address. 
Fasciculus of a Catalogue of the National Medical Library," prepared 
under the direction of Dr. Billings, the librarian, would have excited 
the admiration of Haller, the master scholar in medical science of the 
last century, or rather of the profession in all centuries, and if carried 
out as it is begun will be to the nineteenth all and more than all that the 
three Bibliothecae - Anatomica, Chirurgica, and Medicinae-Practicae - 
were to the eighteenth century. I cannot forget the story that Agassiz 
was so fond of telling of the king of Prussia and Fichte. It was after the 
humiliation and spoliation of the kingdom by Napoleon that the monarch 
asked the philosopher what could be done to regain the lost position of 
the nation. "Found a great university, Sire," was the answer, and so 
it was that in the year 1810 the world-renowned University of Berlin 
came into being. I believe that we in this country can do better than 
found a national university, whose professors shall be nominated in cau- 
cuses, go in and out, perhaps, like postmasters, with every change of ad- 
ministration, and deal with science in the face of their constituency as 
the courtier did with time when his sovereign asked him what o'clock it 
was: " Whatever hour your majesty pleases." But when we have a no- 
ble library like that at Washington, and a librarian of exceptional quali- 
fications like the gentleman who now holds that office, I believe that a 
liberal appropriation by Congress to carry out a conscientious work for 
the advancement of sound knowledge and the bettering of human con- 
ditions, like this which Dr. Billings has so well begun, would redound 
greatly to the honor of the nation. It ought to be willing to be at some 
charge to make its treasures useful to its citizens, and, for its own sake, 
especially to that class which has charge of health public and private. 
This country abounds in what are called "self-made men," and is justly 
proud of many whom it thus designates. In one sense no man is self- 
made who breathes the air of a civilized community. In another sense 
every man who is anything other than a phonograph on legs is self- Dedicatory Address. 
11 
made. But if we award his just praise to the man who has attained 
any kind of excellence without having had the same advantages as 
others whom, nevertheless, he has equalled or surpassed, let us not be 
betrayed into undervaluing the mechanic's careful training to his busi- 
ness, - the thorough and laborious education of the scholar and the 
professional man. 
Our American atmosphere is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half 
knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and 
keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching 
the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good 
books, rather than by wasting our time in talking against it. Half 
knowledge dreads nothing but whole knowledge. 
I have spoken of the importance and the predominance of periodical 
literature, and have attempted to do justice to its value. But the almost 
exclusive reading of it is not without its dangers. The journals contain 
much that is crude and unsound; the presumption, it might be main- 
tained, is against their novelties, unless they come from observers of 
established credit. Yet I have known a practitioner - perhaps more 
than one - who was as much under the dominant influence of the last 
article he had read in his favorite medical journal as a milliner under 
the sway of the last fashion-plate. The difference between green and 
seasoned knowledge is very great, and such practitioners never hold 
long enough to any of their knowledge to have it get seasoned. 
It is needless to say, then, that all the substantial and permanent 
literature of the profession should be represented upon our shelves. 
Much of it is there already, and as one private library after another 
falls into this by the natural law of gravitation, it will gradually acquire 
all that is most valuable almost without effort. A scholar should not 
be in a hurry to part with his books. They are probably more valuable 
to him than they can be to any other individual. What Swedenborg 12 
Dedicatory Address. 
called " correspondence " has established itself between his intelligence 
and the volumes which wall him within their sacred enclosure. Na- 
poleon said that his mind was as if furnished with drawers, - he drew 
out each as he wanted its contents, and closed it at will when done 
with them. The scholar's mind, to use a similar comparison, is fur- 
nished with shelves, like his library. Each book knows its place in the 
brain as well as against the wall or in the alcove. His consciousness is 
doubled by the books which encircle him, as the trees that surround a 
lake repeat themselves in its unruffled waters. Men talk of the nerve 
that runs to the pocket, but one who loves his books, and has lived 
long with them, has a nervous filament which runs from his sensorium 
to every one of them. Or, if I may still let my fancy draw its pict- 
ures, a scholar's library is to him what a temple is to the worshipper 
who frequents it. There is the altar sacred to his holiest experiences. 
There is the font where his new-born thought was baptized and first 
had a name in his consciousness. There is the monumental tablet of 
a dead belief, sacred still in the memory of what it was while yet alive. 
No visitor can read all this on the lettered backs of the books that have 
gathered around the scholar, but for him, from the Aldus on the lowest 
shelf to the Elzevir on the highest, every volume has a language which 
none but he can interpret. Be patient with the book-collector who 
loves his companions too well to let them go. Books are not buried 
with their owners, and the veriest book-miser that ever lived was prob- 
ably doing far more for his successors than his more liberal neighbor 
who despised his learned or unlearned avarice. Let the fruit fall with 
the leaves still clinging round it. Who would have stripped South- 
ey's walls of the books that filled them, when, his mind no longer capa- 
ble of taking in their meaning, he would still pat and fondle them with 
the vague loving sense of what they had once been to him - to him, 
the great scholar, now like a little child among his playthings ? Dedicatory Address. 
13 
We need in this country not only the scholar, but the virtuoso, who 
hoards the treasures which he loves, it may be chiefly for their rarity 
and because others who know more than he does of their value set a 
high price upon them. As the wine of old vintages is gently decanted 
out of its cobwebbed bottles with their rotten corks into clean new re- 
ceptacles, so the wealth of the New World is quietly emptying many of 
the libraries and galleries of the Old World into its newly formed col- 
lections and newly raised edifices. And this process must go on in an 
accelerating ratio. No Englishman will be offended if I say that before 
the New Zealander takes his stand on a broken arch of London bridge 
to sketch the ruins of Saint Paul's in the midst of a vast solitude, the 
treasures of the British Museum will have found a new shelter in the 
halls of New York or Boston. No Catholic will think hardly of my 
saying that before the Coliseum falls, and with it the imperial city, 
whose doom prophecy has linked with that of the almost eternal amphi- 
theatre, the marbles, the bronzes, the paintings, the manuscripts of the 
Vatican will have left the shores of the Tiber for those of the Potomac, 
the Hudson, the Mississippi, or the Sacramento. And what a delight 
in the pursuit of the rarities which the eager book-hunter follows with 
the scent of a beagle ! Shall I ever forget that rainy day in Lyons, 
that dingy bookshop, where I found the Aetius, long missing from my 
Artis Medicse Principes, and where I bought for a small pecuniary con- 
sideration, though it was marked rare, and was really tres rare, the 
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, edited by and with a preface from the hand 
of Francis Rabelais? And the vellum-bound Tulpius, which I came 
upon in Venice, afterwards my only reading when imprisoned in quar- 
antine at Marseilles, so that the two hundred and twenty-eight cases he 
has recorded are, many of them, to this day still fresh in my memory. 
And the Schenckius, - the folio filled with casus rariores, which had 
strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall on the boulevard, - and 14 
Dedicatory Address. 
the noble old Vesalius with its grand frontispiece not unworthy of Titian, 
and the fine old Ambroise Par£, long waited for even in Paris and 
long ago, and the colossal Spigelius with his eviscerated beauties, and 
Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of fine engraving and bad dissection, 
and Italian Mascagni, the despair of all would-be imitators, and pre- 
Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian Berengarius Carpensis - 
but why multiply names, every one of which brings back the accession 
of a book which was an event almost like the birth of an infant? 
A library like ours must exercise the largest hospitality. A great 
many books may be found in every large collection which remind us of 
those apostolic looking old men who figure on the platform at our politi- 
cal and other assemblages. Some of them have spoken words of wisdom 
in their day, but they have ceased to be oracles ; some of them never 
had any particularly important message for humanity, but they add 
dignity to the meeting by their presence ; they look wise, whether they 
are so or not, and no one grudges them their places of honor. Vener- 
able figure-heads, what would our platforms be without you ? 
Just so with our libraries. Without their rows of folios in creamy 
vellum or showing their black backs with antique lettering of tarnished 
gold our shelves would look as insufficient and unbalanced as a column 
without its base, as a statue without its pedestal. And do not think 
they are kept only to be spanked and dusted during that dreadful 
period when their owner is but too thankful to become an exile and a 
wanderer from the scene of single combats between dead authors and 
living housemaids. Men were not all cowards before Agamemnon or 
all fools before the days of Virchow and Billroth. And apart from any 
practical use to be derived from the older medical authors, is there not 
a true pleasure in reading the accounts of great discoverers in their own 
words ? I do not pretend to hoist up the Bibliotheca Anatomica of 
Mangetus and spread it on my table every day. I do not get out my Dedicatory Address. 
15 
great Albinus before every lecture on the muscles, nor disturb the ma- 
jestic repose of Vesalius every time I speak of the bones he has so ad- 
mirably described and figured. But it does please me to read the first 
descriptions of parts to which the names of their discoverers or those 
who have first described them have become so joined that not even 
modern science can part them; to listen to the talk of my old volume 
as Willis describes his circle and Fallopius his aqueduct and Varolius 
his bridge and Eustachius his tube and Monro his foramen -all so well 
known to us in the human body; it does please me to know the very 
words in which Winslow described the opening which bears his name, 
and Glisson his capsule and De Graaf his vesicle ; I am not content 
until I know in what language Harvey announced his discovery of the 
circulation, and how Spigelius made the liver his perpetual memorial, 
and Malpighi found a monument more enduring than brass in the cor- 
puscles of the spleen and the kidney. 
But after all, the readers who care most for the early records of medi- 
cal science and art are the specialists who are dividing up the practice 
of medicine and surgery as they were parcelled out, according to He- 
rodotus, by the Egyptians. For them nothing is too old, nothing is too 
new, for to their books of all others is applicable the saying of D'Alem- 
bert that the author kills himself in lengthening out what the reader 
kills himself in trying to shorten. 
There are practical books among these ancient volumes which can 
never grow old. Would you know how to recognize "male hysteria'' 
and to treat it, take down your Sydenham; would you read the experi- 
ence of a physician who was himself the subject of asthma and who, 
notwithstanding that, in the words of Dr. Johnson, " panted on till 
ninety," you will find it in the venerable treatise of Sir John Floyer; 
would you listen to the story of the King's Evil cured by the royal 
touch, as told by a famous chirurgeon who fully believed in it, go to 16 
Dedicatory Address. 
Wiseman ; would you get at first hand the description of the spinal 
disease which long bore his name, do not be startled if I tell you to go 
to Pott - to Percival Pott, the great surgeon of the last century. 
There comes a time for every book in a library when it is wanted by 
somebody. It is but a few weeks since one of the most celebrated 
physicians in the country wrote to me from a great centre of medical 
education to know if I had the works of Sanctorius, which he had tried 
in vain to find. I could have lent him the " Medicina Statica," with its 
frontispiece showing Sanctorius with his dinner on the table before him, 
in his balanced chair which sunk with him below the level of his ban- 
quet-board when he had swallowed a certain number of ounces, - an 
early foreshadowing of Pettenkofer's chamber and quantitative physi- 
ology, - but the " Opera Omnia" of Sanctorius I had never met with, 
and I fear he had to do without it. 
I would extend the hospitality of these shelves to a class of works 
which we are in the habit of considering as being outside of the pale of 
medical science, properly so called, and sometimes of coupling with a 
disrespectful name. Such has always been my own practice. I have 
welcomed Culpeper and Salmon to my bookcase as willingly as Dioscor- 
ides or Quincy, or Paris or Wood and Bache. I have found a place for 
St. John Long, and read the story of his trial for manslaughter with as 
much interest as the laurel-water case in which John Hunter figured 
as a witness. I would give Samuel Hahnemann a place by the side of 
Samuel Thomson. Am I not afraid that some student of imaginative 
turn and not provided with the needful cerebral strainers without which 
all the refuse of guncrack intelligences gets into the mental drains and 
chokes them up, - am I not afraid that some such student will get hold 
of the " Organon " or the " Maladies Chroniques " and be won over by 
their delusions, and so be lost to those that love him as a man of com- 
mon sense and a brother in their high calling ? Not in the least. If Dedicatory Address. 
17 
he showed any symptoms of infection I would for once have recourse 
to the principle of similia similibus. To cure him of Hahnemann I 
would prescribe my favorite homoeopathic antidote, Okie's Bonning- 
hausen. If that failed, I would order Grauvogl as a heroic remedy, 
and if he survived that uncured, I would give him my blessing, if I 
thought him honest, and bid him depart in peace. For me he is no 
longer an individual. He belongs to a class of minds which we are 
bound to be patient with if their Maker sees fit to indulge them with 
existence. We must accept the conjuring ultra-ritualist, the dreamy 
second adventist, the erratic spiritualist, the fantastic homoeopathist, as 
not unworthy of philosophic study; not more unworthy of it than the 
squarers of the circle and the inventors of perpetual motion, and the 
other whimsical visionaries to whom De Morgan has devoted his most 
instructive and entertaining " Budget of Paradoxes." I hope, therefore, 
that our library will admit the works of the so-called Eclectics, of 
the Thomsonians, if any are in existence, of the Clairvoyants, if they 
have a literature, and especially of the Homoeopathists. This country 
seems to be the place for such a collection, which will by and by be 
curious and of more value than at present, for Homoeopathy seems to 
be following the pathological law of erysipelas, fading out where it orig- 
inated as it spreads to new regions. At least I judge so by the follow- 
ing translated extract from a criticism of an American work in the 
Homoeopatische Rundschau of Leipzig for October, 1878, which I find 
in the Homoeopathic Bulletin for the month of November just passed: - 
" While we feel proud of the spread and rise of Homoeopathy across 
the ocean, and while the Homoeopathic works reaching us from there, 
and published in a style such as is unknown in Germany, bear eloquent 
testimony to the eminent activity of our transatlantic colleagues, we are 
overcome by sorrowful regrets at the position Homoeopathy occupies in 18 
Dedicatory Address. 
Germany. Such a work [as the American one referred to] with us 
would be impossible ; it would lack the necessary support." 
By all means let our library secure a good representation of the lit- 
erature of Homoeopathy before it leaves us its " sorrowful regrets " and 
migrates with its sugar of milk pellets, which have taken the place of 
the old pilulce micce panis, to Alaska, to " Nova Zembla, or the Lord 
knows where." 
What shall I say in this presence of the duties of a Librarian ? 
Where have they ever been better performed than in our own public 
city library, where the late Mr. Jewett and the living Mr. Winsor have 
shown us what a librarian ought to be - the organizing head, the vig- 
ilant guardian, the seeker's index, the scholar's counsellor ? His work 
is not merely that of administration, manifold and laborious as its duties 
are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He 
is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that 
which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee, - he lays up little honey 
for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing pollen from flower to flower. 
Our undertaking, just completed - and just begun-has come at 
the right time, not a day too soon. Our practitioners need a library 
like this, for with all their skill and devotion there is too little genuine 
erudition, such as a liberal profession ought to be able to claim for many 
of its members. In reading the recent obituary notices of the late Dr. 
Geddings of South Carolina, I recalled what our lamented friend Dr. 
Coale used to tell me of his learning and accomplishments, and I could 
not help reflecting how few such medical scholars we had to show in 
Boston or New England. We must clear up this unilluminated atmos- 
phere, and here, - here is the true electric light which will irradiate 
its darkness. 
The public will catch the rays reflected from the same source of light, 
and it needs instruction on the great subjects of health and disease, - Dedicatory Address. 
19 
needs it sadly. It is preyed upon by every kind of imposition almost 
without hindrance. Its ignorance and prejudices react upon the pro- 
fession to the great injury of both. The jealous feeling, for instance, 
with regard to such provisions for the study of anatomy as are sanc- 
tioned by the laws in this State and carried out with strict regard to 
those laws, threatens the welfare, if not the existence of institutions for 
medical instruction wherever it is not held in check by enlightened in- 
telligence. And on the other hand the profession has just been startled 
by a verdict against a physician, ruinous in its amount,-enough to 
drive many a hard-working young practitioner out of house and home, 
- a verdict which leads to the fear that suits for malpractice may take 
the place of the panel game and child-stealing as a means of extorting 
money. If the profession in this State, which claims a high standard 
of civilization, is to be crushed and ground beneath the upper millstone 
of the dearth of educational advantages, and the lower millstone of 
ruinous penalties for what the ignorant ignorantly shall decide to be ig- 
norance, all I can say is 
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! 
Once more, we cannot fail to see that just as astrology has given place 
to astronomy, so theology, the science of Him whom by searching no 
man can find out, is fast being replaced by what we may not improperly 
call theonomy, or the science of the laws according to which the Cre- 
ator acts. And since these laws find their fullest manifestations for us, 
at least, in rational human natures, the study of anthropology is largely 
replacing that of scholastic divinity. We must contemplate our Maker 
indirectly in human attributes as we talk of Him in human parts of 
speech. And this gives a sacredness to the study of man in his physical, 
mental, moral, social, and religious nature which elevates the faithful stu- 
dents of anthropology to the dignity of a priesthood, and sheds a holy 20 
Dedicatory Address. 
light on the recorded results of their labors, brought together as they 
are in such a collection as this which is now spread out before us. 
Thus, then, our library is a temple as truly as the dome-crowned 
cathedral hallowed by the breath of prayer and praise, where the dead 
repose and the living worship. May it, with all its treasures, be con- 
secrated like that to the glory of God, through the contributions it shall 
make to the advancement of sound knowledge, to the relief of human 
suffering, to the promotion of harmonious relations between the mem- 
bers of the two noble professions which deal with the diseases of the soul 
and with those of the body, and to the common cause in which all good 
men are working, the furtherance of the well-being of their fellow 
creatures ! 
Note. - As an illustration of the statement in the last paragraph but 
one, I take the following notice from the Boston Daily Advertiser of 
December 4th, the day after the delivery of the address: - 
" Prince Lucien Bonaparte is now living in London, and is devoting 
himself to the work of collecting the creeds of all religions and sects, 
with a view to their classification, -his object being simply scientific or 
anthropological." 
Since delivering the address, also, I find a leading article in the Cin- 
cinnati Lancet and Clinic of November 30th, headed " The Decadence 
of Homoeopathy," abundantly illustrated by extracts from the Homoeo- 
pathic Times, the leading American organ of that sect. 
In the New York Medical Record of the same date, which I had not 
seen before the delivery of my address, is an account of the action of 
the Homoeopathic Medical Society of Northern New York, in which 
Hahnemann's theory of " dynamization " is characterized in a formal 
resolve as " unworthy the confidence of the Homoeopathic profession." 
It will be a disappointment to the German Homoeopathists to read in 
the Homoeopathic Times such a statement as the following: - Dedicatory Address. 
21 
" Whatever the influences have been which have checked the out- 
ward development of Homoeopathy, it is plainly evident that the Ho- 
moeopathic school, as regards the number of its openly avowed represent- 
atives, has attained its majority, and has begun to decline both in this 
country and in England." 
All which is an additional reason for making a collection of the in- 
credibly curious literature of Homoeopathy before that pseudological in- 
anity has faded out like so many other delusions. REPORT OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE. 
The lot on which this building stands is twenty-seven and one half 
feet broad and sixty feet deep. The original house, which was for- 
merly occupied by the late Dr. Howe, extended to the first beam in 
the ceiling west of the skylight. To obtain this hall, the first floor 
was removed together with that part of the rear wall of the house 
which corresponded to the two lower stories; a strong iron beam was 
carried across to support the upper part of the rear wall, and the 
yard was roofed over. The hall thus covers the whole lot, and is 
eighteen and one half feet high. 
The excellent results obtained here and in the rooms above testify 
to the skill and taste of our architect, Mr. Henry Van Brunt. The 
arrangement of seats at the west end of the hall on grades not only 
makes it easier to see from that end, but gives room below for a steam 
furnace, a coal bin, and four large air-boxes, arranged to admit any pro- 
portion of hot and cold air. Almost the whole of the wall is lined 
with books, the upper parts being made accessible for this purpose by 
a gallery carried round three sides, which also serves to accommo- 
date a considerable number of seats. The gallery is reached by a 
few steps from the rear platform, and by the circular staircase on the 
north side. This staircase also serves to connect the hall directly 
with the reading-rooms above. Your attention is particularly called 
to the admirable arrangements for heating and ventilation. The plan 
consists in general of admitting a large volume of air over steam-pipes 
at the west end of the room, and carrying it off through a large ven- 
tilating shaft at the east end. A strong draught is maintained in this 
shaft by a simple appliance, of which I will speak again later. We 
BY DR. CHARLES P. PUTNAM, CHAIRMAN. Report of the Building Committee. 
23 
can have our air enter at any desired temperature, for by a system of 
valves it may be carried through or over the steam-pipes. The open- 
ings into the room are in the risers of the grades under the seats. 
From there the air is intended to be diffused gradually over the room, 
but to have a general direction toward the east end. 
This plan was submitted to Dr. Edward Cowles, of the Boston City 
Hospital, by whom the proper areas of the openings for admitting 
and discharging the air were calculated. Dr. J. S. Billings, of the 
United States army, who honors us with his presence to night, also 
examined the plans, and suggested a few modifications. We are much 
indebted to these two gentlemen for the attention they gave the matter, 
and for their valuable advice. The air entering the room is intended 
to move at the rate of two feet per second. Air moving at a greater 
rate than this might be felt as a draught. The cold air shafts have an 
area of about twenty-seven square feet, and will therefore admit about 
two hundred thousand cubic feet of air per hour. 
Except on the present occasion, the hall will rarely contain more 
than one hundred and fifty persons, - more often only one hun- 
dred, - so that each person will have from twelve hundred to two 
thousand cubic feet per hour of fresh air. The hall contains about 
twenty-two thousand cubic feet, and all the air will therefore be 
changed more than nine times in an hour, or once in five or six 
minutes. The ventilating shaft has an area of sixteen feet, in which 
the air is expected to have a rate of three feet per second. The open- 
ings into it are under and behind the platform. This shaft, which can 
be seen behind the desk, leads into a space between two sky-lights, the 
lower of which is of ground glass and forms a panel in the ceiling, 
while another shaft leads from the enclosed space into the open air. 
The twenty-eight gas jets which mainly light the room are placed in 
this space, the heat from them insuring a strong upward current di- 24 
Report of the Building Committee. 
rectly from near the floor of the hall. In order to lose as little light 
as possible, reflectors are projected over the gas jets in this ventilating 
lantern at night. In the day-time they are let down out of the way, 
and the hall is abundantly lighted by the sky-light and the two win- 
dows on Boylston Place. If the hall should become too hot during 
a meeting in summer, or in any weather, one or more of the sashes 
in the sky-light may be lowered in such a way as to let off the hot air 
freely from the top of the room, and at the same time to shield the 
eyes of the spectators from the glare of the lights. 
The second story of the house is to be used for reading-rooms. The 
back room contains current journals and books of reference; while a 
duplicate library for home reading will soon be placed upon the 
shelves of the front room. The third story contains two large rooms, 
one of which might be used for a committee room, or be let to some 
society, while the other may perhaps be devoted to the use of med- 
ical students. A small room on the same floor will be used as a du- 
plicate room. 
The top story is occupied by the assistant librarian, Dr. E. H. 
Brigham, and his family. Great pains have been taken to make the 
building practically fire-proof. Among other things party walls have 
been built up on both sides above the roofs. 
We should be glad to say that we were free from pecuniary incum- 
brance. But this is hardly to be expected of a library that has grown 
as rapidly as ours has. We could no longer remain in our rooms in 
Hamilton Place; the shelves were crowded, and the floor was ob- 
structed with piles of books, and beside these about three thousand 
volumes were waiting to come in. Moreover, the means of protec- 
tion against fire were inadequate. It was plain that the library had 
outgrown its old quarters, and had earned th& right to new and 
larger ones. Last spring we asked members of the society and their John S. Billings. 
25 
friends to give us enough money to justify us in buying and altering 
this house. Very generous donations were given to us, amounting to 
over $8000. The house is mortgaged for $8000, but the interest on 
this will be more than met by the rents received from the medical 
societies for the use of the hall. There is also a floating debt of 
almost $4000, which ought to be paid off as soon as possible. 
We confidently believe that a large part of this sum will be sub- 
scribed by the members of the association, but we hope that they will 
also be able to interest those of their friends who are willing to lend 
a helping hand to the cause of medical education. We are encouraged 
to ask for more money by the fact that our former appeal was so gen- 
erously met. We have hitherto not made anything like a public ap- 
peal for money, because we wanted first to have something tangible 
to show for which it should be employed. Now we invite you to ex- 
amine the library and see if it is worth assisting. Most of the sub- 
scriptions that have been received up to this time have been quite 
large, but we would not have it supposed that any sums, even the 
smallest, will not be thankfully received. 
REMARKS OF DR. JOHN S. BILLINGS, U. S. A., LIBRARIAN OF THE 
NATIONAL LIBRARY IN WASHINGTON, D. C. 
I appreciate very highly the privilege of being present at this meet- 
ing, as well as the honor of being called on to address such an assem- 
blage, and I shall prove that appreciation by being very brief in my 
remarks. I had the pleasure of hearing the first report of your li- 
brarian, and the progress of your collection shows that you need no 
advice that I can give. You have already reached that stage of de- 
velopment when you are having practical experience of the truth of 
that maxim which should be always in the mind of the librarian, 
namely, " Unto him that hath shall be given," and are close on the 26 
Remarks. 
period when a new set of difficulties will arise, being those pertaining 
to collections of ten thousand volumes and upwards. 
I think I can best occupy the few moments which I propose to take 
by telling you something of the rise and progress of the Medical Li- 
brary at Washington, of which I have charge. This library is now 
about thirteen years old; it contains about forty-eight thousand vol- 
umes and the same number of pamphlets, and is one of the best work- 
ing medical collections in the world. This growth has been due to 
purchases, to exchanges, and last, but by no means least, to the lib- 
erality and public spirit of many members of the medical profession 
of this country, whose contributions have been large and numerous. 
To secure these contributions, however, requires in most cases personal 
application, and I used to search for them on upper shelves and in the 
closets and garrets of physicians with great success. As one of these 
book-hunting expeditions may have had some influence in the formation 
of this library, a brief account of it may be of interest. About three 
years ago, while in Boston upon one of these raids, I found myself in 
the library of a physician who had recently returned from Europe, 
where he had made a collection of books and pamphlets relating to the 
specialty which he proposed to practice. Among these I observed 
some old and rare books which I ventured to hint " were peculiarly 
desirable for the Washington library, where they would be acceptable 
and be of use to all physicians of the country," etc., etc. The works 
were promptly placed in my hands, and the doctor proceeded to ran- 
sack his shelves, handing down book after book, and asking " if the 
library had that," or " if it ought not to have that," until a pile had 
accumulated which actually made me hesitate and feel some embar- 
rassment in accepting, - although by dint of practice I had even at 
that time acquired a very respectable amount of assurance in such 
matters. I am glad to say, however, that I allowed no signs of my John S. Billings. 
27 
embarrassment to appear, but succeeded in looking as if matters were 
merely taking their usual and expected course, and that I carried off 
everything I could lay my hands on. 
From the accounts of the growth of this library, which I have heard 
to-night, and from the number of books which I see upon its shelves, 
I feel sure that the example which I then set has been faithfully fol- 
lowed, and that your librarian has never forgotten the lesson which 
must have been strongly impressed upon him as he saw his treasures 
disappearing. 
On another occasion, however, I met with a cruel disappointment. 
On going into a physician's office I found a fine large book-case with 
glass doors, behind which appeared a goodly series of volumes in 
paper covers, neatly lettered on the back, and on examining the titles 
I found that they included complete series of some of the rarest of 
our medical journals, - a class of publications which I have been spe- 
cially anxious to secure, - and that in fact there were three journals 
of which I had never even heard the names. The book-case was locked, 
and I eagerly requested of the doctor that lie would open it and let 
me see these treasures, telling him that I must have them. He was 
very reluctant to comply, did not know where the key was, etc., but 
finally opened the case, and explained to me that a friend of his who 
was a member of Congress had sent him a large number of copies of 
Patent Office reports and diplomatic correspondence, and that these, 
neatly covered and labeled, had served to give his book-case such an 
attractive appearance. 
I have been often asked how many medical books we have yet to 
procure in order to make our library complete, and as it must be pre- 
sumed that you also are aiming at perfection some data on this point 
may be of interest. Counting each work as one, regardless of the 
number of editions it may have passed through, I think that of med- 28 
Remarks. 
ical books which ought to be in our national medical collection we have 
about one half. We can usually furnish the originals for seventy-five 
per cent, of the references given in modern medical works and bibli- 
ographies, and this is due to the fact that a large proportion of such 
references is always to articles in periodicals, and that we have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining over eighty per cent, of all the medical journals 
and transactions which have been published throughout the world. 
So much has been said by the medical press within the last year or 
two about our index catalogue that I presume you are all familiar with 
its scope. Up to the evening of November 30th we had indexed the 
original articles in 13,901 volumes of journals, 3293 volumes of trans- 
actions, and 725 volumes of sanitary and hospital reports and mis- 
cellaneous, - in all 17,919 volumes. We are receiving at the present 
time, and regularly indexing before placing them on the files, 372 
medical journals and 201 series of medical transactions, and in addi- 
tion to these we receive about 140 journals and 100 series of transac- 
tions, which are partially indexed. 
It is to be hoped that when, a hundred years hence, your librarian 
makes out his centennial report, he will be able to congratulate you 
on the fact that there has been a decided diminution in the quantity 
of this class of publications during the century, and at the same time 
may be able to report that, with one exception, the most complete 
and useful medical library in the world is that of the Boston Medical 
Library Association. 
REMARKS OF MR. JUSTIN WINSOR, LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY. 
It gives me pleasure to listen to the remarks of Dr. Billings, for 
I regard him as the greatest medical bibliographer in this or any 
other country. If there is any one thing which entitles managers of Justin Winsor. - George H. Lyman. 
29 
libraries to a place in the ranks of those who pursue a science, it is 
their cooperation with students. In former days the merchant went 
home late at night, because he was kept by the necessity of making 
up reports for his foreign correspondents; now he goes home at 
four p. m., certain that all news of importance will be ticked across the 
ocean by one man for all men. Such may be said to be the relation 
of the librarian to students. His part is to open the way which 
they wish to follow. The collection of medical works in the Public 
Library amounts to perhaps 10,000 volumes, to which should be 
added cognate works on chemistry, etc. This will increase the num- 
ber to 12,000 or 13,000. It seems quite unwise to have two inde- 
pendent collections so near each other, when a passage might connect 
them. I cannot yet point out the details of the desired cooperation, 
but I think that the time will come when the two libraries and that 
of the Medical School will be brought into intimate relations. This 
matter I commend to the librarian of the Public Library, to the dean 
of the Medical School, and to the president of Harvard University. 
REMARKS OF DR. GEORGE H. LYMAN, PRESIDENT OF MASSACHU- 
SETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
I am quite aware that nothing which I can say will add to the in- 
terest of this occasion, but as the representative of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society I must at least acknowledge the compliment which 
you pay it, and assure you of its cordial sympathy in your objects. 
It would, indeed, after the address to which we have all listened 
with so much pleasure, be impertinent in me to enlarge upon the 
value to the medical profession and to the community at large of 
just such an institution as this. It is so manifestly desirable that 
every available means for the dissemination of sound medical knowl- 
edge should be developed, that we need not fear that any one will 
question its importance. 30 
Remarks. 
The grand old society which it is my privilege to represent here 
has from its very inception made the diffusion of medical literature 
one of its chief objects. Among the earliest endeavors of that little 
band of distinguished men who a century ago associated themselves 
to elevate the character of the profession, to systematize and render 
productive the scattered medical knowledge of that day, was the for- 
mation of a medical library. Their records show constant effort in 
this direction. In 1786 they voted twenty pounds from their limited 
resources for the purchase of books ; in 1789, thirty pounds; and so 
on. It must be admitted that these were large grants when we con- 
sider the paucity of their numbers and the value of lawful money in 
those times. From the beginning they gave their attention to essays 
upon the laws of epidemics, and to new discoveries in the pathology 
and treatment of disease. As early as 1791 they had accumulated 
sufficient material to justify the publication of their first volume of 
Communications, and like dutiful children they voted two copies, " in 
the best blue binding," to the maternal library at Harvard. As med- 
ical knowledge increased and the press became more fertile, the time 
gradually arrived when every intelligent physician had his own more 
or less abundant library of standard books for convenient reference, 
and the society gradually and wisely limited its efforts to the repub- 
lication of a few encyclopaedic and periodical works for general distri- 
bution, until finally, and quite recently, its own previous accumulations 
by gift and purchase were, for the want of just such an institution as 
this, turned over to the Public Library, where the quaint old literature 
of past generations may be consulted by such antiquarians as can find 
pleasure or profit therein. 
In conclusion, Mr. President, let me claim that which I am sure 
this audience will grant, - that this young and vigorous enterprise is 
one of the legitimate outgrowths from the past teachings and influence Charles W. Eliot. - David P. Smith. 
31 
of the Massachusetts Medical Society, for it is only through its educa- 
tion of medical men that such an institution has been made possible. 
Now that you have so happily shown the way to wider effort, I would 
predict that its influence and means will be gladly and liberally at 
your service as opportunity may offer. 
REMARKS OF CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL. D., PRESIDENT OF HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY. 
For two hundred years Harvard College has been trying to do its 
part in educating the community; and its sympathies with all efforts 
in that direction have been and are unfailing. It is with great delight 
that I see the success and vigor of this library, which in professional 
character resembles the Social Law Library and the General Theolog- 
ical Library; it is also of great interest to the university's medical 
school. All will agree with me that teachers should have ready access 
to books. Yesterday a rule was adopted at the Cambridge library to 
the effect that professors should have the first claim to books. I com- 
mend the rule to this association. I hope that medical students also 
will have access to the library, and think that an arrangement can be 
made between the association and the Medical School which will be 
beneficial to both. I see in this library association an example of the 
true American method of self-reliant and independent action without 
governmental interference or help. In Massachusetts the profession 
is protected by the State Medical Society, an organization of the pro- 
fession itself. So is this library a creation of the profession for its 
own advancement. 
REMARKS OF DR. DAVID P. SMITH, OF SPRINGFIELD, VICE-PRESIDENT 
OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
I offer my warmest congratulations to the founders and managers 
of this library, and beg that the benefits of the associations be extended 32 
Remarks. 
to the whole State. I hope that branch libraries may be established 
in the principal cities, so that to some extent the members of the pro- 
fession throughout the State may be reached. A hall and reading- 
rooms like these I should regard as a medical club-house. It will 
create a unity in the profession, - a common interest. I trust that 
such will be the result, for we all need to have the elbow touched by 
comrade true. And with regard to the community, it should be im- 
pressed upon us that we are not so much its servants as its leaders. 
We must be taught to take a higher place in our own estimation. 
REMARKS OF DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE 
MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERI- 
CAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
When Dr. Chadwick informed me, a few days since, that the com- 
mittee of arrangements, during my absence from the city, had decided 
that I should make some remarks at the close of this meeting, and that 
they had printed the programme to that effect, I was inclined to pro- 
test, and I asked, " What can I say that will not be better said by the 
men who will precede me ? " 
On reflection it occurred to me that there were two subjects I could 
speak of, one of which, if alluded to at all, would not probably be 
urged as I, from my own experience, might press it upon your consid- 
eration, and the other topic I knew could be known only to a few 
individuals, now present. 
The first suggestion that I have to make is that not only the med- 
ical profession but the laity owe an immense debt of gratitude to our 
young professional associates, by whose energy and taste this conven- 
ient building has been obtained and this beautiful auditorium, with its 
adjacent rooms for study, has been prepared. 
During my professional life I have often thought upon and con- 
stantly desired to see a medical library, founded and sustained by 
physicians and by generous lay benefactors, as this has been up to the II. I. Bowditch. 
33 
present hour, and I trust will be by the same parties through all future 
time. Hereafter preventive medicine will be one of the great objects 
of interesting study ; and this branch of our profession calls loudly on 
the laity, as well as on ourselves, for active and cordial support. 
I have desired the establishment of such a library, because I felt 
sure that a comprehensive plan like this present one, capable of in- 
definite expansion, would tend to cement the union and increase the 
generous culture of the whole profession of Massachusetts, and thereby 
greatly benefit all the people therein. I know from personal expe- 
rience the obstacles which have been met by these gentlemen who have 
thus far carried forward this undertaking. I have admired the tact 
and ability with which they have overcome opposition, and I now feel 
disposed to thank them most heartily, not merely for myself, but for 
the community at large, for the profession of the present day and that 
of the far future. I can without hesitation call upon the profession 
and the laity still further to aid them, not only by gifts during life, 
but by special codicils to wills now made, or hereafter to be made, by 
any now present, or by those who, though now absent, may hereafter 
read of our doings on this occasion. 
Twice in my life have I known efforts of this kind to be made. 
Twice I have seen them fail of perfect accomplishment. It is true 
that the first effort established the journal and pamphlet collection of 
the Boston Society for Medical Observation, which now forms such a 
thriving part of this library. The second attempt was in the Suf- 
folk District Medical Society. The matter was referred to a com- 
mittee, and the effort failed wholly, and upon the ground that the 
Public Library of the city could do more for the purchase and care of 
medical works than the profession could do for itself. I deemed that 
decision a great mistake. But I see now that we needed the young 
scientific zeal of the present day to inaugurate the great work. 34 
Remarks. 
The second topic to which I shall draw your attention is the history 
of a gift which I propose to make to the library association at the 
close of this meeting. I am happy to think that it will be the first 
gift received subsequent to this inauguration. I would fain place it, 
with all its fair associations, as one of the aids to a high-toned human- 
ity, which I trust will always pervade and preside over this spot. 
You will, I feel sure, pardon a few allusions I am compelled to make 
to my private professional experience, inasmuch as I can hardly give a 
plain history of the gift without such reference. 
Some years ago, in the early part of the late civil war, a man en- 
tered my study livid and panting, evidently suffering from severe tho- 
racic disease. I saw at a glance and after he had spoken a single word, 
that he was a German gentleman, and I soon perceived that he was a 
man of ability and learning; but his dress was indicative of pov- 
erty. He was attended by a most devoted wife, who was an Amer- 
ican. I became much interested in and attached to him before his 
death, which took place within a few weeks from his first visit to me. 
Some time after his death, I was requested by his widow to take charge 
of certain valuable documents during her absence as a nurse among 
the Union soldiers, to which duty she had patriotically volunteered. 
Among these papers were the genealogical table of her husband's 
family and two Stammbuche or books of autographs, collected by 
one of his lineal ancestors, who was living between 1610 and 1626. 
I then discovered that my friend and patient was descended of a 
noble family, founded in 1386. He had become disgusted with 
the tyrannies and ceremonies and castes of Europe, and had come to 
this country as one in which he had heard, and hoped to find, that 
there was no caste, and that liberty prevailed everywhere. He 
had brought these books as precious heir-looms. Unfortunately, when 
he arrived here, slavery ruled supreme throughout the land. Fugi- H. I. Bowditch. 
35 
tive slave bills were in full operation. Even Massachusetts herself 
bowed her neck. He must have seen all this. 
Of course, his sanguine hopes were soon blasted; straitened 
means also began to press upon him. Seeking an honorable inde- 
pendence, he went into the country and became the chemist of a fac- 
tory, with a small annual salary. While in this position he fell ill, 
and consulted me. I looked over the volumes (they lie here before 
me) with great interest, and found the names of not a few men fa- 
mous in their day. But to my delight as a physician, I found an 
autograph by Fabricius Hildanus, written October 12, 1626, that is 
two hundred and fifty-two years ago, and as plainly to be read now 
as if written yesterday. It had been given to the ancestor of my 
patient. That ancestor had been a student at several of the great 
universities of Europe (Heidelberg, Jena, Strasbourg, Erfurt, Tubin- 
gen, etc.). He had also travelled in Europe, and had resided in Paris 
during a part of the brilliant epoch when Richelieu governed France. 
During these many years the youth had been able to obtain auto- 
graphs from all classes, from princes with their illuminated coats of 
arms, professors of universities, pastors of churches, great writers, 
etc., down to the boon companions of student life. In 1626 he seems 
to have visited Berne. At that time Fabricius Hildanus resided 
there, - one of the great men of our profession, called by some the 
"father of German surgery," as Par 6 is styled the father of French, 
and Hunter of English surgery. Not that I would compare Hilda- 
nus, in native power or historic fame, with either of his two great 
professional associates. John Hunter, especially, looms far above 
either of the others, as the great pioneer and prophet of all modern 
scientific thought. Nevertheless, considering the fame of Hildanus 
and his relation to Germany, his autograph became in my eyes a 
most precious relic. The motto contains a great truth : " Vivit sine 36 
Remarks. 
medico sed non sine medicina qui temperatam vivit vitam." You 
may ask how I obtained lawful possession of it. I received it from 
the widow of the scholar. I had expressed to her a great desire to 
have it in case she felt at liberty to take it from the volume. I 
promised to keep it most carefully, and finally to place it in some 
public museum. I have had it for many years safely locked up, but 
this seems to me the most fitting time and place to bring it forth per- 
manently to the light. 
On the back of the leaf, containing the autograph of Hildanus, is 
another by a professor of law, of whom all memory is now lost, if 
we may trust to the records contained in several cyclopgedias and 
biographical dictionaries, which I have consulted in our city library. 
Nevertheless, his mottoes are excellent. At the top of the page ap- 
pears the following : " Non omne quod libet, licet." And at the bot- 
tom of the same page, below the signature of the writer, are these 
words, which might be adopted as the motto of any honest student 
who may come to these quiet rooms and consult these volumes for 
scientific work : "In silentio et spe fortitudo mea," -" In silence and 
in hope is my strength." Beautiful hope ! perhaps the divinest; cer- 
tainly one of the most invigorating instincts vouchsafed to man. 
And with these words I can most fitly close. LOAN COLLECTION 
OF 
MEDICAL PORTRAITS. 38 
Loan Collection of Medical Portraits. 
Name. 
Residence. 
Birth. 
Death. 
oi 
ic 
Artist. 
Owner. 
Thomas Bulfinch 
Boston 
1694-1757 
Oil Painting 
cc 
Smibert 
Mrs T IT Swett. 
Boston. 
Cotton Tufts 
Weymouth 
1736 1815 
73 
Benjamin Greenleaf.. 
Samuel Danforth 
Boston 
1740 1827 
ll 
G. Stuart 
The MiRReR Danforth 
William Aspinwall... 
Brookline . - 
1743-1823 
ll 
70 
G. Stuart in 1814 
William ARpinwa.ll Esq 
Nathaniel Coffin 
Portland, Me 
1744-1826 
it 
66 
G. Stuart 
Mrs. George Derby... 
Boston. 
John Jeffries 
Boston 
1744-1819 
It 
70 
Greenwood 
John Jeffries Esq 
Thomas Thaxter 
Hingham 
1751 1813 
Water Color 
Lewis Le Prilette 
Roxbury 
1751 1805 
Oil Painting 
u 
Not known 
John B. Anthony Esq 
Gov. John Brooks.... 
Medford 
1752 1825 
G. Stuart 
Francis B. Brooks, Esq. •. 
Medford. 
James Thacher 
Plymouth 
1754 1844 
a 
Miss Stuart 
Mrs James T Hodge 
John Homans 
Boston 
1752-1860 
(( 
38 
Krom miniature in 1700 
Not known 
C. D. Homans, M. D 
Boston. 
John Warren 
Boston 
1753-1815 
11 
Amos Holbrook 
Milton 
1754 1842 
ic 
80 
Hayward of Boston 
Henry J. Gardner Esq. . 
Boston. 
Benjamin Waterhouse 
Cambridge 
1754-1846 
ll 
27 
Not known 
Col. Henry Ware 
Cam bridge. 
Benjamin Waterhouse 
Cambridge 
1754-1846 
Cl 
79 
Not known 
Col. Henry Ware... 
Cambridge, 
Abijah Cheever 
Saugus 
1759-1846 
ll 
70 
Cole 
D. W. Cheever M D 
John Bartlett 
Roxbury 
1760 1844 
Cl 
Stuart.... 
Mrs. Theodore D. Bush.... 
Austin Flint 
Leicester •.. 
1760-1850 
ll 
71 
(Painted in 1831.) Un- 
known 
Austin Flint, M. D 
New York. 
William Spooner 
Boston 
1760-1836 
ll 
21 
Edinburgh 
Mrs. A. E. Spooner 
Mil ton 
B. Lynde Oliver 
Salem 
1760-1835 
ll 
65 
Frothingham 
F E. Oliver M D 
Nathan Hayward 
Roxbury 
1761 1846 
ll 
79 
Harding in 1835 
William Ingalls 
Boston 
1769 1851 
It 
65 
j. Popp. 
Mrs. C. H Stedman 
Boston. 
Nathaniel Miller 
Franklin 
1770-1850 
ll 
76 
J. S. Lincoln, Prov.... 
John B. Anthony, Esq 
Providence, R. I. 
Nathan Smith 
New Haven, Conn. 
1772-1829 
ll 
55 
Prof. Morse (Inventor 
of Telegraph) 
D. P. Smith, M. D 
Springfield. 
Matthias Spaulding... 
Amherst, N.H.... 
1773-1865 
Cl 
33 
Allston, at Studio of 
Benj. West, Lond., 1802 
Edward Spaulding, M.D 
Nashua, N. H. 
Benjamin Shurtleff... 
Boston 
1774-1845 
ll 
68 
Alexander in 1843- - - - 
H. G. Shurtleff Esq 
Roxbury. 
Robert Thaxter 
Dorchester 
1777 1852 
Water Color 
75 
John Dixwell 
Boston 
1777 1834 
Oil Painting 
46 
F Alexander in 1823 
Mrs J. J Dixwell 
Jamaica Plain. 
John C. Warren 
Boston 
1778 1856 Crayon.. 
Rufus Wyman 
Cambridge 
1778 1843 Photogra ph 
James Jackson 
Boston 
1778-1867 Oil Pnint.innr 
go 
Gambadelli in 1839.... 
Peter G. Robbins 
Roxbury 
1779 1352 
James Porter 
Rutland, Vt 
1780-1854 Photograph 
70 
C. B. Porter M. D. ... 
John Green 
Worcester 
1784 186fd " 
78 
orces ter. 
George C. Shattuck.. 
Boston 
1784-1854 
Oil Painting 
13 
Stuart 
John G. Heywood, Esq 
G C Shattuck M T> 
Boston. 
Henry H. Childs 
Pittsfield 
1784-1848 
75 
M. Wight 
Elias Merwin Esq 
Boston 
John B. Brown 
Boston 
1785-1862 
ll 
46 
Chester Harding 
Walter Channing 
Boston 
1786-1876 
ci 
70 
Ames 
Boston 
Joseph H. Flint? 
Leicester 
1786-1846 
4C 
60 
Chester Harding in 1846 
Austin Flint, M. D 
New York. 
LOAN COLLECTION OF MEDICAL PORTRAITS. Loan Collection of Medical Portraits. 
39 
Edward Flint 
George Hayward 
Leicester 
Boston 
1789- 
1790- 
Oil Painting 
40 
45 
Francis Alexander 
J. S. Flint, M. D 
George Hayward, M. D 
Roxbury. 
Jamaica Plain. 
Solomon D. Townsend 
Boston 
1793-1869 
u 
51 
Francis Alexander in 
1844 
Mrs. T. D. Townsend 
Boston. 
Abel L. Pearson 
Salem 
1794-1859 
Painting... 
58 
Chas Osgood of Salem, 
in 1852 
Mr. C. L. Pearson 
Boston. 
John Homans 
Boston 
1793-1868 
ll 
68 
Wight in 1862 
John Homans, M. D 
Boston 
John Jeffries 
Boston 
1796-1876 
ll 
55 
Otis 
B. Joy Jeffries, M. D 
Boston. 
Ramuel Morrill.... 
Boston 
1796-1872 
Crayon 
60 
Miss Eliza Adams 
F. Gordon Morrill, M. D.... 
Boston. 
John P. Spooner.... 
Milton - 
1797 1878 
Photograph 
74 
J. W. Spooner, M. D 
Hingham. 
Josiah Bartlett 
Concord 
1797-1878 
Painting... 
72 
Tves of Detroit. Mich.. 
Miss Martha Bartlett 
Concord. 
Winslow Lewis 
Boston 
1799-1875 
52 
Abel Nichols. 
Mrs. Winslow Lewis 
Boston. 
Anson Hooker 
Cambridge 
1799-1869 
ii 
53 
Wm. Willard 
Mrs. Anson Hooker 
Cambridge. 
Chas F Chaplin 
Cn mb ridge.. 
1800 1857 
ii 
Mrs. C. F. Chaplin 
Cambridge. 
Horatio Adams 
Waltham 
1801-1861 
Photograph 
58 
B. F. D. Adams, M. D 
Waltham. 
Chas II Stedman. 
Boston . 
1804-1866 
u 
60 
C. E. Stedman, M. D 
Dorchester. 
Henry C. Perkins... 
Newburyport 
1804-1873 
Crayon 
60 
Carl E Meinerth 
Mrs. H. C. Perkins 
Newburyport. 
Charles Mifflin 
Boston 
1805-1875 
Photograph 
66 
Mrs. Chas. Mifflin 
Boston. 
M.S. Perry 
Boston 
1805-1859 
Painting... 
ll 
John G. Perry, M. D 
New York. 
Luther V. Bell 
Somerville 
18(6-1862 
50 
Wight 
McLean Asylum 
Somerville. 
James M. Smith 
Springfield 
1806-1853 
ll 
Hardinge of Mass 
D. P. Smith. M. D 
Springfield. 
Chas. B. Putnam.... 
Boston 
1806-1875 
It 
68 
E. T Billings 
C. P. Putnam 
Boston. 
Nath'l B. Shurtleff... 
Boston 
1810-1874 
ll 
32 
Alexander in 1842 
H. G. Shurtleff 
Roxbury. 
Nath'l B. Shurtleff... 
Boston 
1810-1874 
ll 
58 
Photograph 
H. G. Shurtleff 
Roxbury. 
Stephen Salisbury.... 
Brookline 
1812-1875 
Crayon 
60 
Mrs. J. S. Woolsey.... 
Mrs. Stephen Salisbury 
Brookline. 
Jeffries Wyman 
Cambridge 
1814-18/4 Photograph 
Boston Med. Lib'y Ass'n.... 
Samuel Parkman 
Boston 
1816-1854Crayon 
36 
Cheney in 1852 
Mrs. Samuel Parkman 
Boston. 
George Derby 
Boston «... 
1819-1874 Phntoe-ranh 
54 
Mrs. George Derby 
Boston. 
Edward H. Clarke.... 
Boston 
1820 1877 
Painting.... 
32 
Mrs. R. II. Fitz 
Boston. 
John E. Tyler 
Boston 
1820-1878 
H 
54 
Porter. 
McLean Asylum 
Somerville. 
C. E. Buckingham... 
Boston 
1822-1876 
Photograph 
48 
Mrs. C. E. Buckingham.... 
Boston. 
Nathan Hayward 
Roxbury 
1RSO-1866 
it 
35 
Francis C. Ropes 
Boston 
32 
R. W. Rowse in 1869.. . 
John C. Ropes, Esq 
Boston. 
John S. C. GBeene.... 
Boston 
1R4R-1872 ' " 
25 
Mrs. Helen Merriman.. 
Mrs. J. S. C. Greene 
Boston. 
Charles A. Cheever... 
Saugus 
1793-1852 
it 
58 
A. Conant 
D. W. Cheever, M. D 
Boston. SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 
MADE TO THE 
'Boston Stoical library association, 
ON OCTOBER I>, 1881, 
BY 
JAMES R. CHADWICK, M. D. 
LIBRARIAN. 
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 
ON 
THE DIRECTORY FOR NURSES, 
BY 
FREDERICK C. SHATTUCK, M. D. 
CHAIRMAN. SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 
MADE TO THE 
BOSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 
On October J/., 1881. 
BY 
JAMES R. CHADWICK, M. D., LIBRARIAN. 
An accurate appreciation of the near and present is often best con- 
veyed by portraying it in contrast with the remote and past. I shall, 
therefore, beg you to cast a glance down the perspective of years, few 
though they be, and see the small band of six men who met in the 
parlors of Dr. H. I. Bowditch on December 21, 1874, to discuss the 
establishment of a medical library in this city. No definite steps were 
taken at that time, but the project was kept constantly before the 
profession in private intercourse during the succeeding months until 
the inertia and even active opposition were so far overcome that a 
general call was issued to the profession to meet on August 20, 1875, 
when a large attendance was secured, a plan of organization adopted, 
and the following list of officers elected for the first year : - 4 
Sixth Annual Report. 
President Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Vice-President .... Dr. Charles E. Buckingham. 
Secretary ...... Dr. Oliver F. Wadsworth. 
Librarian Dr. James R. Chadwick. 
Treasurer .... Dr. A. Lawrence Mason. 
Dr. Frederick J. Knight, 
Dr. Edward Wigglesworth, 
Dr. William L. Richardson, 
Dr. J. Collins Warren. 
Executive Committee . 
Dr. James C. White, 
Dr. Henry P. Bowditch. 
Dr. Thomas Dwight. 
Committee on Admission . 
The changes in this list have been few. On the decease of Dr. 
Buckingham, in 1876, Dr. H. I. Bowditch was elected vice-president. 
On the resignation of Dr. Mason in 1877, Dr. T. M. Botch was elected 
treasurer. In 1880 he declined reelection and was succeeded by Dr. 
A. N. Sumner. In 1877 Dr. Warren resigned from the Executive 
Committee, his place being filled by the election of Dr. F. C. Shat- 
tuck, while Dr. C. P. Putnam was added to the committee. 
Two rooms in the first floor of No. 5 Hamilton Place were rented, 
fitted up, and opened in the autumn of 1875, under the charge of Dr. 
Edwin H. Brigham, as Assistant Librarian. 
The Society for Medical Observation was the first body which 
showed its confidence in the Association by depositing its library of 
911 volumes of periodicals in our care. Dr. William Read, of this 
city, followed this example by intrusting to us his valuable obstetrical 
library of 200 volumes, and was followed shortly after by the Society 
for Medical Improvement with a loan of its library of 474 volumes. 
Stimulated by these acts of liberality, the individual members of the 
profession, both with and without solicitation, began to shower upon 
us their literary treasures so lavishly that within two years our shelves 
were overcrowded with books, our floors littered, and several large Sixth Annual Report. 
5 
collections stored elsewhere. At the second annual meeting, held on 
October 9, 1877, I had the gratification of reporting our library as 
containing 6,466 volumes. On this date the Association was incor- 
porated under the general Act of the Commonwealth. 
In the spring of 1878 our exigency for greater accommodation for 
the library and reading-rooms had become so urgent, and the evidence 
of our usefulness in promoting the education of the profession become 
so apparent, that your Executive Committee felt warranted in making 
an appeal to the profession and the public for pecuniary aid to make 
possible the purchase of the house No. 19 Boylston Place. The re- 
sponse exceeded expectations, more than ten thousand dollars being 
collected in a very few months. The house was bought, and such 
changes made as are set forth in the report of the Building Committee 
accompanying this report. The building was formally dedicated on 
December 3, 1878, an occasion which must ever be memorable in our 
annals, owing not only to the significance of the occasion, but also to 
the brilliant address of our President, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
and to the appreciative remarks of Dr. John S. Billings, Prof. Justin 
Winsor, Dr. George H. Lyman, President Charles W. Eliot, Dr. David 
P. Smith, Dr. Calvin Ellis, and Dr. Henry I. Bowditch ; a report of 
the address and of the subsequent remarks will be found prefixed to 
this report, as will likewise a list of the loan collection of portraits 
of deceased Massachusetts physicians brought together for the occa- 
sion and hung in the hall. A number of these portraits have since 
been given to the library, examples of generosity which will, I trust, 
be largely followed. 
From this moment our status could no longer be questioned, we had 
become one of the permanent institutions of the city. The initiators 
of the enterprise found in this fact the fulfilment of their expectations 
and the reward of their labors, their supporters recognized that their 6 
Sixth Annual Report. 
faith was justified by the greater facilities for research and a more rich 
accumulation of books and journals than they had dared to anticipate, 
while the scoffers and doubters speedily perceived their error and 
sought to retrieve it by entering the ranks. The result has been a 
large accession to the list of members, so that it now includes 225 
individuals. 
Arrangements were soon made with the several medical societies of 
the city, which had previously met in Temple Place, to hold then- 
meetings in the hall which we had constructed for this purpose. The 
sums received from this source have ever since constituted a large item 
in our annual receipts. 
The additions to our library by gifts, bequests, and exchange, since 
my last printed report (second) on October 9, 1877, have been large 
and constant. While their number makes it manifestly impossible for 
me to give a list of all the individual donors, it is fitting that I should 
render public acknowledgments to our principal benefactors. In the 
years 1878 and 1879 we received from his widow the library of the late 
Dr. Charles F. Chaplin, of Cambridge ; from his son, Mr. Perkins, 
the library of the late Dr. Henry C. Perkins, of Newburyport; the 
library of the late Prof. Edward H. Clarke, of this city, by the pro- 
visions of his will; the library of the late Dr. John E. Tyler, of this 
city, from his widow; and the greater portion of the library of our 
constant friend Dr. George C. Shattuck, at the instance, and with the 
approval, of his sons Dr. George B. Shattuck and Dr. Frederick C. 
Shattuck, of this city. In 1880, from his widow, the library of the 
late Dr. Charles Pickering, of Boston ; from the Roxbury Athenaeum, 
at the instigation of Dr. Henry A. Martin, its collection of medical 
books ; from his widow, the library and surgical instruments of the 
late Dr. Adino B. Hall, of Boston ; from his daughters, the large and 
valuable library and a fine portrait in oil of the late Dr. Samuel Wy- Sixth Annual Report. 
7 
man, of Newburyport; from Dr. Algernon Coolidge, of Boston, Hebra's 
superb colored plates of skin diseases and the Nouveau dictionnaire de 
mddecine; from Dr. Edward Jarvis, of Dorchester, many valuable 
volumes. 
In the year 1878 the Association fitted up a room in the third story 
for the accommodation of the Library of the American Statistical 
Association at an annual rental of $150. This library, which is in 
charge of our Association and open to the use of its members, contains 
3,439 volumes and 12,000 pamphlets, of which 629 volumes and a large 
portion of the pamphlets relate to vital statistics and insanity. 
In 1879 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop gave to the library a most valu- 
able and interesting lot of autographs consisting of, first, a document 
of nine pages labelled " Receipts to cure various Disorders," " For my 
worthy friend Mr- Wintrop," and signed by Edward Stafford, London, 
May 6th, 1643. After giving many prescriptions and directions for 
the guidance of John Winthrop, first Governor of the Colony of 
Massachusetts Bay, in relieving the physical ailments of his subjects, 
the writer closes with the following quaint and pious bit of advice, 
which will hardly commend itself as a prudent rule for conduct in 
these degenerate days. 
" Nota bend. 
"No man can with a good conscience take a fee or a reward before 
ye partie receive benefit apparent: and then he is not to demand any 
thing but what God shall putt into the heart of the partie to give him. 
And he is not to refuse any thing that shall be so given him for it 
commes from God. 
" A man is not to neglect that partie to whom he hath once ad- 
ministered, but to visit him at least once a day, and to medle with 
no more, than he can well attend. In so doing he shall discharge a 
good conscience before God & man." 8 
Sixth Annual Report. 
The next paper is a letter from Hans Sloane, founder of the British 
Museum, giving his diagnosis of a patient's case. 
The remainder of the package consisted of twenty-seven letters ad- 
dressed to John Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, between 1651 and 
1663 by various prominent settlers in all parts of New England, de- 
tailing their symptoms or those of their relatives for which they sought 
medical advice. That these appeals met with a speedy and full re- 
sponse is made evident by one of Governor Winthrop's replies in a 
four-page autograph letter setting forth at great length and with much 
display of learning the points of diagnosis, which he admits is very 
" dubisome to do," and the treatment recommended. 
The manuscript " Receipts " of Edward Stafford have been bound 
up with a reprint of the same with Annotations by Dr. Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes originally published in the first volume of the " Proceed- 
ings of the Massachusetts Historical Society." The letters have been 
cleansed, pressed, restored, and pasted into a blank book, specially 
ordered for the purpose, in the most admirable manner by Dr. and 
Mrs. J. H. S. Fogg, of South Boston. 
This whole collection of documents is of great historical value and 
will be made the nucleus of a collection of medical autographs of past 
and present physicians, to which contributions are now solicited. 
In 1878 the library of the Gynecological Society was intrusted to 
our care. 
To Dr. Calvin Ellis, of Boston, the Asssociation is indebted for 
many large donations of books and for defraying the expense of col- 
lating and cataloguing our collections by the hands of one who is 
specially qualified for the work by many years of similar service in 
the Public Library of Boston. She has now been engaged in this 
task for about eight months. 
Drs. F. C. Shattuck and C. P. Putnam have laid us under obliga- Sixth Annual Report. 
9 
tions for the gift of a fully-equipped catalogue-case with a capacity 
of 72,000 cards - sufficiently large to meet our requirements for many 
years to come. 
In 1879 a Directory for nurses was established in the library rooms, 
the whole plan of which was intrusted entirely to a committee of two 
members of the Executive Committee, Drs. F. C. Shattuck and C. P. 
Putnam, to whose energy and wisdom the entire success of this widely 
known and appreciated department of our Association is due. The 
amount of forethought, practical sagacity, and unremitting labor 
displayed in developing the present admirable system, whereby good 
nurses are supplied to the public with the utmost celerity and a min- 
imum of trouble, merits your most cordial acknowledgment. A de- 
tailed statement of the scheme and its results by the chairman of the 
committee, Dr. F. C. Shattuck, is appended to this report. The net 
income from this source constitutes a large item in the annual receipts 
of the Association. 
OUR PRESENT CONDITION. 
Having thus traced in outline the principal features of our recent 
history, it remains for me to portray the main characteristics of our 
present condition and then to hang my sketch beside those of the other 
medical libraries of the country. 
Our library contained on October 4, 1881, the following number 
of volumes : - 10 
Sixth Annual Report. 
American periodicals 1,992 vols. 
English periodicals 1,344 " 
French periodicals 532 " 
German periodicals 532 " 
Canadian periodicals 69 " 
Other foreign periodicals 102 " 
Periodicals 4,531 vols. 
Encyclopedias 532 " 
Books 4,391 " 
Total 9,494 vols. 
Vital Statistics in the library of the Statistical Society .... 629 " 
Total in the Reference Library 10,123 vols. 
In the Duplicate Library for circulation: - 
Periodicals 837 vols. 
Books 1,429 " 
Total 2,266 vols. 
Total in the Reference Library 10,123 " 
Total in the library 12,389 vols. 
We have 5,678 pamphlets, besides a large number on Vital Sta- 
tistics in the library of the Statistical Society. 
Our Association is regularly in receipt of the following period- 
icals : - 
American journals and transactions 173 
Canadian journals and transactions 5 
Australian journals and transactions . .1 
English journals and transactions 23 
French journals and transactions 28 
German journals and transactions 36 
Other foreign journals and transactions 20 
Total 286 Sixth Annual Report. 
11 
We own a house admirably adapted to our purposes, valued at over 
$20,000, subject to a mortgage of $8,000, and a floating debt of $1,000. 
We have a hall capable of seating two hundred persons, which is 
rented by all the medical societies of the city for their meetings. We 
have a reference library of over 10,000 volumes and nearly 6,000 
pamphlets, and a circulating library of over 2,200 volumes. We have 
capacious and convenient reading-rooms well supplied with the cur- 
rent literature of the day. 
Our cataloguer reports that she has collated and catalogued all the 
journals and transactions of the library up to July 1, 1881 ; has 
classified and catalogued'all the pamphlets ; and has rearranged and 
made author cards for two thirds of the books. 
We carry on a Directory for Nurses which has supplied about nine 
hundred nurses in the past twelve months. 
We have been fortunate in having retained from the outset the 
services of my assistant librarian, Dr. E. H. Brigham, whose uniform 
courtesy and never-failing interest, combined with an extensive fa- 
miliarity with medical literature and an intimate knowledge of the re- 
sources of the library acquired by his long service, have contributed 
largely to the efficiency and success of our institution. 
We have an immense accumulation of duplicate periodicals and 
books which we are constantly drawing upon to effect exchanges with 
the other medical libraries of this country and of Europe, and are oc- 
casionally selling. 
So much for our deeds. What are our needs to fill the measure of 
our usefulness ? A considerable sum to meet the cost of long-re- 
quired changes and repairs of our building; a large sum to expend 
in binding, for the want of which fully one fourth of our library is 
exposed to much avoidable deterioration ; a large sum annually to 
complete the sets of periodicals as occasion presents ; and another Sixth Annual Report. 
12 
large sum for the purchase of new books as soon as published, a defi- 
ciency in the library which has been constantly felt by our patrons, 
but which our limited income has been inadequate to remedy. 
The measure of support and success which our library has uninter- 
ruptedly enjoyed may be better appreciated by contrasting our present 
status with that of the other libraries which now exist in this State. 
The following table presents, in two groups, those of Boston and 
those of the other towns in the Commonwealth, arranged according to 
the dates on which the several collections were first brought together; 
it shows, also, the sources from which several of the present libraries 
were formed. 
MEDICAL LIBRARIES IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
Library 
Founded. 
Medical 
Volumes. 
Medical 
Pamphlets. 
Annual 
Accessions. 
Vols. 
Current 
Jour. and. 
Trans, 
received. 
Boston Athenaeum | 
Second Social or Boston Medical Li- 
brary, 1802-1826. Vols. 1,400. 
Boston 
1807 
5,276 
- 
30 
9 
Harvard Medical School, Boston 
1819 
2,000 
- 
None. 
None. 
Public Library (Massachusetts Medical Society Library, 1781-1873). 
1852 
11,146 
- 
450 
Treadwell Library, Massachusetts General Hospital 
1857 
3,722 
- 
75 
38 
Boston Society for Medical Observa- 
tion Library, 1835-1875. 
Boston Society for Medical Improve- 
Boston Medical Li- 
brary Association ' 
nent Library, 1839-1875. 
Gynecological Society of Boston Li- 
• Boston 
1875 
10,123 
5,678 
1,000 
240 
brarv, 1839-1878. 
American Statistical Association Li- 
brary, 1839-1878. 
City Hospital, Boston 
1865 
1,000 
- 
50 
35 
Harvard University, Cambridge 
1802 
4,350 
None. 
6 
Essex South District Medical Society, Salem 
1805 
1,860 
225 
None. 
Worcester District Medical Society, Worcester 
1845 
5,000 
400 
200 
32 
Berkshire District ( Berkshire Athenaeum Librarv. 1871 1 
1879 
204 
Medical Society. ( Berkshire Medical College Library. J lictsne'd 
549 
18 
- 
Thurber Medical Association, Milford 
Springfield City Library, Springfield 
1853 
500 
None. 
10-12 
None. 
1857 
625 
- 
14 
Worcester North District Medical Society,Fitchburg 
1858 
675 
- 
< 
- Sixth Annual Report. 
13 
To this list might be added the Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Boston, 
which have in their libraries of 13,000 and 16,000 volumes respect- 
ively many relating to the scientific branches of medicine. 
With this wealth of medical literature in Boston, it might be hastily 
inferred that our library was uncalled for. The reverse was, however, 
felt in 1875 to be the case. None of the preexisting libraries were 
adequately supplied with the current literature ; the use of all was 
curtailed by restrictions which, while they were in most instances 
justified by circumstances, rendered them inadequate to meet the re- 
quirements of the medical profession. Proof of this assertion is abun- 
dantly afforded by the almost universal support that we have re- 
ceived. 
In conclusion I would merely point with pride to the rank among 
the special medical libraries of the country to which our library has 
attained in six years. It is exceeded only by the National Medical 
Library in Washington (founded 1865) with 54,000 volumes, the 
College of Physicians in Philadelphia (founded 1789) with 22,000 
volumes, the Academy of Medicine in New York (founded 1846) with 
17,000 volumes, the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia (founded 
1763) with 15,000 volumes, the New York Hospital (founded 1796) 
with 13,100 volumes. 
Our Reference Library, therefore, with 10,123 volumes, stands sixth 
in the list, although founded as late as 1875. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 
ON 
THE DIRECTORY EOR NURSES. 
BY FREDERICK C. SHATTUCK, M. D., CHAIRMAN. 
The establishment of the Medical Library in a building of its own 
afforded an opportunity for supplying a want which had been long 
felt in the community, and we are sure that a few words as to this 
want and the means which were taken to supply it cannot fail to be of 
interest. 
Until within the last two years any person to whose lot it fell to 
try to secure a competent nurse foi* a case of sudden illness was com- 
pelled to get a long list of nurses from a physician or friend, and often 
to spend hours of precious time in driving about the city before a 
nurse could be found ; and then, too frequently, the employer had to 
put up with what was to be had rather than what was desired. In 
other words, there were no means of finding out what nurses were 
disengaged at any particular moment, or of learning the real qualifica- 
tions of a nurse when the immediate and unexpected services of one 
were required. 
Encouraged by the moral and material aid of a few kind friends, 
not of the medical profession, the Medical Library Association under- 
took the task of establishing a Directory for Nurses, offered it a home 
in the Library Building, and appointed a committee of two - Drs. Directory for Nurses. 
15 
F. C. Shattuck and C. P. Putnam - with full powers to take the nec- 
essary steps. This committee was so fortunate as to enlist the inter- 
est of three public-spirited and experienced ladies,1 who have served as 
an advisory committee, so called, but to whose self-sacrificing and un- 
wearied labors a large measure of the success of the Directory is due. 
In July, 1879, the preliminary work was begun, and in the November 
following the Directory opened with the names of about sixty nurses 
on its books. 
The first step was to send a circular to a number of the physicians 
in the largest practice in and about Boston, informing them of the 
project, and asking from each of them a list of such nurses as from 
personal knowledge he could recommend. To all nurses so vouched 
for, as well as to all graduates of the training schools 2 for nurses, cir- 
culars were then sent explaining the plan and inviting them to regis- 
ter themselves. Nurses were not slow to see the benefits which would 
accrue to themselves and the public, and applications for registration 
soon began to pour in. At first a merely nominal fee of fifty cents was 
exacted for registration, but this has now been raised to three dollars 
in order to discourage any but really competent nurses from applying. 
Each applicant is required to fill out a blank form stating the name, 
residence, age, length of experience in nursing, from what training 
school, if any, he or she has a diploma, whether any particular branch 
of nursing is preferred to others, whether he or she is willing to take 
meals in the kitchen, the price per day and per week, and the names of 
three or four physicians and of a like number of families as references. 
When this blank is filled out and returned the registrar sends blanks, 
with a stamped and directed envelope inclosed, to the families and 
1 Miss M. R. Towle, Miss M. A. Wales, Miss A. P. Dixwell. 
2 The local Training Schools are those of the Massachusetts General and City Hospitals 
and of the New England Hospital for Women and Children. 16 
Directory for Nurses. 
physicians named as references. The blank to a physician inquires 
whether the doctor considers the applicant a desirable nurse, whether 
she is good-tempered, neat, capable, and mindful of directions, whether 
she has any faults, and whether she is to be recommended in any spe- 
cial class of cases. The blank to families makes similar inquiries, and 
begs for any information bearing on the character and qualifications 
of the applicant. When this set of blanks is filled and returned, the 
information contained is carefully examined by the committee, and if 
the nurse is accepted an abstract is made of the reports, and recorded 
in indexed books specially prepared for the purpose. 
Postal cards which merely require a moment to fill out are kept 
constantly on hand, and sold to nurses at cost price, so that the Direc- 
tory may be immediately notified of the taking or termination of an 
engagement, or of a change in residence, price, etc. On the first fail- 
ure of a nurse to report an engagement promptly, a warning is sent, 
and on the second failure the name of the delinquent is dropped from 
the register, to which it can be restored only on payment of a second 
registration fee. 
A card catalogue of all nurses registered is also kept so that the 
registrar can tell almost at a glance just which nurses are free at any 
given moment; nurses are also expected to keep the Directory in- 
formed as to future engagements, a point of special importance in se- 
curing attendance for ladies expecting confinement. 
But the work of the Directory does not stop here. A nurse apply- 
ing for registration is at liberty to choose her references, and will natu- 
rally refer to those families and physicians whom she thinks will re- 
port most favorably about her. But when once the nurse is registered, 
blanks specially prepared for the purpose are sent to each person who 
secures her through the Directory, as well as to the physician in charge 
of the case. The replies are all submitted to the committee, and then Directory for Nurses. 
17 
copied in abstract into the register, or filed away, according to whether 
new facts are elicited or not. All complaints made by employers are 
investigated patiently, and every care is taken that strict justice is 
done as far as possible. The Directory also undertakes to furnish wet 
nurses, and keeps a list of trustworthy women who take infants to 
board. 
Nurses are not guaranteed employment by the Directory, and are 
always at liberty to seek occupation for themselves, provided only that 
they send prompt notification of any engagement secured. The chief 
aims of the Directory are to put employers and nurses in ready com- 
munication with one another, and to afford employers reliable infor- 
mation as to the character and qualifications of one who is about to 
become an important member of the household. 
The registrar - who is also the assistant librarian - lives in the 
Library Building, which is furnished with a night bell and telephone, 
so that nurses can be readily secured at all hours of the night as well 
as of the day. The expenses of the Directory, which for printing and 
postage are naturally heavy, are met by the fees paid by those secur- 
ing nurses through its intervention. When information alone is given 
and the employer seeks out the nurse, a charge of one dollar is made 
between the hours of eight A. M. and eight P. M., of two dollars be- 
tween the hours of eight P. M. and eight A. M. But employers often 
wish the nurse laid down at their doors, as it were, and the Directory 
undertakes this duty for the further sum of one dollar. When nurses 
are sent to a distance, in response to a call by telegraph, the charge is 
somewhat increased according to the extra work incurred. Nurses 
have been sent in this way to all parts of this, and the other New 
England States. An instance may be mentioned here which well 
illustrates some of the advantages of the Directory. A physician in a 
neighboring town was called to a case of premature confinement, and 18 
Directory for Nurses. 
the nurse who had been engaged long before was, of course, out of 
reach. But there was a telephone in the house, the physician immedi- 
ately put himself in communication with the Directory, and within an 
hour a competent nurse reached the house, distant about five miles 
from Boston. For wet nurses the fee is five dollars. 
There are now 412 nurses registered, of which number 366 are 
women, 46 are men, and 75 are graduates of a reputable training 
school. Female nurses receive from 8 to 20 dollars a weekboard, 
lodging, and washing being furnished in all cases, and travelling ex- 
penses paid by the employer. Male nurses receive from 20 to 35 dol- 
lars a week. The monthly average of the number of nurses furnished 
from January to November, 1881, is 74. 
It was thought best not to advertise in the papers, and the Directory 
has relied for success solely on its merits. No difficulty whatever is ex- 
perienced in furnishing full employment to all really desirable nurses, 
the demand quite keeping pace with the supply. The committee in 
charge report that they think they can already see the influence of 
the Directory in helping to raise the standard of nursing, an influence 
which must steadily increase in force as the advantages of such a cen- 
tral bureau become more and more widely known. The Directory is 
believed to be the first of its kind ever established, and will doubtless 
lead to the formation of similar ones in other large cities. No pains 
will be spared in the future to keep our bureau at the highest possi- 
ble point of efficiency, and to adopt every improvement suggested by 
our own experience as well as that of others.