m A PILGRIMAGE: 
OR THE 
SUNSHINE and SHADOWS 
OF THE 
PHYSICIAN 
BY 
Wm. Lane Lowder, B. S., M. D. 
Typography and Presswork 
By R. H. Carothers, 
Louisville, Ky. Copyrighted, 1897, 
WM. LANE LOWDER. 
BY TO THE 
STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS 
MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 
OF 
THIS VOLUME 
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
IS PREFACE. 
The days of long prefaces are past; and it is also too- 
near the close of the century to indulge in fulsome dedi- 
cations. I shall, therefore, only trouble the reader with 
a brief synopsis of that which 1 have attempted to say. 
This little volume is the outgrowth of a series of essays, 
or papers, read at different times before the following 
Medical Societies: Casey Co., Ky., Medical Society; 
Lincoln Co , Ky., Medical Society; Tri-County, Ky., 
Medical Society; Russell Springs, Ky., Medical Society, 
and at the request of a number of the members, these 
papers have been collected, arranged and printed; and 
as a result the following pages are presented. The 
writer does not claim that this work is free from errors. 
It was not written beneath the still and quiet shadows of 
the University, nor in the cool and dusky silence of the 
College Chamber; but amid the active duties of a pro- 
fessional life. Many of its pages were written during 
the dark and silent hours of the night—hours stolen 
from sleep—hours usually allotted to the repose of body 
and mind. Consequently it is not offered as a classic PREFACE. 
to medical literature; and to avoid the poisoned darts 
of the critic, has not been the aim. 
The reader is requested, however, to observe that 
though the plan of this work is entirely that of the 
writer, he does not put it forth as altogether original in 
every respect, either in language or thought; but some- 
times worked up in his own language, and sometimes in 
that of others. Or in the language of M. Rollin, the 
Historian: “To adorn and enrich my own,” says that 
celebrated writer, “ I will be so ingenuous as to confess 
that I do not scruple, nor hesitate, to rifle wherever I 
come; and that I often do not cite the authors from 
whom I transcribe, because of the liberty I take to make 
some slight alterations.” 
The wisdom of the present is but the accumulated 
knowledge of the past—a public treasure—“wherein 
every man hath a share.” 
In the preparation of this work, it has not been the 
object of the writer, to attempt to paint the lily or adorn 
the rose, or as Lowell says: 
“ Plastering our swallow-nests on the awful Past, 
And twittering around the work of larger men 
But to present the stprn realities as they have appeared 
to him, has been the chief endeavor. Should a perusal 
of its pages in any way inspire the “youth,” sustain the 
“manhood,” or console the “ aged ” of the profession, 
this endeavor will not have been in vain. 
As we had builded, what we but deface.” 
Wm. Lane Lowder. 
Humphrey, Ky., Sept. 6th, 1897. A PILGRIMAGE: 
OR THE 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
OF THE 
PHYSICIAN. CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I.—Introduction 3 
Page. 
CHAPTER II.—Qualifications of the Physician. 
Section I.—Mental 13 
Section lE—Moral 22 
Section HE—Literary . . . 37 
Section IV.—Professional .... 47 
CHAPTER Hl.—Duties of the Physician. 
Section I.—To the Public . 60 
Section II.—To the Profession . . 68 
Section 111.—To Himself .... 77 
CHAPTER IV.—Influence of the Physician. 
Section 1 87 
Section II . 101 
CHAPTER V.—Professional Friendship ■ . . . 116 
CHAPTER Vl.—Medical Ethics 127 
CHAPTER VlE—Medical Societies 139 
CHAPTER VIII.— Pilgrimage of the Physician. 
Section I.—Youth ...... 152 
Section ll.—Manhood . . . . 165 
Section 111.—Old Age 178 CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
The career of the Physician begins with 
his determination to study medicine and 
terminates with his death; or, as is so 
beautifully portrayed by the immortal 
Gray, in that matchless poem—“The Rude 
Forefathers of the Hamlet,” when, 
u The breezy call of incense-breath ing Morn, 
The swallows twittering from the straw-built shed, 
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.” 
Then it is and not till then, that his 
labors cease and his trials are all ended. 
The morning of this life should be com- 
menced with aseptic hands and a ster- 
ilized heart, that the ambition to realize the 
ideal in a profession, “ honored in all ages 
by all men” will not be infected by skep- 
ticism or greed. To do this he must cul- 
tivate agreeable relations with physicians 
whose precept will be a lesson, and whose 
life an example, to inspire him with a lofty 4 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
conception and clear appreciation of the 
duties and responsibilities of a trust sub- 
mitted to his care, and sacred above all 
things else—a human life. In selecting 
for his life-work the profession of medicine 
the question of success will naturally be 
uppermost in the mind of the Physician. 
This, while largely affected by natural ap- 
titude, is like success in any other field of 
labor, more largely determined by the 
genius of hard work and the patience that 
has “learned to labor and to wait.” 
If in statesmanship eternal vigilance is 
the price of liberty, in medicine eternal 
toil is the price of success. Great natural 
abilities, quickness of apprehension, a re- 
tentive memory, the logic that correlates 
and systematizes, powders of invention that 
create new wholes out of seemingly incon- 
gruous particles, equip one for the race in 
our profession and would appear to make 
success assured. Yet, he who is gifted 
with a German preseverance often wrenches 
from nature her secrets and is seen climb- 
ing far up the heights, whilst genius sleeps 
below. There are many things that enter 
into the tout ensemble of the physician’s life OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
5 
and career which may make or mar, 
though not so perceptibly as his scientific 
attainments and technical knowledge or 
the lack of what is necessary in respect to 
these. 
Life has been called a pilgrimage, and 
perhaps no term could be selected more 
expressive of its uncertainty, dangers and 
hopes. It is indeed a vo}Tage through a 
region of varied aspects, beneath a check- 
ered sky of cloud and sunshine. Man is in- 
deed a pilgrim—one of a goodly company, 
as diverse in character and feeling as in 
language and complexion. Yet all unite 
in one common object, all pressing for- 
ward to one common goal—the ocean of 
eternity. As the strings of an instrument 
responding to the same touch but each 
vibrating with its own peculiar tone, pro- 
duce one harmonious melody, so all hearts 
respond to the touch of the same Divine 
Master, each with its own peculiar meas- 
ure, yet all uniting to perfect the great 
work for which they were created—the 
glory of the Creator. The life of the phy- 
sician is indeed a pilgrimage joyous to 
some, yet wearisome at times to all. 6 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, 
We mingle together in sunshine and rain,” 
in all its stages, youth, manhood and 
old age, changing and uncertain. Yet, on 
this journey, however dreary to each one, 
however desponding, there appear green 
spots as welcome as are the oases of the 
desert to the panting caravan where the 
sparkling waters and cool herbage invite 
to refreshment and repose. Here the 
weary spirit loves to. linger and renew its 
vigor for the journey onward. Here, like 
the good old Patriarch, we erect a pillar 
of rememberance in token that God hath 
dealt kindly with us. Work and worry 
are ours from the time we begin the study 
of medicine until the winter of life has 
dusted our temples with the snowflakes of 
time. 
“ So closely our whims on our miseries tread, 
That the laugh is awak’d ere the tear can he dried; 
And as fast as the rain-drop of Pity is shed, 
The goose-plumage of Folly can turn it aside.” 
Yet the clouds that are seen as we hasten 
through a fruitful experience have many a 
brilliant lining, and the shield that may OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
7 
at times obstruct our vision has both a 
silver and a golden side. 
“ But pledge me the cup—if existence would cloy, 
With hearts ever happy and heads ever wise, 
Be ours the light Grief that is sister to Joy, 
And the short brilliant Folly that flashes and dies.” 
Life’s pleasures and Joys will blend 
themselves in a very large measure with 
its griefs and sorrows, and the eagles of 
victory will perch upon our banners more 
often than the vultures of defeat. 
On the long and lonesome ride, “ when 
twilight dews are falling” and the “ even- 
ing shades appear” as a token “ of ’parting 
day,” when houses by the wayside are 
dark and silent, “ and all the air a solemn 
stillness holds,” where the gloom and soli- 
tude of the forest are deepened by the 
shadows; along roads that wind by fields 
of waving grain, from which the ripening 
odor has filled the air with all its frag- 
rance; along dusty highways beneath the 
scorching rays of a torrid sun, when the 
din of the harvester is heard in the dis- 
tance and the carol of the lark recalls to 
the memory happier days gone by; amid 
falling snowflakes, that flutter down in 8 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
soundless benediction on the dust beneath, 
when the earth is clothed in nature’s wind- 
ing sheet, and the universal chill of the 
arctic clime penetrates the heart with a 
feeling of desolation, the ability to gener- 
alize from observation and experience, or 
to awaken the intellect with conceptions 
from the masters in literature, will keep 
the mind strong and the body erect. On 
many a dreary night and prolonged after- 
noon the paucity of country thought and 
the poverty of rustic knowledge will fill 
you with the ennui of solitude, and the 
gloomy reflection of thankless labor will 
mark you with the ingratitude of humanity. 
“ The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone; the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase 
His favorite phantom : yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employment, and shall come, 
And make their bed with thee.,; 
Bleak and barren may be the prospect 
around us; the wood, the oak, the aspen 
and the willow may be leafless; and not 
a thrush may have as yet essayed to clear 
the furrowed brow of winter; but this we 
know shall pass away, give place, and be OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
9 
succeeded by the buds of spring and the 
blossoms of summer. Chill and cheerless 
may be the hope around us; but soon the 
wild flowers of joy and sunshine will spring, 
as it were, beneath our boyish tread; they 
will open in advancement, expand in ma- 
turity, and illumine our pathway with the 
richness of luxuriance. Poverty and dis- 
appointment will appear, at times, to hang 
frowning around us, and its apparition 
haunt our footsteps; but soothed and 
charmed by the fitful visits of the happy 
reflection of self-sacrificing deeds done for 
the good of suffering humanity, and 
crowned,as in a vision, with the holy wreath, 
we will wanton in a fairy land and view 
the Elysian fields of Paradise. 
But the clouds of imagination are gath- 
ering, and the picture will soon be dark; 
but never, while memory lasts, can it fade 
out of the heart. What blessings would 
be ours, if only we could hold forever that 
exaltation of the spirit, that sweet resigned 
serenity, that pure freedom from all the 
passions of nature and all the cares of life 
which come upon us amid such scenes and 10 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
surroundings as these! “Alas, and again, 
alas.” 
Even with the thought this golden mood 
begins to melt away; even with the 
thought comes our dismissal from its in- 
fluence. Nor will it avail us anything 
now to linger at the shrine. Fortunate is 
he, though in bereavment and regret, who 
parts from duty while yet her kiss is warm 
upon his lips—waiting not for the last 
farewell word, hearing not the last notes 
of the music, seeing not the last gleams of 
sunset as the light dies upon the sky. The 
labors-and the discoveries of the physician 
have been the world’s astonishment and 
delight. Men of talents and of taste, 
the most refined, have praised and hon- 
ored them; the lofty Prince in his gilded 
palace, and the lonely peasant in his 
squalid hovel have ever been grateful to 
them, and sang hyms of praise, in token 
of their appreciation, respect and admira- 
tion. The physician of the afflicted (rich 
or lowly) is the physician of mankind. He 
has had its confidences, he has known its 
weaknesses and its follies, its faults and 
its infirmities, and through all has been OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
11 
the soul of honor. No trust betrayed, no 
confidence wronged nor duty violated. It 
is no wonder that men and women (and 
children, best judges of us all) do him 
homage, and in their hearts regard him 
with an abiding and loving tenderness, 
that years cannot deaden nor time destroy 
“ To live in hearts we leave behind, 
The Physician, who for long years has 
visited suffering humanity amid storm 
and sleet, through sunshine and rain, who 
has stood at the bedside when the cry of 
the new-born broke the silence of the 
darkened chamber, who has cheered the 
lonely sufferer by his presence in the dark 
hour of sickness and gloom, who has stood 
hy loved ones, when human skill availed 
Hot and death came, is the man of all 
men, to whom the human heart goes out 
ln friendship close akin to love. The term 
love is a strong one, and I thus choose it 
purposely, and with the intent to use it in 
all its strength. Though the ideal physi- 
cian fall, at home, among kindred and 
friends, or may wander for away from his 
Is not to die.” 12 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
natal spot, and far distant may be the 
scenes of his early labors, and a foreign 
soil “piously covers his remains within 
her bosom,” mankind will always feel a 
deep and abiding thankfulness, that he 
lived and wrought, where he did, and as 
he did. 
“Oh, blest who in the battle dies, 
God will enshrine him in the skies.” 
No lofty monument nor stately column 
may tower above his sacred ashes to im- 
plore “ the passing tribute of a sigh,” yet 
his silence speaks in solemn tones of a 
heritage left to posterity, which will be 
fondly cherished, long after polished stones 
have crumbled into their primitive dust. 
There will be no need of “storied urn or 
animated bust,” his life-work will be his 
enduring monument, and his humane dis- 
coveries will be his immortal epitaph. 
“ There scatter’d oft, the earliest of the year, 
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; 
The redbreast loves to build and warble’ there, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
CHAPTER 11. 
QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PHYSICIAN—MENTAL, 
MORAL, LITERARY AND PROFESSIONAL. 
SECTION I. 
“ Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel 
of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the 
case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel 
°t the Resurrection. Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the 
wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them ; 
they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot stop 
them; madness only makes them go faster; death 
alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever- 
swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence 
at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we 
nave carried so long beneath our wrinkled fore- 
heads.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
MENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
One who presumes to practice medicine 
should possess the wisdom of Solomon, 
the patience of Job, the eloquence of David, 
the devotion of Ruth, and the faith of 
Elijah. A glance at any medical society— 
a little reflection upon the physicians of 14 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
our own acquaintance, some honest self- 
communion as to our own motives and 
ability, are more than sufficient to convince 
the most sanguine that individuals em- 
bodying all the above-mentioned virtues 
are extremely rare. 
However widely writers upon mental 
science may differ in regard to the nature 
of the mind, all agree that the energy and 
the effectiveness of all our mental proces- 
ses are largely dependent upon the char- 
acter and condition of the brain. The 
brain is the physical organ of the mind. 
Scientists teach that every thought, feel- 
ing, or act of will is accompanied by a cer- 
tain expenditure of nervous energy, and a 
consequent destruction of a certain amount 
of brain tissue. As muscular action is 
performed at the expense of muscular tis- 
sue, so mental action is performed at the 
expense of brain tissue. The rapid de- 
struction of brain substance may be in- 
ferred from the enormous quantity of 
blood which flows to the brain to supply 
material to repair it. 
This organ, which weighs an average of 
49| ounces in men and 44 ounces in women OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
15 
—or about one-fiftietli as much as the en- 
tire body—receives one-fifth of the blood 
of the entire body. 
This fact indicates the dependence of 
healthy and vigorous brain activity upon 
the quantity and nutritive quality of the 
blood supplied to the brain. It is only 
when the entire body is in vigorous health 
that there can be the most effective action 
of the mind. The brain sympathizes with 
every other organ and is strong or weak as 
they are. This is true when brain action 
is normal. There is an abnormal condi- 
tion often experienced in certain states of 
disease in which there is an unnatural ac- 
tivity of brain, even when there is great 
weakness of the other organs. Also by an 
on due exercise of the brain, which is long 
continued, it comes to appropriate more 
than its share of the blood, and the other 
organs are thereby weakened to give 
strength to the brain. But these event- 
ually react upon the brain and a diminu- 
tion of its powers results. It is, therefore, 
when the body is in perfect health that 
there can be the most healthful and vigor- 
ous action of the mind. The old maxim, 16 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“A sound mind in a sound body,” is an 
acknowledgment of the truth of this. 
Consequently, the physician who would be 
active and strong mentally must be heal- 
thy and strong physically. To be thus 
requires a strict observance of the rules 
and laws of hygiene on his part. The size 
and quality of the brain are not the same 
in all individuals. Mental power is de- 
pendent upon the size and quality of the- 
organ which it employs to manifest itself, 
as well as upon the condition of the brain 
in respect to nutriment and vigor. The 
healthful or diseased condition of the body 
will determine the amount of energy which 
the mind can put forth and the length of 
time it can sustain it; for the poet says r 
“ ?Mid pleasure or pain, in weal or in woe, 
;Tis a law of our being, we reap as we sow." 
The brain must be fresh if the mind 
shall act vigorously. A tired brain will 
serve only for feeble thinking. How shall 
we rest the brain? The only perfect rest 
is untroubled sleep. There are, however, 
changes of exercise that afford partial 
rest. Prof. Bain, of the University of OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
17 
Aberdeen, Scotland, says that memorizing 
is an exercise which makes the greatest 
demands upon the nervous energies; that 
the use of ideas in the making of new com- 
binations,—in new constructions,—de- 
mands a less degree of brain vigor, and 
that writing, drawing, and searching ref- 
erence books for information, and noting 
what is found, make the least demands 
upon the nervous power. Partial rest is 
experienced by changing from one subject 
of study to another, provided the point 
of fatigue has not been reached. After 
this point has been passed, all labor is in- 
jurious. 
A vivid imagination is a mental qual- 
ity that the physician should possess. It 
gives him influence and impresses person- 
ify, which are' essential to his success. 
Personal magnetism has for its chief in- 
tellectual attribute a vivid imagination. 
Pr. Wayland says : “ Imagination is that 
faculty by which, from materials already 
existing in the mind, we form complicated 
conceptions or mental images according 
to our own will.” 18 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
The action of the mind in gaining knowl- 
edge differs much from its action when 
communicating. It is imagination which 
gives the power thus to go to the stand- 
point of another and work from his base. 
Says Bain in “Education as a Science:” 
“ If the early training could be so directed 
as to enrich and invigorate the conceptive 
faculty [his term for imagination] a time 
would come when definite knowledge could 
be absorbed so rapidly as to dispense with 
the attempts to impart it prematurely,” 
It is the imagination that gives spring and 
vivacity to the mind. Talmage is a mas- 
ter of imaginative speech. It is this, rather 
than his grotesque extravagance, which 
reaches the popular heart. When Bismarck 
said, “The cause of Germany is to be 
won by blood and iron, and not by parli- 
amentary speeches,” it was by the heat of 
imagination that these thunderbolts of 
words were forged. 
The secret of eternal youth lies in keep- 
ing the imagination fresh and active. 
“ They are the lovely, they in whom unite 
Youth’s fleeting charms with Virtue's lovely light.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
19 
The conception of the physician should 
be kept clear, strong, alert and active. 
And in no way can we do this but by ex- 
ercising it upon the imaginative products 
of others, or in creations of our own. Sir 
Joshua Reynolds says in one of his dis- 
courses : “It is by being conversant with 
the inventions of others that we learn to 
think.” 
The enquirer after new truth stands on 
the boundary of the known and peers into 
the unknown. His senses are alert, his 
memory retentive, his reason strong to 
prove the truth or falsity of every propo- 
sition presented; but if no propositions 
are presented his reason has nothing to 
operate upon. Imagination is the great 
asker of questions for the other powers to 
answer. 
It is not easy to learn to think; nor is 
it easy to think after learning how. The 
big-brained Carlyle says: “True effort, in 
fact, as of a captive struggling to free him- 
self: that is thought.” We should teach 
by example as well as by precept. Pre- 
cepts are sometimes as worthless as a bank- 
I’upt’s unindorsed promise to pay; for, as 20 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
Spurgeon, the great English divine truly 
says: “When you see a man with a great deal 
of religion displayed in his shop-window, 
you may depend upon it, he keeps a very 
small stock of it within.” We, as physici- 
ans, should teach truth by adhering to it 
with the severest strictness. We should 
teach neatness by carefulness as regards 
our own person, work and surroundings. 
We should teach patience and amiability 
by keeping an unruffled front in the face 
of trying ordeals. The reflection forces 
itself in upon me that one who succeeds in 
all these hard tasks would be rather more 
of a saint than a “ nineteenth-century- 
doctor,” but it is a possible thing to be 
both, and we know the doctrine of a large 
and worthy body of people in regard to 
the perseverance of the saints. Permit 
me to say in this connection that it is a 
mistake for a man to be persuaded that it 
is not possible to mantain a Christian 
character in secular life. Paul made tents 
for his bread, but never failed to shine as a 
Christian; Newton mapped the stars to 
keep up his holy life; Wilberforce, in the 
heat and struggle and strife of public life, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
21 
always kept his flag floating as a child of 
God; and the Grand Old Man—Gladstone 
—never appears to finer advantage than 
when he reads the Sunday lesson in the 
little church at Hawarden. A good man 
is a glad man, and there are more doors 
open to such than to any other. 
It seemed to me a great sacrilege when I 
read that the largest steamship that was 
ever built—the “Great Eastern”—had to 
come down to be used as a common coaler 
on the sea; or for a splendid mill with its 
wonderful machinery, made for the finest 
work, the weaving of silks and satins, to 
he choked with shoddy and greasy rags, 
would be putting it to less than its proper 
use. 
The human body is the greatest machine 
that was ever created, and it should not 
he divorced from the purpose of its crea- 
tion or debased to the meanest uses: 
"A sacred burden is this life ye bear; 
Look upon it, lift it, bear it solemnly ; 
Stand up and work beneath it steadfastly; 
Falter not for sorrow, fail not for sin, 
But onward and upward till the goal you win.” 22 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
SECTION 11. 
“ So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quary-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” 
MORAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
—Wm, Cullen Bryant. 
Horace (Quintus), the Latin poet, de- 
scribes the physician in the twenty-second 
ode : ‘‘lnteger vitae scelerisque purus. ’’ 
It declares that his morals must be fit, 
brains educated, motives beyond question, 
and his common sense apparent from the 
moment the bedside is reached; and, so- 
ciety having found these qualifications 
rewards him in two ways. As a first re- 
ward, it permits him from his own medi- 
cal income, to live well and die poor; but 
his second reward is quite a different com- 
pensation, sui generis. It cannot be esti- 
mated by any unit of commercial value. 
It is a reward of faith and belief, and when 
it is bestowed, it carries with it the seal of 
the divine commission, “Heal the sick, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out 
devils. Freely ye have received, freely 
give.” 
The code of Ethics of the American Med- 
ical Association, Article I. Section 8, says ; 
“ There is no profession from the members 
of which greater purity of character and a 
higher standard of moral excellence are 
required than the medical, and to obtain 
such eminence is a duty every physician 
owes alike to his profession and to his 
patients. It is due to the latter, as with- 
out it he cannot command their respect 
and confidence, and to both because no 
scientific attainments can compensate for 
the want of correct moral principles. It 
is also incumbent upon the faculty to be 
temperate in all things, for the practice 
of physic requires the unremitting exer- 
cise of a clear and vigorous understand- 
ing; and on emergencies, for which no 
professional man should be unprepared, a 
steady hand, and an acute eye, an uncloud- 
ed head, may be essential to the well-being 
and even to the life of a fellow creature.” 
The physician is the man, into whose 
care society intrusts the most valuable 24 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
possession in existence—the lives of its 
individual members. There is nothing 
more beyond this. 
He is their custodian, the court of last 
human appeal. How essential it is, then, 
that we should ever be thoroughly pre- 
pared to discharge our professional duties. 
When the physician has done, the end has 
come; for 
“ The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, 
Be scattered around, and together be laid ; 
Andtheyoung and the old, andthelow andthehigh 
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. 
“ The hand of the kiug that the sceptre hath borne; 
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn; 
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave, 
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.” 
It is no wonder, then, that as guardian 
of its highest interest, society declares be- 
forehand that the physician shall be only 
of the best. Dr. Holmes once said, in an 
after-dinner speech: “The medical pro- 
fession is so pure, that its writers of fic- 
tion are compelled to go outside its limits 
to get material for the villians of their 
stories,” and this is but a reflection of the 
real truth, for only recently some uneasy 
genius who sought to fasten criminal pro- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
25 
pensity on the medical profession, could 
only find seven hundred who had suffered 
stautory penalty, among all the physici- 
ans who have practiced in the United 
States and Canada during the political 
history of these two countries. 
The physician should possess the “ four 
cardinal virtues,” viz.: Temperance, Pru- 
dence, Fortitude and Justice. Only the man 
who is strong in the strength of a lofty 
integrity and exalted honor is fitted for a 
profession demanding such high qualities 
and imposing such grave responsibilities 
as does that of medicine. The physician 
comes into the closest and most sacred re- 
lations of life. He sees men and women 
in their hours of weakness, sees them when 
judgment and will are overthrown by dis- 
ease, sees them when the intellect is so 
shattered and enfeebled by disease that 
its mastery is lost and ignoble passions 
rule unchecked and unrestrained, and 
1.. . . 
there is, therefore, an imperious necessity 
that he should be a man of sterling integ- 
rity and stainless purity, “chaste as un- 
sunned snow.” The most delicate honor, 
the chastity of which is such that it feels 26 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ a stain like a wound” is as necessary to 
the true physician as sunshine to the flow- 
ers of the field. 
The physician’s confessional is not 
always one where secrets are wittingly re- 
vealed, but is often one where the de- 
throned intellect or the disordered mind 
makes men and women reveal that which 
else no mortal ear had ever heard. Things 
are heard by him which the speaker would 
not have voluntarily given utterance to, 
though death were the penalty of silence. 
But not only does the physician hear what 
in health would have remained unspoken, 
for from many lips he hears voluntarily 
revealed secrets that the world should never 
know. He hears of infirmities that, if 
known, would bring his patient to infamy 
and shame, he hears that which, if re- 
vealed, would destroy the peace of families 
and wreck many lives. He holds the same 
power over his helpless patient as does 
the butcher over his innocent victim— 
“ The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
Had he thy reason would he skip and play ? 
Pleased to the last, he crops the flow’ry food, 
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.’* OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
He holds often and often a greater power 
than that of death itself, for in his hands 
is the power to consign his patient to a 
fate a thousand fold worse than physical 
death. The physician in whose mind 
dwell coarse thoughts, not only dishonors 
a noble profession and shames the tradi- 
tions and history of a glorious past, but 
he also puts snares about his own feet, 
which sooner or later will be the means of 
casting him headlong “ into a pit of de- 
struction.” 
“ O, what a tangled web we weave 
When first we practice to deceive.” 
The life of a physician who is true to the 
ethical laws of his profession and to its 
traditions is a benediction, and he who 
lives it crowns himself and those to whom 
he ministers with unfading blessings. 
“ He that has light within his own clear breast. 
May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day ; 
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, 
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun.” 
The ethical principles woven into the 
mental and moral organization of men are 
like threads of gold woven into gross fab- 28 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ric, they remain bright and untarnished 
throughout all the years, while the base 
parts grow dark and moldy in decay. Men 
whose thoughts and actions are influenced 
by sound ethical principles are men whose 
virtues every one may see. The true phy- 
sician has little patience with those who 
talk slightingly of medical ethics. He be- 
lieves in them. He believes them sound 
in theory and beneficent in results. 
The more the physician knows of medi- 
cal ethics and the more closely he adheres 
to them, the better he will be fitted for 
the higher duties of his profession. A man 
who knows nothing of the ethics of the 
profession, or knowing them, gives them 
no heed, ought to be driven from the world 
of practical medicine, for he is unworthy 
of a place in it. The physician, of all the 
learned men in the professions of secular 
life, needs something to give strength and 
vigor to the better part of his nature, for 
his studies and his experiences incline him 
to gross materialism, and his opportuni- 
ties and duties subject him to peculiar 
temptations. It was said of old ; “Where 
there are three physicians there are two or THE PHYSICIAN. 
29 
atheists.” If this is not the substance of 
truth, it is at least the shadow of truth. 
Some potent and ever present influence is, 
therefore, needed to overcome this ten- 
dency to materialism, and to arm the 
physician with strength to resist tempta- 
tion. This influence is in no small meas- 
ure supplied by the system of ethics con- 
structed by the physicians of this country, 
for that system declares principles of the 
soundest morality and purest honor. Ido 
not say that adherence to that system is 
all that is required—not that, by any 
means—but I do say, that it is a powerful 
and beneficent factor in the foundation of 
a physician’s character. 
From the time when the first of woman 
born required assistance in the extraction 
of a thorn from the foot, even until now, 
the aid of the physician has been required 
by the unfortunate. So firmly was this 
necessity and the beneficence of succor 
impressed on the popular mind that it 
early became a prevalent belief that so 
great a boon must come direct from 
heaven. And to give expression to the 
obligation, divine honors have been paid 30 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
to medical men. Does the proud skeptic 
reply, this is false? 
“ Of all the vices that conspire to blind 
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide his mind, 
What the weak head with strongest bias rules, 
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.” 
The diversity of opinions held by medi- 
cal men, and the opposing sects everywhere 
found, establish the objection that med- 
icine is uncertain and beneath the dignity 
of a science, and unworthy the confidence 
of an enlightened civilization. Yon will 
hear cavils like these. But the physician 
who has entered upon a life-long pursuit, 
should entertain the fullest faith in the 
utility and dignity of medicine. By such 
assurance only will he be inspired to pur- 
sue it with elevated devotion and persever- 
ing efficiency. 
Therefore a suggestion upon this point 
is proper in this article at this place. The 
physician claims for medicine of to-day a 
recognition among the sciences, of utility 
equal to any. The objection to medicine 
based upon the diversity of opinions held 
by physicians upon medical subjects, may 
be briefly answered by comparison, which OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
31 
is not intended to be odious. Law is said 
to be the perfection of human reason. Its 
axioms are written—its evidence duly and 
deliberatively weighed. Yet, in practice 
in the highest court in the land, in the most 
important issue that could come before 
it, the judges will be so equally divided in 
opinion, that four will differ from five, and 
so it is liable to be, all the way down to 
the lowest tribunal. And when a special 
commission is appointed to adjudicate 
upon a vital question to the State, by the 
highest authority, consisting of fifteen of 
the most eminent and disinterested men 
in the nation, seven will differ from eight. 
It still remains for publicists to give us a 
system of political economy which will be 
approved by the nations. In Divinity we 
might expect to have an illustration of har- 
mony and unanimity, especially when we 
recall the fact, that the doctrines are all 
drawn from, and are based upon the same 
authority. And furthermore, that this 
authority is described as being so plain, 
that he who runs may read, and the way- 
faring man need not err therein. What is 
the fact ? Sects innumerable exist, adher- 32 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ing with the greatest tenacity to tenets as 
opposite as Zenith from Nadir. The poet, 
Moore, in allusion to sects and differences, 
expresses himself as follows : 
“ Como, send round the wine, and leave points of 
belief 
To simpleton sages, and reasoning fools; 
This moment’s a flower too fair and brief, 
To be withered and stain’d by the dust of the 
schools. 
Your glass may be purple and mine may be blue, 
But, while they are filled from the same bright 
bowl, 
The fool who would quarrel for difference of hue, 
Deserves not the comfort they shed o’er the soul.” 
Many other illustrations of diversity of 
opinion among men upon various subjects 
might be introduced, but I deem it unneces- 
sary. Granted, then, that diversity of 
opinion does exist upon medical subjects, 
medicine is therefore not peculiar. Medi- 
cine unworthy the present civilization ! On 
the contrary, the obligations to medicino 
for benefits conferred, are greater than can 
be liquidated. Society and civilization will 
ever remain debtors to medicine. It ban- 
ishes pain. It shortens the duration of 
disease. Medicine has demonstrated the OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
invisible causes of many diseases. It has 
made it possible to elude their effects. It 
has added innumerable comforts to daily 
life. It has prolonged the duration of 
human life at least one-third. 
The infant of today has a better expec- 
tation of life than ever before. Medicine 
is foremost in useful discoveries. It util- 
izes inventions. Hygiea is one of its dei- 
ties. It is perfecting sanitary science. It 
exacts tribute from every department of 
knowledge. Every branch of science con- 
tributes to practical medicine. Hence 
there is a propriety in asserting that the 
foundation of medicine is as broad as 
human experience. The physician should 
exemplify the type of the ideal. He should 
be raised above the petty jealousies and 
out of the narrow groove of the sects. The 
vast domain of nature is his field. All in 
this territority that is excellent, all that 
is useful, is his. It will not be difficult to 
justify this high claim for medicine. We 
might appeal to the experiences of the past 
in support of our position. More than 
one lesson may be learned from even a 34 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
brief retrospect. Confining our attention 
to the progress of medicine, we are war- 
ranted in drawing the following conclu- 
sions : 
1. That sects have existed from the ear- 
liest times. 
2. That the tenets of the sects have 
been characterized by partial views. 
3. That partial views are always defec- 
tive. 
4. That defective knowledge leads to 
error. 
5. That sects are the legitimate product 
of error. 
6. Hence sects ever have been, and 
always will be transitory. 
Bryant says: 
“ Truth crushed to earth will rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But error, wounded, writhes with pain, 
And dies among her worshipers.” 
It does not militate against this position 
to reply that sects have appeared, and ex- 
ercised an influence continuously for years 
—for fifty years, it may be—or for a cen- 
tury. What is a century ? In the grand 
aggregate of the cycles, it is a mere point OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
35 
of time. It is as the passing cloud. When 
the cloud is dissipated, no vacuum remains. 
When the sect disappears, no item of use- 
ful knowledge is lost. The present age is 
too intensely practical to long foster that 
which is useless for its purposes—a fact 
which we commend to all chronic grum- 
blers. It “will not willingly let die” 
that which has a potency of life in it to 
accomplish, even in imperfect fashion, 
what is necessary to be accomplished, and 
what without this life would not be done. 
Success is the evidence of want. No 
man, or set of men, can build up a system 
or thing permanently, unless it is needed. 
“11l weeds grow apace,’’but they are speed- 
ily cut down. The shallow idea is that 
cunning is better than sagacity, that tact 
rises above talent, and genius succumbs 
to gumption. 
Accidental and temporary successes are 
mistaken for the rule, and a Mythical For- 
tune or Luck is pictured blindfold on a 
wheel. But neither the uMacrocosm ” nor 
the “Microcosm” are the creatures of 
chance, or in anywise of the “ fortuitous 
concurrence of atoms.” 36 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“For I doubt not through the ages one increasing 
ing Purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the pro- 
To him that hath shall he given—hath ca- 
pacity and the will and the pou sto of Arch- 
imedes, it shall be given to move apart of 
the world at least; and he or they who 
have none of these things fail, however 
grievous their lamentations. The social 
law is as inexorable as that of gravitation ; 
moving bodies produce the greatest changes, 
and the largest ones have the greatest at- 
tractive force. 
cess of the suns.” 
The counsel given by Longfellow in “A 
Psalm of Life” should be deeply im- 
presssed upon the mind, and indelibly en- 
graven upon the heart of the physician 
who would succeed in life’s combat. 
“ In the world’s broad field of battle, 
In the bivouac of life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
Be a hero in the strife! 
Trust no future, howe’er pleasant, 
Let the dead Past bury its dead, 
Act—act in the living Present, 
Heart within, and God o’erbead.” 
—H. W. Longfellow. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
37 
SECTION 111. 
“ Know something about everything and every- 
thing about something.”—Lord Brougham. 
LITERARY QUALIFICATIONS. 
Our Poet Physician once said: “The 
medical profession is the least learned of 
the professions, in this country at least. 
They have not the culture of the lawyers 
nor of the ministers, but they are more 
sensible.” Dr. Holmes was a happy ex- 
ample of the combination of learning and 
common sense; for his stock of good sense 
was great and unfailing, and his learning 
wide and deep. There is, indeed, no con- 
ceivable reason why a learned man may 
not be a sensible one. On the contrary, 
there is every reason for affirming that the 
more of learning a man has the more sen- 
sible a man he is, provided always that the 
foundation of common sense is strong 
enough and broad enough to sustain the 
superstructure of learning. Book knowl- 
edge cannot, it is true, supply the place 
of that faculty we call common sense; but 
learning may widen and strengthen that 
faculty, and no man, however strong or 
vigorous his common sense, is qualified to 38 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
enter the noble profession of medicine un- 
less his natural sense is enlightened by 
learning and his faculties disciplined by 
study. It matters not how much of com- 
mon sense a man may possess, there will 
always be some part of his mind in the 
shadow of ignorance unless the sunshine 
of learning is let in with such power as to 
dispel the dark shadows. Ignorance is the 
dominion of absurdity and the abode of 
superstition, unless disciplined common 
sense is strong enough to conquer absurd- 
ities or remove superstitions. 
The physicians of the middle ages were 
men of vigorous common sense, but never- 
theless, they were the most superstitious 
of mortals. The physician should by all 
means be an educated man. He should 
possess a good literary education. As a 
student, he should never be encouraged 
nor permitted to begin the study of medi- 
cine, without having first acquired good 
literary attainments. The imperious ne- 
cessity for this requirement is apparent to 
all. It has every argument in its favor, 
and none against it. All the leading medi- 
cal schools of this great country of ours OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
39 
have discerned this prerequisite to be an 
absolute and indispensable qualification, 
before allowing their students to matricu- 
late upon their rolls. In consequence there- 
of, they require of the candidate prior to 
his admission within their walls, a degree 
in arts, science or letters, or in lieu of this 
he must pass an examination, the stand- 
ard of which shall equal that indicated by 
the bachelor’s degree in arts, science or 
letters. 
“Better far pursue a frivolous trade by serious means, 
Than a sublime art frivolously.” 
There was a period in the early history 
of this country, when such an exaction as 
this, from the prospective medical student 
would have appeared impractical and un- 
warranted ; but “ 2'empora mutanfur, et vos 
mutamur in illis ” [The times are changed 
and we are changed with them.] The pub- 
lic at large demands and rightfully expects 
more than ever before, and the spirit of 
the age never asked as much. While this 
applies with peculiar force to medicine, it 
is equally true of all the other professions. 
A thorough education in the line of the 
profession of the physician is an absolute 40 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
necessity and an indispensable aid to his 
success in his daily practice. It would be 
difficult to grasp this special training with- 
out preliminary scholarship. Thorough 
and systematic learning in the line of the 
profession has a great advantage. It re- 
veals obstacles in the path of progress, 
that otherwise might be run against to the 
harm of both patient and physician. It 
affords inspiration amid dfficulties by the 
knowledge that others have borne the heat 
and burden of the day, and conquered. 
It lifts us into a higher plane of thought, 
and it relieves from much of that worry, 
worry, worry, that is grinding the life out 
of so many faithful but overly-anxious 
physicians. However, this professional 
training cannot be substituted for a gen- 
eral education. 
The physician should be a student of 
general literature and science, as well as 
that of medicine ; or, as Shakespeare says, 
in “As You Like It:” 
“And this our life exempt from public haunt 
Finds tongues in trees, hooks in running brooks, 
Sermons in stones and good in everything.” 
It is said that the lawyer and the minis- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
41 
ter qualify themselves for their work by 
study in special schools, and that in like 
manner the doctor should be specially in- 
structed in his own profession. But the 
successful lawyer builds his professional 
education on top of a regular collegiate 
course; so does the minister, who would 
keep abreast with the times. So must the 
physician add his professional training 
to a good general education, for it can by 
no means take its place. The science of 
medicine is extremely difficult to compre- 
hend, with all the ordinary aids of learn- 
ing and education; though by its posses- 
sion, much time, and a vast amount of 
labor may be saved. 
History records instances in the lives of 
men, who, in spite of defective education, 
by their native abilities and unconquera- 
ble energy, raised themselves not only to 
prominent positions during life, but to the 
highest pinnacle of professional fame. As 
an instance of this kind, there was John 
Hunter, the great English anatomist and 
surgeon. He was great because he could 
not help it, and without the ordinary aids 
of learning and education; but let not 42 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
any who may chance to read this, foolishly 
conclude that they can dispense with them 
because he did. Yon are not Hunters> 
(only one of a kind of that class of men 
ever lived) and even he suffered much 
from his deficiencies in these respects. He 
had the mortification and useless toil of 
discovering many things that had been 
found out long before, only he did not 
know it, and his works are often so obscure 
and ill-written, that it is extremely diffi- 
cult to ascertain his real meaning. In 
looking over the history of medicine we 
find that every new truth and fact dis- 
covered was the natural result of some 
other truth or fact discovered before— 
oftentimes amid darkness and obscurity, 
toil and privation,— 
“Not a truth has to art or science been given, 
But brows have ached for it, and souls toiled and 
striven. ”—Lytton. 
Every advance in medicine has thrown 
additional burdens and-responsibilities on 
the medical practitioner. The medical 
man of a half century ago was not called 
upon to make the careful and refined diag- 
nosis which modern science renders possi- OP THE PHYSICIAN. 
ble, and which modern medicine demands. 
Then no thermometer, no ophthalmascope, 
laryngoscope, stethoscope, microscope, 
sphygmograph or X-rays apparatus, de- 
manded his consideration. Yet now with 
all these the modern doctor has to work. 
In order to make a diagnosis he must spend 
more time with his patients than formerly, 
much more time in preparation than be- 
fore. 
The physician who would attain emin- 
ence among men, and distinction in his 
chosen profession, must of necessity have 
as his watchwords vigilance and activity. 
In these latter days it becomes more and 
more certain that a man must pass for 
what he really is. The physician of today 
has entered the profession at an auspicious 
period, at a time of great activity. The 
activity of this time is but the aggregate 
of the industry of individuals, and there- 
fore all who would retain a place in the 
onward movement, must of necessity exert 
their faculties to good effect, or lag behind 
and drop out of the line. 44 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ The heights by great men reached and kept, 
Were not attained hy sudden flight; 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night.” 
Theories and opinions do not now influ- 
ence the thought of men, because they are 
venerable with antiquity. Theories, which 
in time passed, swayed and controlled the 
opinions of men for successive generations, 
have not infrequently, when tested in the 
crucible of independent experiment, crum- 
bled into dust. The lesson once learned in 
the older dispensation needed no revision. 
When in accord with the edict of the Master, 
the duty which it exacted was imitation 
merely. It therefore stimulated to no 
original thought or mental activity, but 
left abundant time for leisure. Venera- 
tion for authority like that, is a trait of 
the past. In our time the new must stand 
the test of experiment and experience. 
Hence the necessity of vigilance and ac- 
tivity. Activity is the condition of ani- 
mate nature. Stagnation implies death. 
By industry only do we live. Let none 
say that these actions are too severe. Do 
not regard the primeval decree, “In the OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
45 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” 
as a curse. In the present state it is less 
a curse than a blessing. The labor of in- 
dustry is the source of man’s highest hap- 
piness. 
“ He that will not when he may, 
When he would, he shall have nay.” 
The law of industry is most beneficent. 
It pervades all nature. It is the flowing 
water that remains sweet and potable. It 
is the atmosphere stirred by the winds 
that is most salubrious. It is the metal 
in constant use that corrodes the least. It 
is a great mistake to suppose that man’s 
highest happiness consists in the enjoy- 
ment of listless ease. 
“ Must I be carried to the skies, 
On flow’ry beds of ease; 
While others fought to win the prize 
And sailed through bloody seas ?” 
The physician who would keep abreast 
of the times must be a wide, general and 
thoughtful reader. Familiarity with the 
records of the past illuminates the page 
of current history. The daily newspaper 
or the monthly magazine is as necessary 
as daily food. The medical journals should 46 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
be read, as is the secular press, after ex- 
perience—with a view of separating the 
true from the false—the oreide from the 
gold. There is a great amount of human 
nature in medical journals, and in medical 
books—cave canem! 
“ Learn well to know how much need not he 
known, 
And what that knowledge which impairs your 
sense.” 
There is vastly more in medical science 
than some believe, and possibly there is 
vastly less than some of its enthusiaotic 
votaries claim. Let it ever be our aim to 
secure the central verity. The physician 
should be a constant student, and when 
he ceases to be a student he should cease 
to practice as a physician. 
Poetry and history should interest him; 
and the natural sciences should ever claim 
a close relationship with him. All books, 
whether great or small, are but attempts 
to translate that one great book which lies 
open before humanity, the star-and-flow- 
er-writ Book of Nature. There are many 
imperfect translations and poor commen- 
taries, and thrice happy is he who can OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
47 
read the original without translation or 
commentaries. 
“ And Nature, tlie old nurse, took 
The child upon her knee, 
Saying, ‘ Here is a story-book 
Thy Father hath written for thee/ ” 
—Longfellow’s “ Tribute to Agassiz.” 
SECTION IV. 
PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS, 
“He that attends to his interior self, 
That has a heart, and keeps it—has a mind 
That hungers and supplies it, and who seeks 
A social, not a dissipated life, 
Has business.” 
Every member of the medical profession 
should strive to be an exemplar—an ideal 
doctor, viz: robust, erect, of magnificent 
form, with strong countenance, and with 
“manhood’s brow serenely high, and the 
fiery heart of youth ”—exceedingly fair to 
look upon, gentle as a lady, strong as a 
lion, true as steel, swift as the roe, vigi- 
lant as the eagle, brave as Ceasar, a Ches- 
terfield in manners, and an Apollo in the 
sciences. In morals, benevolence, purity 
and intelligence he is the noblest work of 
the Creator, the highest type of man and 48 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
human perfection, walking in the foot- 
steps of the Great Physician, of whom it 
is said, “Never man spake like this man.” 
The index of a gentleman is politeness. 
Politeness is refinement of manners, con- 
nected with a desire to please others, by 
anticipating their wishes and wants and 
studiously avoiding whatever might give 
them pain. 
“ Few to good breeding make a just pretence ; 
Good breeding is the blossom of good sense ; 
The last result of an accomplished mind, 
With outward grace, the body’s virtue joined.’* 
From the most remote period in history 
we have some account of a rude system of 
medicine. It has always been and always 
will be one of the instincts of human na- 
ture to prevent and relieve the suffering 
of their fellow creatures. Even in the 
most barbarous states of society, there 
exists a rude species of medical and sur- 
gical practice. From some references made 
incidentally to some of the writings of the 
ancients respecting the practice of medi- 
cine among the Egyptian priests, it would 
appear that it consisted in a great measure 
in the employment of the magic arts, work- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
49 
ing upon the imagination, etc. In fact it 
was our modern Christian Science lacking 
both science and Christianity, as it still 
does at the present time. These methods 
seem to have been the first steps in the art 
of medicine among the Egygtians. In the 
writings of Moses there are various allu- 
sions made to the practice of medicine 
among the Jews ; the priests in these cases 
appear to have been the medical men. 
In the other countries of the Orient, at 
these remote periods, the art of medicine 
seemed to be even in a less advanced state 
than among the Egyptians. 
After this period the barber’s pole of 
to-day constituted the sign of the phy- 
sic an and surgeon. The first charter 
granted to the incorporation of barber- 
surgeons in England was conferred by Ed- 
ward the Fourth in 1491. This absurd 
alliance continued in force for about three 
centuries, and at last came to include some 
men of eminence and abilities; even the 
great Ambrose Pare was one of the barber- 
surgeons. But as the light of civilization 
destroyed the guild of barber-surgeons, 50 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
and their more important functions 
dropped away from them, they still con- 
tinued the practice of some of the minor 
operations, such as phlebotomy, as indeed 
the barbers still do in some parts of Eu- 
rope, and it may not be out of place to 
mention that the striped pole, used even 
now as a sign of barbers, is a relic of those 
times when the barber did the bleeding as 
well as the shaving, and it had a signifi- 
cance which indicated that fact, the white 
stripe represented the bandage placed 
around the arm, the blue stripe the vein, 
the red stripe the blood, and the pole it- 
self the staff which the patient grasped in 
his hand to facilitate the flow of blood. 
So long as this deplorable state of medi- 
cine and surgery existed, it is evident that 
any one could practice; there were no pro- 
fessional qualifications, and the physician 
was little more than a physical laborer, 
ignorant, socially underrated, and in her- 
aldry utterly repudiated. Observe the 
contrast to-day, if you please. He who 
was once scoffed at and repudiated, is now 
honored, trusted, a leader in science, the OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
51 
recipient of national rewards and exalted 
honors. 
It needs no argument to prove that there 
is an imperious necessity for medical edu- 
cation and professional qualifications. 
Strong measures are required to protect 
the community from pretenders and char- 
latans. Humanity has suffered too much 
from ignorant pretenders, and it is high 
time to end their existence. There is but 
one safe course and that is for the law to 
sternly and imperatively exclude from the 
practice of medicine all except those who 
have studied in well organized colleges 
conducted by competent instructors. A 
guarantee of fitness and qualification the 
public weal requires, and this guarantee 
can only come from an Institution gov- 
erned and conducted by men of integrity 
and learning. 
The time for allowing men who have not 
given years of study to the science of 
medicine to tamper with such a delicate 
and complex organization as that of man 
has gone by. It is true that no man who 
is worthy to be a physician will enter the 
practice of the profession unless he feels 52 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
that he has qualified himself profession- 
ally by years of study, but unfortunately, 
it is also true that there are men who 
would enter it for the greed of gain, though 
they were conscious that they could not 
discern a case of dysentery from phthisis 
pulmonalis. It is for such dishonorable 
men that strict laws unrelentingly en- 
forced are required. 
Education in the science of medicine, if 
rightly conducted, gives skill and pow- 
er. The object of all practical education 
is to create power, not simply to cram the 
memory with rules and precepts. 
“ Examples may be heaped until they hide 
The rules that they were made to render plain.’7 
In no practical profession is there pow- 
er unless skill and learning are combined. 
A man may know how to bend the bow of 
Ulysses, but if he lacks the skill to do it, 
his knowledge is fruitless. A man may 
know how “ Hector of the glancing helm,” 
wielded his spear, but the knowledge with- 
out the skill would be a barren thing. A 
man may be taught the theory upon which 
a Sydenham or a Hunter diagnosed dis- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
ease, but if he never gets beyond the mere 
theory, he will do but sorry work, when 
called to the bedside of the sick and suffer- 
ing. It is the man of power, who is of 
service at the bedside. The mere theorist 
is little better than a “ Jobn-a-Dreams,” 
who is ever “a muddy mettled rascal.” 
If the power that comes from true educa- 
tion is wanting, he who assumes to enter 
upon the active practice, “will go sound- 
ing on a dim and perilous way,” more 
perilous to his patients than himself. 
The basis of power in medicine is scien- 
tific learning of principles, and skill is the 
application of that learning or knowledge 
with judgment and wisdom. The knowl- 
edge that avails is scientific knowledge, 
and it is the only kind that makes a man 
strong when strength is needed, and gives 
him power to successfully grapple with 
disease. The man who possesses such 
knowledge is seldom at fault in diagnosing 
a case and his skill is not often baffled. 
The only knowledge that avails in the 
hour of disease is a philosophic one, for, 
as Bacon justly says: “Medicine not 
founded on philosophy is a weak thing.” 54 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
A medical education is neither complete 
nor valuable unless it gives the power to 
know what to do and how to do it. Medi- 
cine is a science as well as an art, and be- 
fore there can be proficiency in the art, 
there must be a mastery of the science. 
If medicine is a science, its principles are 
laws of universal sway in all of its do- 
main. Throughout all the universe law 
reigns and over all the sciences it holds 
dominion. Every science has its funda- 
mental laws which in the field of that 
particular science are universal. Medi- 
cine is no exception to this all-pervading 
rule. The laws of health are universal and 
where laws are universal there can be no 
distinct systems or schools, although there 
may be diversity of views as to the efficacy 
of remedies and modes of treatment. 
Fundamentally, however, there can be 
only one school, since every science is, in 
its primary element, a united and indivisi- 
ble system of philosophical laws. In these 
laws and principles the man who deserves 
a place in the great profession of medicine 
must be deeply learned. The ideal phy- 
sician will be a sympathetic man, and a OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
55 
firm man. He will be a man of few words 
in the sick-room. There is a better thing 
than the great man who is always speak- 
ing; and that is the great man who only 
speaks when he has a great word to say. 
Sickness is an awful and fatal thing 
often; and in this connection I cannot 
help quoting verbatim the following lan- 
guage used by Dr. Elisha Bartlett in his 
opening lecture at the old Louisville, (Ky.) 
City Hospital in 1849. He said: “Gen- 
tlemen, sickness is in one sense a very 
solemn thing. A hospital is a place where 
only dependent and homeless people come 
to seek succor at the hands of the phy- 
sician. If you are to make physicians 
worthy of the name, suffering will always 
command your sympathy. You will be 
shown here disease in all its phases and 
the manifold suffering which it entails. 
It is expected that you will study each 
individual case; study its symptoms; study 
the practice advised ; study the patholog- 
ical changes wrought by disease in various 
organs of the body. But in all your stud- 
ies here, I beg you, study to be quiet.” 
Noble words of wisdom and counsel, al- 56 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
beit littered nearly fifty years ago. They 
may be applied with great propriety to us 
as physicians to-day in our daily practice 
at the bedside. Kindness is also a quali- 
fication that belongs to the profession of 
medicine. The physician can be kind and 
yet firm. He should ever remember the 
old though vulgar adage: “A good action 
is never thrown away, though done to a 
dog,” or in the language of the poet— 
“I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where. 
“ I breathed a song into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where. 
“Long, long afterwards in an oak 
I found the arrow still unhroke; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend.” 
Our professional attention to the needy 
and deserving poor, should never be slight- 
ed in our ambition for fame or wealth. 
The venerable Dr. Daniel Drake once said 
to a physician, who was about to enter on 
the practice of his profession : “ I have 
never seen a great and permanent prac- 
tice, the foundations of which were not 
laid in the hearts of the poor. Therefore OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
57 
cultivate the poor. If yon need another 
though a sordid reason, the poor of to-day 
are the rich of tomorrow in this country. 
The poor will be the most grateful of your 
patients. Lend a willing ear to all their 
calls.” When a man like Daniel Drake, 
whose whole life was devoted to the bene- 
fit of suffering humanity, whose heart 
and mind were always open and ready to 
give advice to the younger members of his 
cherished profession, utters words like 
these, they demand our respectful and 
thoughtful consideration, and we must 
give heed. 
Another qualification of the professional 
man is the art of talking well. This is 
more than a mere thinking world. A man 
owes it to his time to learn to talk well. 
While it is true we have two ears and but 
one mouth, and it means we must hear 
twice as much as we speak, yet that mouth 
is for use, and the man who is a good con- 
versationalist is a public benefactor—a 
tutor at large. I would not encourage the 
physician to get too near the danger line 
to which Benjamin Franklin referred when 
he said, “Do not fall in love with your 58 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
own voice,” but I would urge him to 
study to talk well. It is not an uncom- 
mon thing for a man to spend a great deal 
of time on his dress; he studies his gait 
of walking, his pose in standing and his 
style in riding. Better, far, than be “an 
animated clothes-stand,” or an actor in 
producing effects, that he study a style of 
conversation. How very few men there 
are who are able to state a fact! There 
is an art in talking well. “Some men 
scald their faces with luke-warm water,” 
—so says an old Arabian proverb; so do 
they muddle and confuse everything they 
tell. There is an embellishing and ampli- 
fication in conversation to an extent of 
exaggeration that sometimes loses a char- 
acter for truthfulness. All men cannot 
sparkle like the late James G. Blaine, or 
some others that might be named, who 
have wonderful conversational powers; but 
their lost art may be recovered to a great 
extent by attention, practice and pains- 
taking. Almost any man may attain the 
accomplishment of being a good talker, if 
he will. Individuality should be a charac- 
teristic trait or qualification of the pro- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
59 
fessional man. The physician should be 
himself. To be little mocking-birds of 
some other men is a small ambition. 
Sturdy Oliver Cromwell once sat for his 
portrait to a famous painter who cared 
more to paint a king than a man. His 
palette turned kindly to royalty. He be- 
gan to soften and beautify the picture, 
wiping out its lines and seams. Cromwell, 
who always stood up for the truth on can- 
vas as well as everywhere else, said : “ No, 
man, no; paint me as I am, wrinkles and 
all.” So let us live, telling the truth to 
ourselves and of ourselves, and to every 
other man. Unearned praise and sudden 
popularity often soon fade away; they 
are like the dew of the morning, but it is 
the work of a full lifetime to make a good 
mark. It is possible, as has already been 
shown, for a man to make so deep an in- 
dentation on the world that his grave and 
his fame will never be forgotten. 
'‘No knights of old in fete or fight 
Have ever won a name so bright 
As thou may’st win and wear; 
If like the valiant ones of old 
Thy faith he high, thy heart he bold 
To do, as well as dare.” 60 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
CHAPTER 111. 
DUTIES OF THE PHYSICIAN TO THE PUBLIC, 
THE PROFESSION AND HIMSELF. 
SECTION I. 
“In nothing do men so near approach the gods, 
as in giving health to men.”—Cicero. 
TO THE PUBLIC. 
The physician should be a sentinel on 
the watch-tower of public opinion with 
reference to all matters about which his 
superior special education and training 
make him best fitted to advise the people. 
He enjoys exceptional opportunities; and 
should use them with a wise forethought 
so that, when he has run his race, he may, 
in looking back over his career, see that 
the society in which he moved has been 
elevated and improved. OF THE PHYSICIAN, 
61 
“ Such life as his can ne’er he lost; 
It blends with unborn blood, 
And through the ceaseless flow of years 
Moves with the mighty flood.” 
Many of the noblest charities for the 
relief of suffering humanity owe their 
foundation to the influence of the physi- 
cian to whom a grateful patient gave an 
“ attentive ear.” Therefore, we may say 
that the doctor in society should be one of 
its active members, taking a prominent 
part in all its movements and interests; 
guiding, controlling, directing, molding 
opinion, correcting error, removing preju- 
dice, inspiring to right action and correct 
feeling, and establishing, by every right 
means, the good, the beautiful and the 
true. 
If it, is the duty of the minister of the 
gospel to define moral or social evils, and 
to point out the way to avoid or forsake 
them, it is equally the duty of the physi- 
cian to sound a clear note of warning, 
when, through ignorance or false econ- 
omy, the authorities of his town or city 
fail to jDrovide for the proper drainage of 
the streets and alleys, for the removal to 62 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
safe places of all garbage, for measures 
giving to its citizens an abundance of pure 
water, for properly quarantining against 
all epidemics, for adequate and proper 
ventilation in public halls and school 
buildings. When the shadow of great epi- 
demics falls upon a frightened public, or 
the wail of private sorrow comes to his 
ears from those whose loved ones have 
been suddenly snatched away, he should 
be the first to find out the causes which 
make epidemics pestilential, and even iso- 
lated cases deadly. 
No effect is the result of a single cause. 
There is no fever poison so potent, or di- 
sease germ so malignant, but it may be 
robbed of the major part of its terrors by 
attention to the already discovered rules 
of enlightened hygiene. I would not bid 
the physician in the future, 
“ When Jove 
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison 
In the sick air ” 
Be fearless and present examples of brav- 
ery and self-sacrifice to the scared popu- 
lace—for I know he will not flinch—but I 
would ask him then to enforce the lesson OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
that, as “wise nations in time of peace 
prepare for war,” so in time of health 
should individuals, families and the whole 
people so order their surroundings that 
what erstwhile were causes of disease and 
death may, thereafter, become the ser- 
vitors of heightened health and increased 
longevity. 
To thinking physicians, there are dis- 
closed evidences and greater advances in 
our science than any the world has yet 
seen. Those who are long past the merid- 
ian of life may not participate in them, 
as even Moses was not permitted more 
than a glimpse of the “Promised Land” 
—but many of us will, I fervently believe, 
have that magnificent privilege. 
The last half century is the most re- 
markable period of which history gives us 
record, but it is more than probable the 
next will wonderfully surpass it. And in 
no department is this more assured than 
in Medicine. Every considerable portion 
of the task before the physician, like that 
of the human body, is to eliminate. And 
medical science, again, like the same body, 
although it is constantly grasping for 64 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
more, does not by any means become gi- 
gantic thereby. Medical science is not 
becoming more perfect by mere accretion, 
but mainly by excision, as the statue 
comes out of the marble by skillful use of 
the chisel and mallet. It is easier to 
elaborate than to concentrate. Of all the 
professions, the medical is the most chari- 
table. “There is no profession by the 
members of which eleemosynary services 
are more liberally dispensed than the med- 
ical, but justice requires that some limits 
should be placed to the performance of 
such good offices. Poverty, professional 
brotherhood and certain public duties here- 
tofore mentioned, should always be recog- 
nized as presenting valid claims for gratu- 
itous services; but neither institutions en- 
dowed by the public or by rich individuals, 
societies for mutual benefit, for the in- 
surance of lives, or for analogous pur- 
poses, nor any profession or occupation 
can be admitted to possess such privilege. 
Nor can it be justly expected of physicians 
to furnish certificates of inability to serve 
on juries, to perform militia duty, or to 
testify to the state of health of persons. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
65 
wishing to insure their lives, obtain pen- 
sions, or the like, without a pecuniary ac- 
knowledgement. 
“ But to individuals in indigent circum- 
stances, such professional services should 
always be cheerfully and freely accorded. 
It is the duty of the physician, who is a 
frequent witness of the enormities com- 
mitted by quackery, and the injury to 
health and even the destruction of life 
caused by the use of quack medicine, to 
enlighten the public on the subjects, to 
expose the injuries sustained by the un- 
wary from the devices and pretensions of 
artful empirics and impostors. Physi- 
cians should use all the influence which 
they may possess as professors in colleges 
of pharmacy, and by exercising this op- 
tion in regard to the shops to which their 
prescriptions shall be sent, to discourage 
druggists and apothecaries from vending 
quack or secret medicines, or from being 
in any way engaged in their manufacture 
and sale.” It is not only the duty of the 
physician to prescribe medicines and meas- 
ures to relieve present disease; but it be- 66 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
comes his duty to become educators of the 
individuals he treats, and the communi- 
ties where he resides, in the great princi- 
ples of health. This is wherein medicine 
has made its greatest advance and achieved 
its grandest triumphs. He should not be 
satisfied with being called upon, but seek 
a place among those who lead, and com- 
mand advance in tones not to be misun- 
derstood. Thorough education in hygienic 
and sanitary matters and training of the 
public mind to its principles should be- 
come a distinct branch of learning and 
culture, and its teachings accepted, and 
laws and regulations enacted to enforce 
its precepts by both State and National 
governments. Sanitary education and san- 
itary reform must begin in the household. 
“ Its foundation must be laid in the hearts 
of the mothers of the country and at the 
sacred shrine of infancy. Teach mothers 
to nurse their children—not too much nor 
too often; teach them that a child can be 
starved to death by too much food, and 
that frequently the more they are fed the 
faster they are starved; teach them that 
the overdistended stomach in infancy ere- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
67 
ates a morbid appetite which cannot be 
governed in after years, and that the mis- 
erable dyspeptic and drunkard is but the 
full fruition of what might have been pre- 
vented had a proper care been exercised at 
the cradle. 
“Teach them that fresh air, sunshine, and 
pure clean water, both internally and ex- 
ternally, are a part of God’s best gifts to 
man, to be used and not wasted.” Impress 
them thus, and sanitation will be given an 
impetus that will be far reaching in its 
effects. 
Physicians who succeed in doing their 
duty are great public benefactors, and gra- 
cious men, “ and gracious men are public 
treasures and storehouses wherein every 
one hath a share.” 
The lives of such men will never attract 
the deserved adulation of the historian. 
There is something pitiable in the ignor- 
ance of the press and public regarding 
their work for suffering mankind. The 
camp, the battlefield, and the intrigues of 
state have ever charmed the poet and his- 
torian ; but in the silent watches of the 
night, when the balance of life and death 68 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
trembles in the hand of the physician, 
alike in the poverty-stricken hovel or in 
the palace of the rich, are wrought deeds 
of heroism unsung, inspired by the genius 
of these who now are dust. 
“Even in their ashes live our wonted fires.” 
We believe with Hippocrates, that “the 
highest gift the gods have conferred upon 
men is the power to heal their fellow-creat- 
ures,” and that these hands which have 
wrought so untiringly for science and hu- 
manity— 
“ A richer meed of praise shall claim 
Than all that wait on wealth or fame.” 
SECTION 11. 
TO THE PROFESSION. 
“Ere you remark another’s sin 
Bid thy own conscience look within.” 
—Gay. 
Amidst all the innumerable branches of 
knowledge which solicit the attention of 
the human intellect, there can be none of 
so much importance, religion only excep- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
69 
ted, as that which constitutes the Healing 
Art. For the soul in a diseased body, like 
the martyr in his dungeon, may retain its 
value, but has lost its usefulness. 
“The harp that once in Tara’s halls 
The soul of music shed, 
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls, 
As if that soul was fled.” 
Thus “that Sweet Singer of the Emer- 
ald Isle” expresses the thought. Such is 
the nature of man under the strong pow- 
er of sense and sympathy; influenced by 
all the elements around him, and the en- 
ergies of thought within him—wearing out 
his mortal covering—sapping the founda- 
tions of his house of clay—while the pas- 
sions pour a continual storm upon the 
wheels of life. Thus circumstanced and 
impelled forward by the combined action 
of so many agents to that ‘ ‘ bourne from 
whence no traveler returns,” it is not as- 
tonishing if man, although the soul is so 
much superior to the body, should bestow 
upon the care of the latter the principal 
portion of his labors and his life. 
“ Every individual on entering the pro- 
fession of medicine, as he becomes thereby 70 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
entitled to all its privileges and immuni- 
ties, incurs an obligation to exert his best 
abilities to maintain its dignity and hon- 
or, to exalt its standing, and to extend 
the bounds of its usefulness. He should 
therefore observe strictly such laws as are 
instituted for the government of its mem- 
bers, should avoid all contumelious and 
sarcastic remarks relative to the faculty 
as a body; and while by unwearied dili- 
gence he resorts to every honorable means 
of enriching the science, he should enter- 
tain a due respect for his seniors, who 
have by their labors brought it to the ele- 
vated condition in which he finds it.” 
It is the duty of the physician in his 
daily intercourse with his professional 
brethren to treat them with the utmost 
respect and courtesy. It matters not how 
humble or obscure may have been the 
birth or surroundings of your brother 
practitioner in early life; or what may 
have been his calling or trade, previous to 
his professional life; he has a just claim 
on your kind offerings—courtesy, favor 
and respect. Let us remember, in the 
language of an eloquent writer, that Pride OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
71 
is unstable and seldom the same, that 
she feeds upon opinion, and is fickle as her 
food. She builds her lofty structures on a 
sandy foundation—the applause of beings 
every moment liable to change. But vir- 
tue is uniform and permanent; and fixed 
upon a rock are the towers of her habita- 
tion : for she looks for approbation only 
to Him, who is the same, yesterday, to-day 
and forever. 
“ Count life by virtues ; these will last 
When life’s lame, foiled race is o’er ; 
And these, when earthly joys are past, 
Shall cheer us on a brighter shore.” 
Physicians, remember when called upon 
in consultation, to share the burdens and 
responsibilities of your fellow-physician. 
When in the hour of his utmost extremity, 
he most needs your counsel, your admoni- 
tion and kindliest advice, then it is, a 
word, a look, a gesture, or a mere sign of 
disapproval may sink your poor confiding 
victim beneath a load of obloquy, censure 
and opprobrium that time cannot efface, 
merit obliterate, nor the apologies or re- 
gret of the offender repair the injury in- 
flicted. The physician’s reputation is his 72 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
capital. Destroy his reputation and he 
becomes a bankrupt professionally. How 
beautifully is this thought presented by 
the immortal “Bard of Avon,” when in 
Othello he makes that serpentine charac- 
ter—lago (the darkest character anywhere 
found in his writings, whose very soul was 
black as night) say : 
“ Good name in man and woman, dear ray Lord, 
Is the immediate jewel of their souls: 
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something? 
nothing; 
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thous- 
ands ; 
But he that lllches from me my good name 
Eohs me of that which not enriches him 
And makes me poor indeed.” 
Then, brethren, it necessarily demands 
of us self-denial, self-control, it requires 
of us an honesty of purpose, a right in- 
tent, to be fully able at all times and un- 
der all circumstances, to render unto Caes- 
ar the things that are Caesar’s; and to 
properly and equitably mete out to our 
professional brother that professional cour- 
tesy and favor that we expect and de- 
mand of him. Better by far be honored 
for the good within us than to receive the OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
plaudits and encomiums of the world for 
unmeritorious deeds and the wealth we 
may command. 
u Shall I ask the brave soldier, who lights by my 
side 
In the cause of mankind, if onr creeds agree? 
Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried, 
If he kneel not before the same altar with me? 
From the heretic girl of my sonl shall I fly, 
To seek somewhere else a more orthodox kiss ? 
Ho! perish the hearts, and the laws that try 
Truth, valour, or love by a standard like this! ” 
The brightest star that shines out mid 
all the galaxy of glittering, glimmering 
jewels, that dazzles with its splendor and 
effulgence the heavenly cluster, that star, 
once unnamed and unknown, is now the 
peer of all that world of lights. So from 
the humblest walks in life, in the medical 
world, the brightest geniuses have sprung, 
who have secured the plaudits and good- 
will of mankind for their worth and ex- 
cellence in the profession. Let us there- 
fore have a care that we hinder not, by 
act, word or deed, one of the least of our 
number, lest we stay the dawning of the 
brightest star in the medical world in its 
course. 74 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“Who floes the best his circumstance allows, 
Does well, acts nobly, angels could do no more. 
Onr outward act indeed admits restraint; 
’Tis not in things o’er thought to domineer. 
Guard well thy thought, our thoughts are heard in 
We may not all ascend to the highest 
pinnacle in the temple of medicinal fame, 
we may not all be able to delve down deep 
to the very stratum that lines the base of 
this grand structure of principle and 
science, we may not all etch our names on 
the very summit of its towering pinnacle, 
we may not all illumine the medical world 
with the light of our genius, wisdom, ac- 
quirements, or attainments in the profes- 
sion, but we may each of us, all of us, be 
honorable, honored and held in high es- 
teem by those around and about us mid 
the humbler walks of life in the medical 
world, for our reverence for, and our ad- 
herence to, the professional duties that 
bind us together. 
heaven.” 
While our brother may not have been 
brought up in the schools and colleges of 
the learned, he may have been trained in 
one far superior for eliciting the powers 
of an original mind—that severe school of OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
75 
adversity—that perilous ordeal where the 
feeble minded perish; but the great of 
heart come out of the fires purified and 
resplendent in tenfold brightness.* They 
rebound by the very impulse and pressure 
of the blow that was designed to crush 
them, and reach their elevation in the sky- 
The misfortunes of the virtuous often turn 
to their advantage. When the world per- 
secutes them, they are generally driven 
into some illustrious career. Misfortunes 
are the road to great talents; or, at least, 
to great virtues, which are far preferable. 
The physician’s life, like a kaleidoscope, 
is set in the mirror of time subject to the 
changes of the present and the reflections 
of the past. These may come at unsea- 
sonable hours and in unexpected places. 
Thus he knows not the time nor the place 
that he may need the good opinion and 
offices of his associates. He should there- 
fore carefully cultivate his eye and hand, 
his mind and heart, in professional morals 
as a part of his medical education, that 
the call for help will not go unheeded, 
and, if necessary, his honor and integrity 76 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
defended from the conspiracy of slander 
and falsehood. 
“ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he reap ” is a divine injunction, and the 
thistles of unprofessional conduct will be 
blown by the whirlwind of resentment to 
the outermost edge of the everwidening 
circle of life, and the thorns of retaliation 
be thrust deeper when the occasion comes, 
which it is sure to do. 
While the cares and responsibilities of 
the profession rest heavily upon the phy- 
sician, there comes also a wealth of pleas- 
ure and a deep sense of gratitude in the 
discharge of its duties and obligations. 
He would, indeed, be recreant to his trust, 
and void of the higher feelings of human 
nature, within whose heart there did not 
dwell responsive chords of sympathy. To 
the true physician there is no greater 
pleasure than a consciousness of duty 
well done, and the heartfelt gratitude of 
suffering relieved of pain ; for 
“He gave to mis’ry all lie had—a tear; 
He gained from Heav’n (’twas all he wish'd) a 
friend.’" 77 
OP THE PHYSICIAN. 
SECTION 111. 
TO HIMSELF. 
"Think for thyself—one good idea, 
But known to be thine own 
Is better than a thousand gleaned 
From fields by others sown.” 
—Wilson. 
To promote health of body and tran- 
quility of mind, the sages of antiquity 
labored with the most severe and inces- 
sant toil. They studied the constitution 
of man, that they might find out the seat 
of his maladies, and the source of his mis- 
ery. The influence of the hope so feel- 
ingly expressed and deeply felt by every 
noble mind, that all diseases shall yet 
yield to the power of medicine in its per- 
fect state, ought to be abundantly sufficient 
to determine us to examine with candor 
every new discovery that is presented by 
the care and experience of man, whatever 
may be his station or condition in life. 
Great men are not always wise; and the 
very meanest is not beneath the care of a 
kind Providence, nor the influence of his 
holy spirit. 
“ For tliy kind heavenly father bends his eye, 
On the least wing that flits across the sky.’7 78 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
And if, perchance, the grand Panacea 
shall be at last found—that Moly of the 
Egytians, and Elixir of the Greeks—who 
would not deem himself more honored by 
contributing the smallest item to the great 
discovery for relieving the wretchedness 
of the human race than if he had bes- 
towed upon him the Empire of the world ? ” 
You have doubtless seen one fever rage, 
and prostrate its victim, over which the 
physician’s skill had no influence. To 
have saved that life, to you so precious, you 
would have given the universe had you 
possessed it and would have considered it 
but as dust in the balance. No doubt oth- 
ers have felt as you did. And if the period 
shall arrive, when the heart strings shall 
no more be torn, lacerated, who would not 
exult in the joyful anticipations of that 
coming day ? 
And this dream of a universal medicine, 
which has pervaded the nations of the 
earth since the days of Isis and Osiris, is 
not all a dream—for the days shall come, 
saith the Lord, when there shall be noth- 
ing to hurt, or annoy, in my holy moun- 
tain. No pain to hurt nor sickness to an- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
79 
noy. But whether disease shall be ban- 
ished from the globe in the glorious pe- 
riod of the Millenium, or the grand cath- 
olicon be discovered to remove it, the data 
do not determine. But— 
“That very law that molds a tear, 
And bids it trickle from its source, 
That law preserves the earth a sphere, 
And guides the planets in their course.” 
And the day will arrive when medical 
science and skill will have attained that 
apex of perfection, that it will be able to 
remove all the diseases of man; and leave 
not for life a single outlet, a single door 
of retreat, except old age. 
By means of sanitation and of serum- 
therapy (undoubtedly the therapy of the 
future), mankind will, at last, reach a 
point where (barring fortuitous accidents) 
the allotted span of life will be achieved, 
and the end of each human being will be 
Euthanasia. 
As a ship’s crew is controlled by the 
captain, so the brain, bone and brawn of 
each human body constitute the crew of 
the “living vessel,” and the soul is the 80 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
captain in command. Each man must see 
to the sailing of his own bark. To be sure, 
he can be a log drifting with the tide, or 
he can float like a feather in the wind; 
but the wide-awake physician, properly- 
equipped for the “life voyage,” will not 
content himself to do less than use to the 
utmost the triple compound engines— 
knowledge, opportunity and ambition. 
Many a young man, like the oyster in 
whom energy is feeble, sticks in the mud, 
dreaming—idly dreaming, desiring a fu- 
ture, but doing nothing to make it. 
“ Press on ! surmount the rocky steeps, 
Climb boldly o’er the torrent’s arch ; 
He fails alone who feebly creeps; 
He wins who dares the hero’s march.” 
It has often been said that the (4) 
great powers of the world were Europe, 
Asia, the Rothschilds and the Barings ; but 
things have changed, and it is nearer right 
to-day to say that the (4) great powers 
of the world are, the United States, Eu- 
rope, Asia and an Education. In com- 
bining the first and the last—the United 
States and an education—there is no such 
other combine in existence in the world- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
81 
John Hickman, a Congressman from 
Pennsylvania, had written in Latin on his 
ring, “The best is nothing.” And it is 
true, unless particular use is made of at- 
tainments and opportunities; but it is 
ten thousand times untrue in the lives of 
such men as S. D. Gross, D. H. Agnew, 
Austin Flint and J. Marion Sims. 
One of the Howards ordered a sun-dial 
put upon his tombstone to signify that 
life was only a shadow. 
Recalling the lives of Ephraim McDow- 
ell, Benjamin W. Dudley and Daniel Drake, 
and remembering the splendid powers of 
Wm. E. Gladstone and Phillips Brooks, 
life is much more than a shadow. 
“ Mount up the heights of wisdom, 
And crush each error low; 
Keep hack no word of knowledge 
That human hearts should know.” 
One of the most important duties of the 
physician to himself, is to see that he be 
properly remunerated for his services. It 
is a duty that he owes to himself and 
family, to secure his pay for services ren- 
dered. He should early impress on the 82 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
minds of his patients the old maxim, that 
“the laborer is worthy of his hire,” and 
he should not fail to ever cause them to 
keep the same verdant in their memories, 
by occasional allusions to its importance. 
By patients paying their physicians well 
for his time, labor and skill, they enable 
him to be a better man—a more skillful 
and scientific practitioner. It enables him 
to support his family, keep neat and clean, 
to buy new instruments, new books, med- 
ical journals, attend the medical societies, 
to visit the great hospitals occasion- 
ally, and to sit at the feet of the eminent 
surgeons and masters in the profession— 
as did the disciples of old at the feet of 
Gamaliel. 
Every physician should, besides being a 
good physician, be a good business man. 
He should be as thorough in business mat- 
ters as in scientific ones. The ideal phy- 
sician can’t afford to have any sympathy 
with all the sentimental talk about char- 
ity ; after he has rendered an efficient 
service, he is justly entitled to proper re- 
muneration, and it is then not a subject 
for parley or discussion—there is no need OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
for any talk, sentimental or otherwise. 
After fees have once been charged they 
should be collected and not be allowed to 
remain on the books indefinitely. There 
are two most excellent reasons for this. 
Reason number one:—Just as long as a 
patient is owing his doctor he is the doc- 
tor’s enemy. Reason number two ;—lt is 
unprofessional, and the physician so do- 
ing is guilty of unprofessional conduct 
toward his fellow practitioners. Exempli 
gratia, suppose that a physician is finan- 
cially able (possibly one in a score is so cir- 
cumstanced) to carry his patients—their 
accounts from year to year, and not suffer 
for the necessaries of life; there are other 
physicians in his community, possibly, 
who are not so fortunate, and consequent- 
ly would be of necessity compelled to suf- 
fer for “the staff of life.” 
To the physician there is nothing more 
deplorable after a life of earnest work and 
activity—looking upon the rays of life’s 
descending sun—than to realize that he 
must of need work day and night for his 
own and the subsistence of a dependent 
family ; therefore look to it, fellow phy- 84 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
sicians, that you provide against the day 
when you will most need the reward of 
labor prudently conserved, and that enough 
is left for enjoyment of reasonable rest 
and recreation. 
No other class of men do business in 
that loose, careless, unconcerned way as 
does the physician. It is not business. 
“Nothing succeeds like success” is a 
motto that I read somewhere not long 
since. I have heard also, that one of the 
largest banking houses in the world has 
made it a cardinal rule never to have an)T- 
thing to do with an unsuccessful man. 
Shakespeare, in “Hamlet” makes Polo- 
mius say: 
“Neither a borrower nor a lender he ; 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 
This above all: to thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou caust not then be false to any man.” 
Perchance some of you have looked 
down from the gallery upon the Board of 
Trade during an exciting session, and 
perhaps imagined it a bewildering illus- 
tration of “ chaos come again.” The OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
85 
initiates know better. That man scream- 
ing at the top of his voice, and gesticula- 
ting so frantically, is not a lunatic, sur- 
rounded by fellow incurables. “ There is 
a method in his madness,” as the ware- 
houses, the banks and clearing house— 
sedate and cool-blooded parties enough, 
in their way—will tell yon. Superficial 
observers think much in the same way of 
the larger floor upon which men compete 
for mere existence, for comfort, for wealth, 
position, fame and power. To them it is 
all a muddle,” in which wrong is as likely 
to triumph as right; and chance and mo- 
mentary achievements are mistaken for 
the rule. But neither Fortune nor Luck 
are the creatures of chance. 
The physician owes it as a duty to him- 
self to occasionally take a much needed 
vacation. His social life is so circum- 
scribed by the exacting duties of his pro- 
fession, and the unnecessary demands 
made upon his time and talents, that he 
practically lives a life of seclusion, al- 
though in constant touch with the great 
stream of humanity in the outside world. 
The days, weeks, months and years of 86 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
the busy physician flit by as the mist of 
the morning, and the noontime of life is 
upon us ere we realize its magic flight. A 
little leisure, a little rest from the toil 
and care and worry of professional life is 
a good thing, and should not be deferred 
until gray hairs admonish us that the 
autumn of life is at hand. Then 
“ Go forth unto the open shy, and list 
To nature’s teachings, while from all around 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— 
Comes a still voice : 
Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course. Nor yet in the cold ground, 
Where thy pale form is laid with many tears, 
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee shall claim 
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.” 
—Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
87 
CHAPTER IV. 
INFLUENCE OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
SECTION I. 
“ ’Tis not so much to press and plead, 
At every turn a friend and foe, 
Because our creed they will not know ; 
The rather let us well bestow 
Our precepts iu the life we’ lead.” 
The influence of the physician is power- 
ful and widespread. There is not in all 
this broad land of ours, a household or a 
home in which the physician is not the 
most important visitor that crosses its 
threshold. He stands “ upon the confines 
of existence, welcoming the new-comer and 
bidding farewell to the goer-away.” Un- 
der God the issues of life and death are in 
his hands; disease and misery, or health 
and strength, often depend upon his knowl- 88 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
edge, skill and judgment. An error on his 
part may cost life, or, if not productive 
of such serious consequences, may wreck 
the health of the patient, or send him out 
into the world infirm, lame or deformed. 
The Hon. Thos. F. Bayard, in an address 
to a medical class, not long since, made 
the following remarks: “ I never knew a 
really great physician who was not great- 
er as a man—l mean whose greatness did 
not rest upon his personal and moral ba- 
sis, which elevated and strengthened his 
professional life, infused itself into the 
community in which he lived, and was, in 
fact, the underlying and pervading cause 
of his influence and consequent success in 
his profession. It has been my personal 
fortune to know such a man. It has been 
my privilege and delight to accompany 
him in visits where his only medicines 
were the personal presence and conversa- 
tion of the man himself. He had shared 
and lessened their anxieties; counseled 
the wayward; had lead the sick back to 
health; cheered the weak-hearted ; had 
rejoiced with them that did rejoice and 
wept with them that wept. And I have OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
89 
seen such a man so surrounded by an at- 
mosphere of love and trust, holding as 
it were the heartstrings of a family in his 
hands, their guide, philosopher and friend, 
and then I realized what a moral force in 
society the profession, properly compre- 
hended and properly followed, was capa- 
ble of exerting, and how relatively small 
a part of its usefulness was the adminis- 
tration of medicine.” 
The physician should be a man of edu- 
cation, of polished and refined manners, to 
the fullest extent. His profession should 
make him such, and the practice of that 
profession should make him a man of 
broad ideas. He is like the man who 
views the landscape from a broad emin- 
ence. 
The mainsprings of human conduct are 
not concealed from his view. He becomes 
familiar with the interplay of those forces 
that control human actions. He, there- 
fore, should be a man not liable to be 
moved by prejudice or bigotry, two most 
baneful characteristics of a narrow mind. 
He should be keenly alive to the advance- 
ment of science. From his peculiar rela- 90 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
tions to people, he must be a man who 
wields au influence, the importance and 
force of which will be largely proportional 
to his breadth of information and his tact. 
Crises will arise in every community when 
society will turn in its helplessness to 
him who knows. Let the physician be 
ever ready to respond. Let the call find 
him qualified with that knowledge which 
will give him power. Through his influ- 
ence the physician becomes a leader in so- 
ciety, molding its opinions, removing its 
prejudice, directing its energies toward 
those human ends that will elevate and 
advance his fellow-beings. 
“ The web of human life is wove 
Not Avith a single strand, 
But 6Arery grand and nohle man 
Holds one Avithin Ins hand.” 
The word Influence is the most incom- 
prehensible, the most vast and far reach- 
ing of all words. We seldom use it in 
any but a literal sense, but in every de- 
gree of its true meaning there is the shad- 
ow of infinity. Philosophers tell us, not 
in jest, but in the profoundest earnest, 
that every footfall on the pavement jars OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
91 
the sun, and every pebble dropped into 
the ocean moves the continents with vibra- 
tions that never cease. The hand gives 
motion to a pendulum, and by that act 
an effect has been produced which shall 
endure through eternity. The vibration 
of the pendulum as a mass ceases, but 
only because its motion has been trans- 
formed from mass motion to molecular 
motion. Had it been suspended in a vacu- 
um and been made to swing without fric- 
tion at the point of suspension, it would 
have vibrated on forever, but the friction, 
which is inevitable, and the resistance of 
the air gradually bring it to rest, and we 
say the motion has ceased, but this is not 
true. The motion has only become in- 
visible. A moment ago the pendulum 
was swinging, but now infinitely small 
atoms are swinging in its stead, and the 
aggregate motion of all those atoms is 
just ecpial to the motion of the pendulum 
at first. 
These waves of atomic motion expand 
and radiate from points of origin, extend- 
ing on, and on, and on, past planets and 
stars, beating and dashing against their 92 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
brazen bosoms as the waves of the ocean 
beat the rocky shore. This is not the 
language of fancy, it is the veritable phil- 
osophy, the demonstrated facts of science. 
The mind gave birth to motion com- 
municated along the nerve of the arm to 
the pendulum, and that motion has gone 
beyond its recall, on its eternal mission 
among the stars. What a solemn thought! 
“ Man is the parent of the infinite!” And 
yet this illustration but faintly shadows 
the awfulness of human influence. If a 
simple motion of the hand is fraught with 
eternal consequences, what shall we say 
of the influences of the mind ? They shall 
live as long as the throne of the Infinite; 
ah, that the mind of the physician could 
be impressed with the awful truth, that 
an influence in its very nature is eternal. 
Not a word or thought or deed of all the 
myriad dead but lives to-day in the char- 
acter of our words and deeds and thoughts. 
We are the outgrowth of all the past, the 
grand resultant of all the world’s past 
forces. Only the Deity can measure the 
influence of a human thought. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
“ No stream from its source 
Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, 
But what some land is gladdened. No star ever rose 
And set without influence somewhere. Who knows 
What earth needs from earth’s loAvest creature ? No 
life 
Can he pure in its purpose and strong in its strife, 
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.” 
The physician knows that pathology is 
the ever-shadowing Nemesis of histology; 
that disease, health, pleasure and pain go 
hand in hand ; that it is but a step across 
the border line from sanity to insanity; 
that virtue and vice, law and anarchy, 
poverty and riches, touch elbows ; that rust 
and decay go with inactivity, while growth 
and increase follow activity. Above all, 
he knows that environment is one of the 
most powerful of influences, and often the 
only one strong enough to overcome hered- 
itary tendences. All these and many 
other contending forces in the daily equa- 
tion lead the physician away from “Al- 
truria,” into the vision of society, the 
field of post-graduate activity. There is 
nothing more evident than the law of com- 
pulsion. Everything is obliged to bend to 
it. Summer’s heat and winter’s storm 94 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
are compulsion. Law, society, customs 
and religion are compulsion. Commerce, 
so fittingly called “the hymn of prosper- 
ity,” the dirge of famine, vespers of the 
dark ages, is compulsion. There is no 
place where the individual is let alone. 
Everywhere influences of contending for- 
ces limit physiological as well as social 
life. 
The beautiful scenery of our country— 
the landscape of cultivated farms, villa- 
ges, factories, rivers and railroads stands 
for the collective compulsory labor of so- 
ciety. It represents community, its ad- 
vancement represents civilization, and 
while it is all compulsion it is still thus 
beautiful because of individual influences 
directing its developement. The poet, 
Keats, says; 
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever ; 
Its loveliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness.” 
Let us see what place the physician has 
in this developement, for he is one of three 
principal, positive, forming influences in 
society. He shares alike in this respon- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
95 
sibility with the press and the pulpit. 
ti The mantle of prophecy no longer de- 
scends on a successor, and the divine pur- 
pose is not revealed to mortals.” There 
exists, however, in every age, masterful 
classes of men, whose environments per- 
mit them to shape the destinies of society 
and direct its quiet, but powerful forces. 
In this silent, quiet work of directing for- 
ces, the two things necessary are always 
at hand in the physician’s daily life, viz.: 
education and opportunity. He finds out 
early, in liis daily rounds, as one lately 
said, “It is not station, nor riches, nor 
power, but knowledge and wisdom and 
personal worth, that most really and sure- 
ly command the final homage of men.” 
By no author has this ever been so beauti- 
fully portrayed in story as by lan Mac- 
laren, a physician of the old school, in 
“ Stories of the Bonny Briar Bush.” The 
germinative influence of Dr. Mac Lure in 
“ Dromtochty ” has been a* revelation to 
the reading world, who have all too little 
appreciated the influence of the physician 
in society. Lan Maclaren, in answer to 
a direct question at a banquet in his hon- 96 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
or at Glasgow, stated that he had known 
four practitioners of medicine in Scotland, 
from any one of whom he could reproduce 
the character of Dr. Mac Lure, while doubt- 
less we ourselves have known one or two 
physicians, from whom the same charac- 
ter could be drawn. Such men lead the 
inner life of the community with them. 
The inspirations of their daily life to the 
boys and girls of their clientage and their 
words of advice are among the forming or 
incentive influences by which our schools 
and colleges are filled with students, and 
our country with useful men and women. 
Dr, Chauncey Depew says, that the physi- 
cian, in his daily rounds, preaches, from a 
perambulating pulpit, lessons, principles, 
maxims, doctrines, proverbs, which in time 
form a large part of the ethics and virtue 
of his constituency. 
“ Words of love from hearts sincere, 
In this world of care and woe, 
Are like springs in deserts drear, 
Giving life where’er they flow.” 
This quiet, every day creative influence 
of the physician is a great factor in the 
developement of great intellectual move- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
97 
ments. Broad ideas are the products of 
isolated germination, planted among the 
few who are able to grasp .their meaning. 
They grow slowly, taking hold only here 
and there at first. These movements may 
be educational or social or revolutionary; 
but, whatever they are, they are discussed 
over and over again with the family phy- 
sician, who tarries to talk awhile after his 
professional call is ended. He observes 
the birth of a broad idea in this way, and 
disseminates it in his daily rounds among 
those whose minds are fit to seize it. Af- 
ter a time these ideas group, and the 
groups mass, then the public announces a 
common cause under some leader who is 
competent to organize it and direct its 
purpose. In this way grand schemes or- 
iginate and complex influences are direct- 
ed to harmonious execution. This is the 
influence of contact, of line on line, and 
precept on precept, of day by day, and 
year by year, close personal associa- 
tions. 
It is a part of the physician’s life and 
of his real field of usefulness, but is by no 98 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
means the whole of it, for his influence 
extends to more extensive fields. 
Literature, poetry, fiction, history, the 
sciences and discovery have all drawn dis- 
tinguished followers from the ranks of 
medicine. Apollo was the god of poetry, 
music, science and medicine. The Greeks, 
who were the closest observers of associa- 
ted virtues, brought these attributes to- 
gether as their ideal of what ought to be 
found in the character of a Greek physi- 
cian. Poetry and music; the charm of 
strophe, and the harmony of sound, to 
mellow the daily toil of the medical sani- 
tarian, who so often is compelled to make 
bricks without straw. What an exponent 
of poetry and medicine our own Dr. Oliv- 
er Wendell Holmes has been. In his “ Poet 
at the Breakfast Table ” he has embalmed, 
the best part of his poetical nature. Ver- 
satile, stirring, witty, tender poems, that 
live with us and become a part of us, are 
“Old Ironsides,” “The Wonderful One- 
horse Shay,” and “The Chambered Nau- 
tilus.” 
Where can there be found in the Eng- 
lish language a more humorous, witty and OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
99 
ludicrous poem, than “ Rip Van Winkle, 
M. D.”—An after-dinner prescription writ- 
ten by Dr. Holmes and taken by the Mass- 
achusetts Medical Society, at their meet- 
ing held May 25, 1870. I cannot refrain 
from quoting verbatim, a portion of canto 
first. 
Months grew to years; at last he counted three, 
And Rip Van Winkle found himself M. D. 
Illustrious title ! in a golden frame 
He set the sheepskin with his Latin name, 
Ripum Van Winklum, Quem we—scimus—know 
Idoneum esse—to do so and so. 
He hired an office; soon its walls displayed 
His new diploma and his stock in trade, 
A mighty arsenal to subdue disease 
Of various names, whereof I mention these: 
Lancets and bougies, great and little squirt, 
Rhubarb and Senna, Snakeroot, Thoroughwort, 
Ant. Tart., Vin. Colch., Pil. Coclme, and Black 
Drop, 
Tinctures of Opium, Gentian, Henbane, Hop, 
Puly. Ipecacuanha, which for lack 
Of breath to utter men call Ipecac, 
Camphor and Kino, Turpentine, Tolu, 
Cubebs, “ Copeevy,” Vitriol—white and blue, 
Fennel and Flaxseed, Slippery Elm and Squill, 
And roots of Sessafras and “ Sarsaf’rill,” 
Brandy—for colics, Pinkroot—death on worms, 
Valerian, calmer of hysterical squirms, 
Musk, Asafoitida, the resinous gum 100 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
Named from its odor—well, it does smell— 
Jalap, that works not wisely but too well, 
Ten pounds of Bark and six of Calomel. 
For outward griefs he had an ample store, 
Some twenty jars and gallipots, or more; 
Ceraium simplex—housewives oft compile 
The same at home, and call it “ wax and ile,” 
Unguentnm Resinosum—change its name— 
The “ drawing salve” of many an ancient dame ; 
Argenii Nilras, also Spanish flies, 
Whose virtue makes the water bladders rise— 
(Some say that, spread upon a toper’s skin, 
They draw no water, only rum or gin)— 
Leeches, sweet vermin ! don’t they charm the sick ? 
And Sticking-plaster—how it hates to stick! 
Emplastrum Ferri—ditto Picis, Pitch, 
Washes and Powders, Brimstone for the—which, 
Scabies or Psora is thy chosen name 
Since Hahnemann’s goosequill scratched thee into 
fame, 
Proved thee the source of every nameless ill, 
Whose sole specific is a moonshine pill, 
Till saucy Science, with a quiet grin, 
Held up the Acarus, crawling on a pin ? 
Mountains have labored and have brought forth 
mice: 
The Dutchman’s story hatched a brood of twice. 
Pve well nigh said them—words unfitting quite 
For these fair precincts and for ears polite. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
101 
There are others, too, who once took the 
oath of Hippocrates, whose influence and 
poetry lives after thenj. So long as books 
are written “Endymion” and “Lamia” 
will be read, and Dr. John Keats will live 
in the memory of men, while “Bitter 
Sweet”, and its author, Dr. J, G. Holland, 
will be studied and cherished by women 
whose hearts are wounded and feet weary. 
The poetry of Marchelli, Haller, Gold- 
smith and Erasmus Darwin, is a part of 
the standard literature of the tongue in 
which they wrote. Mathematics and As- 
tronomy, Surveying and Navigation, have 
drawn eminent disciples from the ranks 
of medicine; and the name of Joseph Ray, 
M. D., and his series of mathematical text- 
books, are as household words in every 
state and county in the Union. The first 
grammar of the English language placed 
in our puerile hands, was written by T. S. 
Pinneo, A. M., M. D. In many other de- 
partments of life, medical men have ex- 
tended lasting influences. 
SECTION 11. 
A portion of our boyhood’s literature 
in our early school-days, was the arctic 102 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
expeditions of Dr, Kane and Dr. Franklin, 
and we are thrilled no less again, in man- 
hood, by the North-pole voyages of Dr. 
Nansen. 
From the earliest period in our nation’s 
history, our profession has always stood 
firm in the defense of our country’s cause; 
and the names of Drs. Joseph Warren, 
Hugh Mercer and Benjamin Rush, are in- 
delibly written in the annals of the Revo- 
lution ; and their deeds recorded show 
that they were not idle spectators of the 
fray. And the Juggernaut of war never 
stained its wheels with nobler blood, nor 
left grander spirits in ruins, than those 
among our noble surgeons, during our last 
sad internecine conflict. 
“A common citizenship holds sacred in 
the urn of memory the exalted manhood 
and imperishable fame of an ancestry who 
command their own tribute of affection 
and the admiration of the world.” These 
noble men responded to the summons of 
Providence for a glorious work, and, like 
the chosen of old, many closed their work 
with the blood of martyrdom. Greater 
heroism was never displayed by man or OF THE PHYSICIAN, 
woman. Martyrs burned at the stake could 
not escape the death if they would; but 
these personifications and crystallizations 
of heroism would not abandon their posts 
of duty and escape the dangers if they 
could; but their labors are finished—all 
honor to them—their mission is ended. 
The world will not soon look upon their 
like again. 
“Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! 
Dear as the blood ye gave; 
No impious foot-steps here shall tread 
The herbage of your grave; 
Nor shall your glory be forgot 
While Fame her record keeps, 
Or honor points to the hallowed spot 
Where Yalor proudly sleeps.” 
—O’Hara. 
In philosophy there are few books of 
greater interest than Dr. Draper’s “Intel- 
lectual Developement of Europe,” and 
what might be said about the works of 
Dr. Gluts. Darwin can be omitted, for you 
are all doubtless familiar with his labors, 
from his journey on the “Beagle” until 
the establishment of the new philosophy, 
which at first brought ignominy and abuse 
as reward, and at last canonized his name 104 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
in science and earned for his remains a 
final resting-place in Westminster Abbey, 
alongside of archbishops and cardinals, 
whose doctrines he opposed. 
“ Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb, 
Take this new treasure to thy trust, 
And give these sacred relics room 
To slumber in the silent dust.” 
In discoveries for the benefit of suffer- 
ing humanity, the physician’s labors have 
always been active, ceaseless and unre- 
lenting, The names of the immortal Har- 
vey, the illustrious Jenner, the imperish- 
able Morton, and the sainted McDowell, 
are known and revered in every land and 
clime upon which the great Luminary sheds 
his brilliant rays. Sir Edwin Arnold says, 
in his tribute to the discover of Anaes- 
thesia, “ Let me take permission to tell you 
what fills my own heart most with thank- 
fulness, and causes me chiefly to congrat- 
ulate you on these new days of therau- 
peutic science is the benign, the blessed 
discovery, and the now almost universal 
employment of anaesthetics. If you look 
into the history of that happy revolution, 
you will be warned against depreciating OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
105 
fresh ideas by noticing how sadly slow 
men are to take hints which nature gives 
to them of her very choicest treasures of 
resource. 
“ Why did not any one act upon what Sir 
Humphrey Davy so long before learned and 
imparted about the properties of nitrous 
oxide ? 
“ The key was already there, but not until 
many years afterward did an almost casu- 
al hand (that of an American dentist) fit 
it into the golden door, behind which sat 
waiting an angel of pity, kinder and more 
powerful than any Arabian fairy sudden- 
ly revealed in her divine beauty and boun- 
tifulness to any prince or magician of the 
Thousand and One Niyhts Is there any- 
thing in human history which more stern- 
ly teaches that man must win every boon 
of Nature by his own ceaseless striving 
than that this simple chemical and phy- 
siological secret of anaesthesia should have 
lurked so sadly long in its easy formula, 
undeciphered through all those waiting 
generations, when pain was an omnipres- 
ent tyrant whom science could not con- 
trol, and the operating room a torture 106 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
chamber dreaded almost as much by the 
surgeon as by the sufferer ? ” 
“ Lips that blanch not in the reeling strife 
Turn silent and white from the surgeon’s knife.”' 
Thus a poet sang, prior to the discovery 
of anaesthetics. “ Think of those gallant 
sailors of Nelson at Trafalgar, whose bleed- 
ing stumps, in the gloom of the orlop deck, 
were plunged into hot pitch to stay the 
hemorrhage! One would almost expect that 
pity for such brave men, and for the 
countless tender women and children who, 
age after age, so hopelessly endured, Tel- 
esphorus, the God of Healing, or Nature 
herself, would have burst the iron law of 
her impassive silence; and as Helen did 
in the Odyssey for the sorely tried Greeks, 
have poured this nepenthe into the bitter 
cup of mortal life.” 
Dr. Holmes says; “The man to whom 
the world owes this priceless gift is Dr. 
Wm. Thomas Green Morton.” Imagine, 
if you please, the conflicting emotions 
which stirred within the heroic breast of 
this immortal man, when his discovery 
was first subjected to public trial. If the 107 
OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
experiment proved successful, his name 
would be rendered immortal and the op- 
erating room robbed of its greatest terror; 
if it should fail, only ridicule awaited 
him. It was successful. What this has 
done for the amelioration of the horrors 
of pre-anaesthetic surgery, very few now 
living can appreciate. Instead of shrinks, 
cries and groans of the patient, everything 
now proceeds with that quiet and leisure 
which is so essential to the performance 
of many, if not most, of our modern elab- 
orate and prolonged operations. The au- 
thor of the Light of Asia says again: “I 
have myself known what it is to pass, 
fearless of the keen steel, into that world 
of black velvet tranquility, of which your 
magic drugs now keep the gate; and to 
awake as good as healed, grateful beyond 
words for the soft spell of enchanted peace, 
and the sure and faithful skill.” Who 
could possibly endure the torture of an 
operation lasting for one, two, or it may 
be even three hours, when every minute 
seems an eternity of anguish ? But happily 
now “the fierce extremity of suffering 
has been steeped in the waters of oblivion 108 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
and the deepest furrow in the knotted 
brow of agony has been smoothed away 
forever.” 
A great .surgeon lately remarked: “ I 
would rather be the discoverer of anaes- 
thesia, than have won an Austerlitz or a 
Waterloo.” Who can measure the im- 
portance of this signal event to humanity ! 
It remained for America to confer this 
priceless boon on suffering mankind. Many 
gilded monuments have towered heaven- 
ward to perpetuate the names and com- 
memorate the prowess of martial heroes, 
who have tarnished the earth with the 
blood of slaughtered men, or, in the lan- 
guage of the “ Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard ” 
“To wade through slaughter to a throne 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ” 
have sent a wail of sorrow over entire 
continents! But such “ frail memorials ” 
pale into insignificance, as the native-born 
or alien, “who, mindful of th’ unhonored 
(not dishonored) dead ” listens to the 
“artless tale” of two humble dentists OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
109 
whom God enabled to discover a slumber 
that antidotes every pain. 
“ Such names as Warren, Jackson, Morton, Wells, 
Will live as long as suffering manhood dwells 
Within this weary world of death and funeral 
knells.” 
Thus a poet sweetly sings of the discov- 
erers of anaesthesia. Their work is done. 
Their duties performed. Their lives were 
an inspiration. They are at rest; where 
•‘No chilling winds or poisonous breath 
Can reach that healthful shore— 
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, 
Are felt and feared no more.” 
They at last reached the pure Empyrean 
and, to use Shelley’s words, robed in daz- 
zling immortality, sit on thrones 
“ Built beyond mortal thought, 
Far in the Unapparent.” 
In a hallowed spot, a typical American 
home, in Rockbridge County, Va., Nov. 11, 
1771, the “Father of Ovariotomy” first 
saw the light. It has been said that great 
men, like great mountains, stand alone, 
with the valley of ancestry on the one side 
and the gulf of posterity on the other. But 110 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
history tells ns, however, that this tower- 
ing character did not stand alone, for the 
foothills of his ancestry were of decided 
magnitude, prophetic of a genius destined 
to lay the foundation for a great revolu- 
tion in the ars cMrurgica, and to become 
one of the greatest benefactors of the hu- 
man race. 
After obtaining his literary education at 
Georgetown, Ky., our hero in 1798-4 at- 
tended lectures at the University of Edin- 
burgh. In 1795 he returned to America 
and began the practice of his profession at 
Danville, an aristocratic little colony not 
far from Lexington, Ky. He faced dangers 
from storm and flood, in clouds and dark- 
ness at night, at times lost in the dense 
forest. He was actuated by the higher 
principles of his profession. He feared 
neither man nor devil; he knew no fear ex- 
cept the fear of God, and that of doing 
wrong. The degree of his happiness was 
determined by the magnitude of his under- 
taking. In December, 1809, he was called 
to see a lady suffering from an ovarion tu- 
mor, and at once suggested its removal. 
But he stated to her that, so far as he OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
knew, the operation had never been done 
—that it would be an experiment; conse- 
quently he could make no promise as to 
the outcome. By his manly presence and 
honest words he planted a new hope in 
the heart of despair. Thus, “he unlocked 
the bosom of confidence with the key of 
personal magnetism.” The patient gave 
her assent to the operation; which was 
performed at his home in Danville. When 
it became known what he was about to 
undertake he found a mob gathered about 
his house. He also learned that if the 
patient recovered, it would be well with 
him, but if she died from the operation, 
he would be at the mercy of a merciless 
mob. He offered up a prayer and pro- 
ceeded with his work. This prayer, in 
fervency and literary merit, it is claimed 
by scholars, has never been surpassed and 
seldom equaled by mortal man. What an 
example of true courage and resolute de- 
votion was exhibited by this heroic, good, 
kind, gracious, loving and lovable man! 
He no doubt felt the force of the lamenta- 
tion of the poet:— 112 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land. 
All shun, none aid you, and few understand.” 
No truer heroism has been, or ever will be, 
recorded on the immortal pages of never- 
ending history. True courage must be 
deliberate, must be premeditated, must be 
actuated by a high, a holy and a bene- 
ficent motive. It was not a maddening 
pseudo-heroism stirred up by the rattle of 
the drum and shriek of fife on battlefields, 
where man seeks to slay his fellow-being. 
The heroism of Hannibal, Alexander, Xer- 
xes, or Napoleon, can never be compared to 
that of this cool, calculating, thinking 
man. The operation was completed, and 
the torch lighted by Ephraim McDowell 
in the midnight darkness has shone forth 
with resplendent glory in this brilliant 
noonday of abdominal surgery. The cen- 
tury, which, in a year or two, will have- 
rolled on to the eternal past, has placed 
in the magnificent temple of medicine 
many pillars of surpassing beauty and 
grandeur, while its surgical columns have 
risen high towards Heaven, where as gild- 
ed towers they fain would vie with the OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
God-given sunshine in dispelling the chill 
and gloom of human agony. 
“Chirurgia’s tower, thy lights resplendent blaze, 
Dries woman’s tears and lengthens out her days. 
McDowell and Sims, of our Columbia’s clime, 
Began the work, moved onward, nigh sublime. 
To woman, then, these blessings shall be given, 
Queen of the home, and home the type of Heaven.” 
In 1817, “Three Cases of Extirpation of 
Diseased Ovaria ”—the first publication of 
ovariotomy—was made to the world. It 
was long before Europe could believe that 
such a brilliant, original and magnificent 
improvement could originate in what was 
then known as the back-woods of America; 
but she has been apprised many times 
since of the genius of America’s Physicians 
and Surgeons. My dear reader, should 
every other source of pride in your Amer- 
ican citizenship fail, you have only to 
point to the recorded triumphs of Amer- 
ican medicine and surgery to have it res- 
tored. 
In 1827, Dr. Johnson, Editor of the 
London Medico Chirurgical Review, after 
announcing the results of five cases of 114 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ovariotomy, four of whom had recovered, 
says: “There were circumstances in the 
narrative of some of the first cases that 
raised misgivings in our minds, for which 
uncharitableness we ask pardon of God 
and of Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Dan- 
ville.” What a noble confession! 
Virginia is justly proud of her orators, 
statesmen and soldiers, “but shall not 
the achievements of her statesmen suc- 
cumb, at last, to the pitiless logic of 
events ? Shall not the voice of her orators 
grow fainter with coming ages ? Shall not 
the victories of her soldiers be found at 
last only in the libraries of students of 
military campaigns, whilst the fame of 
this village surgeon, like the ever-widen- 
ing waves of the inviolent sea, shall be 
wafted to the utmost shores of time, hailed 
alike by all nations in all ages for having 
lessened the burden and prolonged the 
span of human life ? ” He was a handsome 
man. His was a beautiful life. 
“ Beautiful lives are those that bless 
Some silent river of happiness 
Whose secret fountains none can guess.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
115 
Should a student of medicine, in cen- 
turies hence, ask who first performed ov- 
ariotomy, the answer will be ready and 
unequivocal. As a result of this self- 
sacrificing life and wonderful result, there 
goes forth a benediction to every home in 
the known world; from every hearthstone 
in Christendom there returns a blessing 
to the memory and the resting place of 
Ephraim McDowell. 
“ Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around, 
Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease; 
In still small accents whisp’ring from the ground 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.” 116 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
CHAPTER Y. 
PROFESSIONAL FRIENDSHIP. 
“When true hearts lie withered, 
And fond ones are flown, 
Oh ! who would inhabit 
This bleak world alone ? ” 
Sophocles says : “ What good man is not 
his own friend ? ” Young states that a 
foe to God. was ne’er true friend to man. 
Some sinister intent taints all he does. 
Dryden says : “ Want gives us to know the 
flatterer from the friend.” Shakespeare 
makes Cassius say; “ A friend should bear 
his friend’s infirmities.” Webster’s defin- 
ition of a friend is one who entertains for 
another such sentiments of esteem, respect 
and affection that he seeks his society and 
welfare—a well-wisher. Egotism, hatred, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
117 
avarice, intemperance, immorality and in- 
fidelity are at enmity with professional 
friendship; any member must purge him- 
self of these evil genii before he knocks at 
the door of professional friendship for 
recognition and admittance. To have pro- 
fessional friends we must be worthy of 
them—promoters of each others’ welfare, 
success and happiness—all gentlemen who 
are members of our noble profession will 
be friends Friendship is founded on con- 
fidence, confidence on integrity, and with- 
out integrity there can be no friendship. 
The duties incumbent upon the physi- 
cian are not those alone that afflicted hu- 
manity requires at his hands; but the 
principle of justice, right, and a “ script- 
ural injunction,” demands of him a far 
nobler, higher, loftier, grander and more 
generous and kindred feeling; one that 
should actuate him in all his professional 
intercourse with his fellows; a spirit of 
professional duty, of conciliation, of mu- 
tual fellowship, so inculcated in the heart, 
mind and memory, that naught but a wide 
departure from every obligation that binds 
him to the common brotherhood should 118 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
sever the tie that binds him. We, as pro- 
fessional men, men loving justice, should 
unbiasedly, unselfishly and unreservedly 
help to bear the burdens of each other— 
“to feel a brother’s care,” as it were. To 
be true to the trust confided and the con- 
fidence imposed requires of us often— 
many times, self-denial and self-sacrifice, 
but, 
“ When our cause, it is just, 
Conquer we must. 
This he our motto, 
In God is our trust.” 
How endearing is the title of friend; 
what a charm in the very name of friend- 
ship ! How the mind turns at once to the 
circle at the fireside, for it is here that 
friendship is seen in all its beauty and in- 
tensity. The mother’s devotion has ever 
been the theme of the poet’s song and the 
minstrel’s strain, and filial love has been 
promised in its fulfillment. Desolate in- 
deed must be that heart which cannot look 
back to the early quiet joys of home. The 
remembrance of a parent’s love hath oft- 
en come back to the lone wanderer like 
a long-forgotten strain, to cheer him in OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
119 
his solitude and calm his weary spirit; 
and feelings of hatred at the world’s in- 
gratitude have given way to kindlier emo- 
tions, as he thought of his earliest, his 
truest friend—his mother. 
“A mother’s love! the sacred thought 
Unseals the hidden fount of tears, 
As if the frozen waters caught 
The purple light of early years.” 
It causes his memory to revert to the old 
home, with all its familiar surroundings, 
with its moss-grown roof, that in turn 
“lets in the sunshine and the rain,” to his 
pious father and his sainted mother, who 
have long since “crossed the dark river ” 
and are resting “under the shade of the 
trees ”—that silent depository of the low- 
ly dead; to the bright-eyed brother and 
the golden-haired sister of long ago, and 
the coy little maiden, who in turn kept 
house for him one day, his brother the 
next; and a little grassy mound on the 
hillside, across the meadow, near the green 
wood rises to view, and a few “pious 
drops” gather in the eyes, as “he thinks 
of her he loved so well, and those early 
broken ties.” How fond recollection calls 120 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
to mind his dumb-playmates: his faithful 
dog, his gentle cow and his playful colt— 
all “ have quietly mingled their bones in 
the dust.” Throughout all animal nature 
is this principle recognized. The humble 
ant shows attachment to his fellow-worker, 
and the busy bee will permit no intruder 
in its hive, and so up through the scale of 
created beings is this ruling principle 
evident, increasing gradually in power, 
until in man, under the guidance of rea- 
son, it is displayed in its full development. 
It is the basis of patriotism—that love of 
country which nerves the arm and fires 
the heart to protect our native soil from 
the step of the invader—our hearth-stone 
from the finger of the oppressor. It im- 
parts hope to the exile when sweet strains 
of some home-melody strikes his ear, with 
all its hallowed associations. High and 
low, rich and poor, acknowledge its power. 
It heightens the joys of wealth in the pal- 
ace, and alleviates the misery of squalid 
poverty in the hovel. Even the wicked, 
whose hearts have been worn away by the 
constant drippings of evil, yield to its in- 
fluence. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
121 
What noble instances of heroism has 
it produced! It has comforted the “de- 
parting soul ” of the martyr in its celes- 
tial flight. It was seen at the cross on 
Calvary, when Rome, proud Rome, was in 
her pristine vigor, when, amid revelings 
and reproaches, that ever faithful band of 
followers stood by and witnessed the last 
agony. It guided the lone woman “at 
the peep of dawn ” to the “ narrow cell ” 
to see where they had laid her Friend and 
Saviour. History has given us a beautiful 
account of the ties of friendship that ex- 
isted between Damon and Pythias. The 
former having been condemned to death, 
obtained permission from Dionysius, to 
visit his home and bid farewell to his 
family, kindred and friends, the latter 
gives himself, as a ransom in prison, to 
suffer the punishment in his stead in case 
he did not return at the appointed time. 
Damon was punctual ; and this striking 
instance of friendship so affected the king 
that he at once pardoned Damon and re- 
quested to become his friend. 122 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ But whether on the scaffold high, 
Or in the battle’s van, 
The fittest place where man can die 
Is where he dies for man.” 
What a noble instance of true friendship 
is represented in the death of Christ. This 
is the kind of friendship that is of value. 
A friendship that is not willing to give 
and do more than it receives is base in- 
deed. To the man whose mind is indeed 
aright, there is no pleasure so great as the 
consciousness of having done a good ac- 
tion. The incense of prayer and praise is 
doubly fragrant when performed by deeds 
of benevolence and kindness. 0 how much 
we all need a brother’s helping hand ! We 
start on life’s voyage down the stream of 
time—the banks are strewn with flowers— 
we do not see the hidden thorns—ve do 
not inhale the lurking poison—we glide 
on gently, the distant mountains bright 
with hope, and all beyond an expected 
Paradise. But will the stream be always 
smooth ? Shall we not feel the thorns ? 
Shall we not inhale the poison ? Plow cross 
the mountains ? The pilgrim’s staff may 
break in ascending the rugged heights. OF THE PHYSICIAN, 
How welcome then a brother’s hand to 
ease us a little of our burden. 
“ Teach me to feel another’s woe, 
To hide the fault I see; 
That mercy I to others show, 
That mercy show to me.” 
How sacred should be that tie of friend- 
ship which binds the physician to his fel- 
low, no one can know or feel until ex- 
perience has taught the lesson and left its 
impress indelibly engraven upon the heart 
and memory by a lifetime of toil, of care, 
of privation, of want, of anxiety, of per- 
plexity and a hundred other ills conse- 
quent upon, and the attendants of, his 
professional life. Unhonored and unsung 
must he commence the struggle for recog- 
nition and maintenance, for conquest, de- 
feat or victory. Years of poverty, years 
of severest toil, years of study, onward 
must he go midst heat and cold, midst 
storms of adversity, with but an occa- 
sional gleam of sunshine to cheer him 
along life’s rugged thorn-strewn pathway; 
uncompensated, unappreciated, a mendi- 
cant, a slave, to obey the behests, com- 124 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
mands, dictates and calls of every one, 
however ungenerous, unappreciative, or 
ignoble, and life itself may prove the sac- 
rifice in the discharge of his professional 
duties. To whom then must we look, aye, 
from whom expect condolence, sympathy 
and a just regard, if not from those who 
travel the same rugged, thorn-strewn path- 
way ; if not from our own brotherhood, who 
by sad experience have been taught these 
terrible truths ? As to the duties and obli- 
gations, no man, least of all a member of 
the medical profession, who should be en- 
dowed with ordinary intelligence, need be 
misguided or misdirected ; neither need he 
misinterpret or misunderstand his profes- 
sional duties to his brethren. It may all 
be summed up in one scriptural injunc- 
tion: “Do ye unto others as ye would 
that others should do unto you.” 
Charles Kingsley says: 
“Do noble things, not dream them all day long,— 
And thus make life, death, and the vast hereafter, 
One grand, sweet song.” 
The dissensions, the animosities, the pro- 
fessional jealousies, the bickerings, the OP THE PHYSICIAN. 
125 
distrust and disfavor among us, lead the 
public to question our sincerity, capacity 
and integrity, conserve to our own hurt 
and injury, lessen us in the public confi- 
dence and esteem, weaken our cause, and 
bring reproach and obloquy upon the 
science we should love, honor and cherish. 
They bring unkindly and ungenerous feel- 
ings, pervert our judgment, warp and dis- 
tort our sense of justice, deaden the kind- 
lier and finer feelings of the soul, and 
burden us with a load of prejudice, avar- 
ice, greed and professional distrust that 
will oppress us, and lower our chosen 
profession. Let us suffer ignominy and 
contumely ourselves and forever remain 
unrecognized by the world rather than 
betray the confidence imposed in us by a 
professional brother. Let a spirit of fair- 
ness, of justice, of right prevail; let it 
actuate us in all our professional inter- 
course with each other. 
Rather suffer wrong ourselves than to 
inflict it on those who call upon us to 
share their burdens and responsibilities. 
Then will the shadows of discontent flee 
away, and the cheering sunlight of pro- 126 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
fessional peace and prosperity dawn upon 
ns, to light our pathway, lighten our burd- 
ens and gladden our lives ; and smiles will 
come oftener than tears, joy oftener than 
grief, and many a cheerful ray of glad 
sunshine will burst through the clouds of 
a stormy sky, and hope itself will find the 
unknown quantities of time in the equa- 
tions of eternity. 
“ There are green, isles in each ocean, 
O’er which affection glides; 
And a haven on each shore, 
When love’s the star that guides.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
127 
CHAPTER VI. 
MEDICAL ETHICS. 
“ The noblest lesson taught by life 
To every great, heroic soul. 
Who seeks to conquer in the strife, 
Is self-control” 
Webster defines Ethics—the science of 
morals, manners, conduct and deport- 
ment. 
There are many pretty, engaging little 
manners which every person may “ put 
on,” without the risk of being deemed 
either affected or foppish. The sweet smile, 
the quiet, cordial bow, the earnest move- 
ment in addressing a friend, or more es- 
pecially a stranger, whom one may recom- 
mend to our good regards, the inquiring 
glance, the graceful attention, which is 128 
SUNSHTNK AM) SHADOWS 
captivating when united with self-posses- 
sion—these will insure us the good regards 
of even a churl. Above all, there is a cer- 
tain softness of manner which should be- 
cultivated, and which, in either man or 
woman,adds a charm that almost entirely 
compensates for lack of beauty. The voice 
may be modulated so to intonate that it 
will speak directly to the heart, and from 
that elicit an answer; and politeness may 
be made essential to our nature. Neither 
is time thrown assay in attending to such 
things, insignificant as they may seem to 
those who engage in weightier matters. 
Such things enter largely into the make 
up of a gentleman—an ideal physician. 
Let us ever bear in mind that the real 
gentleman is not he who displays the la- 
test fashion, dresses in extravagance, with 
gold rings and chains to display; not he 
who talks the loudest, and makes constant 
use of profane language and vulgar words; 
not he who is proud and overbearing, who 
oppresses the poor, and looks with con- 
tempt on honest industry; nor he who 
cannot control his passions, and humble 
himself as a child : but it is he who is kind OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
129 
and obliging—who is ready to do you a 
favor with no hope of reward; who visits 
the poor, and assists those who are in 
need; who is more careful of his heart 
than of the dress of his person; who is 
humble and sociable—not irascible or re- 
vengeful; who can always speak the truth 
without resorting to profane or indecent 
words. Such a man is a true gentleman 
wherever he may be found. Rich or poor, 
high or low, he is entitled to the appella- 
tion. 
“ What’s a fine person, or a beauteous face, 
Unless deportment gives it ease and grace f 
With every other requisite to please, 
Some want the striking elegance of ease.” 
By medical Ethics, we mean medical 
manners—professional conduct and de- 
portment among those engaged in the pro- 
fession of medicine. “ Sincerity and plain- 
dealing ” (sincerity of heart and honesty 
of purpose) should ever distinguish us. 
Medical ethics should be taught in all 
Medical Colleges, especially during the sen- 
ior year of the student. We will notice 
first the Ethics of Consultation. 130 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
Consultations are held (1) at the re- 
quest of the friends to satisfy them that 
everything possible is being done for the 
patient; or (2) at the request of the phy- 
sician for his help and guidance and to 
protect himself, if necessary. Every reg- 
ular physician ought to be willing to con- 
sult with another regular physician, when 
asked to do so by the friends. There can 
be nothing to lose by it, if the consultant 
is a gentleman, and if he is not, it is bet- 
ter to know it. 
If the family physician asks for consul- 
tation he should take care that his con- 
sultant be properly rewarded for his work, 
and since the physician in charge of the 
case would have to make a definite ap- 
pointment, he will be justified in doubling 
his usual fee for calling. The physician 
having the case should first tell his con- 
sultant or consultants all he know's about 
the case that will help them; he ought to 
know more than they could learn from 
one examination, and will doubtless be 
possessed of information they will not be 
likely to glean. The attending physician 
should be the first to propose the neces- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
sary questions to the patient, after which 
the consulting physician should have the 
opportunity to make such further in- 
quiries of the patient as may be necessary 
to satisfy him of the true character of the 
case. After this the patient should be 
examined by the attending physician and 
consulting physician or physicians. They 
should then retire to a private place to 
calmly and deliberately discuss the case; 
and the physician’s privilege of secrecy 
should be strictly adhered to in this dis- 
cussion. The friends have a right to know 
the result, but they have no right to pry 
into the discussion of the case. If neces- 
sary, the patient should be re-examined 
before a decision is made. 
“In consultations no rivalship or jeal- 
ousy should be indulged ; candor, probity, 
and all due respect should be exercised 
toward the physician having charge of the 
case.” (Code of Ethics Article IV. Sec- 
tion 2), Differences of opinion should be 
freely discussed at this time, and not on 
meeting the friends. It is not courtesy 
for either the attending physician, or the 
consultant, to hold private interviews with 132 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“In consultations, theoretical discus- 
sions should be avoided, as occasioning 
perplexity and loss of time. For there 
may be much diversity of opinion con- 
cerning speculative points, with perfect 
agreement in those modes of practice 
which are founded not on hypothesis, but 
on experience and observation.” (Code of 
Ethics Article IV. Section 6). 
the friends or relatives of the patient. 
The consulting physician should ever 
observe the greatest caution in his manner 
and conduct during consultation. 
“We may try to evade it, 
May do what we will, 
But our acts, like our shadows, 
Will follow us still.” 
He should not by word, look or gesture, 
show a sign of disapproval in the treat- 
ment pursued; but, on the other hand, 
should consider himself bound by duty 
and honor to share equally in the respon- 
sibility—in the credit of success or in the 
censure of failure. The result of the con- 
sultation should be communicated to the 
family through the attending physician, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
and the consultant or consultants should 
express their confidence in the physician’s 
ability to manage the case, collect their 
fees, and depart. 
The physician should be very careful in 
making the so called friendly visits to a pa- 
tient in charge of another physician ; but, 
in the case of a relative, or a near friend, 
or neighbor, where common courtesy, ci- 
vility and good citizenship, require visits 
of this kind, he should never converse on 
the subject of the patient’s disease, or on 
its treatment. The reason for this is ob- 
vious, as an observation or remark may be 
made without any intention of interfe- 
rence, which may destroy or shake the 
confidence in the course he is pursuing, 
and cause him to neglect the directions 
prescribed. 
The physician occasionally meets with 
the self-constituted doctor or doctress— 
Homo sapiens—there is scarcely any com- 
munity, but is infested with one or more 
of these evil genii, who always pretend to 
possess infallible remedies for every dis- 
ease. Don’t enter into a quarrel with 
them about the merits of these great death 134 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
robbers, pain annihilators, etc., you can’t 
afford it; but let them enjoy that peace- 
ful state of mind that is so congenial to 
man’s happiness. 
“ When ignorance is bliss, 
7Tis folly to be wise.” 
But never allow your patients to be per- 
suaded to take any medicine or any rem- 
edy prescribed by this class of persons. 
However simple their preparations may 
appear to be, it often occurs that they are 
the cause of much mischief, and in all ca- 
ses they are harmful by being an obstruc- 
tion, and an opposition to the plan of 
treatment adopted by the physician. The 
physician should always make it his duty 
to instruct his patients along the line of 
ethics. Teach them never to send for a 
consulting physician without the express 
consent of their own medical attendant. 
And no physician should respond to such 
a call, unless he knows it is perfectly 
agreeable to the attending physician. 
Should a physician be discharged by his 
patient, he has a perfect right to demand 
the or reason of his dismissal, and OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
135 
also should demand a settlement—either 
by cash or note. 
The physician should impress his pa- 
tients with the fact that they are as badly 
in need of his services as he is of their 
money. No physician should ever visit 
the patient of another physician in his 
absence, except it be at the request of the 
attending physician, or in case of emer- 
gency. Professional enmity of the most 
bitter nature has been caused between 
physicians, that lasted through life, from 
the failure to exercise due caution and 
respect in regard to this matter. 
“ He that is respectless in his courses, 
Oft sells his reputation at cheap market.” 
The physician should never allow him- 
self to be engaged in too many things at 
the same time. The study and practice of 
his profession should claim the greater 
portion of his time. It would not be ad- 
visable for him to devote more of his time 
to the politics and religion of his com- 
munity than to his profession. Should he 
desire to engage actively in politics, and 
to become a “jmlitical hustler” or a 136 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ward-heeler,” he should lay aside the 
cap and gown of Hippocrates and don po- 
litical costume, that he may enter the 
arena, “properly clothed.” The true phy- 
sician practices Christianity every day of 
his life; although he may not be one of 
the brethren in the church sense, he stands 
higher than those who make empty pro- 
fession. Whether you regard him as a 
man or a physician—the servant of the 
people—you will say of him, “ well done; 
thou hast served thy fellow-men well,” 
and to say that, in this our passing day, 
is to pass a high encomium upon worth 
and character. 
While it is the duty of the physician 
(and every other good citizen) to study 
the Holy Word, and attend church when 
convenient, it would not be prudent for 
him to lay aside his medical studies, and 
engage in the endless discussion of innu- 
merable sects, creeds, denominations, dog- 
mas and heresies of men, which have done, 
and are now doing the cause of true Chris- 
tianity more harm than all the writings 
and teachings of Tom Payne and Bob In- 
gersoll combined. However, should the 137 
OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
physician find that he has made a mistake 
in life, by getting into the wrong profes- 
sion, and prefer that of the clergy, he 
should at once abandon that of medicine 
and turn minister. It has been said that 
a man cannot serve two masters at the 
same time; that he will love the one and 
hate the other. Remember, that “the 
more reserved, the more observedand that 
“ true worth is in being, not seeming.” 
It has been said that the physician be- 
comes so accustomed to suffering and 
death that he looks upon them only as a 
necessary result of the process and end of 
physical organization. So far as the ma- 
terial body is concerned, his knowledge of 
the laws regulating its mechanism teaches 
him the necessity and certainty of its de- 
■cay, but his knowledge of the mechanism 
of that body also teaches him that life is 
something more than a mere manifesta- 
tion of forces on a physical organization, 
and that death is more than the decay of 
matter. His constant association with 
suffering and death teaches the physician 
to appreciate sorrow and bereavement, and 
his sympathies go out to the bereaved 138 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ones when his ministration to the sick is 
at an end. When the fear of death enters 
the household, it may be for the occupant 
of the cradle, or for that of the easy chair 
by the window, an appeal is made to stay 
its relentless grasp. None know the force 
of the appeal so well as the physician, as 
he realizes the responsibility of the confi- 
dence imposed. The knowledge of duty 
well done is the whispering approval of 
an aspiring conscience which is the vision 
of the touch of God with the hidden treas- 
ures of the soul. 
Then let us abide in the work, do the 
right as it is given us to know the right, 
that an approving conscience may be ours 
when life’s work is ended, and as we ap- 
proach the twilight of existence may we 
not be melancholy and dejected, but joy- 
ous in contemplation and satisfied in re- 
flection ; 
“ Arid leave behind us, freed from grief and fears,. 
Far nobler things than tears, 
The love of friends, without a single foe— 
Unequaled lot below.” OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
139 
CHAPTER VII. • 
MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 
“ Bat Knowledge to their eyes her ample page. 
Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne’er unroll; 
Chill penury repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul.” 
—Gray. 
[Paraphrase—But they had no school or college 
privileges. Poverty and want prevented them 
from carrying out their exalted aspirations—lofty 
ambitions, and chilled and restrained the flow of 
their activities, as frost checks the current of a 
stream by freezing it.] * 
At the time the above stanza was writ- 
ten, and to whom the allusion was made 
(The Rude Forefathers of the Hamlet) it 
was no doubt true, but a century and a 
half of time has rolled into the eternal 
past, and we now stand upon a plane of 
existence where poverty and want no long- 
* Should this explanation seem unnecessary, or excessively 
elementary—even puerile—to certain readers, they must remember 
that the poem from which this stanza is taken is so full of artistic 
perfection as to be utterly beyond the reach of most people when 
they read it first, and of a great many when they read it last. 
W. L. L. 140 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
er repress our noble rage—crush out our 
noble desires. Good books are cheap, and 
schools are within the reach of everyone? 
no matter how indigent his circumstances. 
Channing says: “In the best books 
great men talk to ns, give us their most 
precious thoughts, and pour their souls 
into ours. They are the voices of the dis- 
tant and the dead, and make us heirs of 
the spiritual life of past ages. Books are 
the true levelers. They give to all who 
will faithfully use them the society, the 
spiritual presence, of the best and greatest 
of our race.” 
It matters not how poor you are—it 
matters not, though the prosperous of your 
own time will not enter your obscure 
dwelling—if the sacred writers will enter 
your humble dwelling and take up their 
abode under its roof, if Burns will cross 
your threshold to sing to you the songs of 
his native land—of the Boon, the classic 
Boon, or Hermit Ayr, and Alloway Kirk, 
and Moore to soothe and cheer you with 
his Irish Melodies, and Milton to sing to 
you of Paradise (Lost and Regained), and 
Shakespeare to open up to you the worlds OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
141 
of imagination, and the workings of the 
human heart, and Franklin to enrich you 
with his practical wisdom—you will not 
pine for want of intellectual company, 
and may become an educated man, though 
shut out from what is termed the best so- 
ciety in the community in which you re- 
side. 
‘‘ From every lowly cottage roof, 
However poor and brown, 
From every dusty hovel points 
A hand at glory's crown." 
There was a period in the history of this 
country when the stanza cited above, from 
“ Gray’s Elegy,” could have been applied 
with equal force and propriety to the phy- 
sicians of the day, as to the rustic, unpol- 
ished Forefathers of the Hamlet. But 
since that time there have been wonderful 
changes—mirahile visu [wonderful to be- 
hold] . There were then few books, fewer 
medical schools, and medical societies 
were unknown. But at this our passing 
moment, books are within the easy reach 
of all, medical colleges abound on every 
hand, and there is scarcely a county in 
any State in the Union, but that has its 142 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
medical society. There has never been a 
time when facilities were greater, oppor- 
tunities more convenient, or circumstances 
more favorable, for acquiring a thorough 
scientific training in the healing art than 
at the present. 
The physician should immediately after 
his graduation become a member of some 
medical society. He should pursue his 
studies continuously, and in no way can 
this be done better than by associating 
himself with his brethren in a medical so- 
ciety. Earnestness in the pursuit of knowl- 
edge is the key-stone to its acquisition. 
The public judge us by the interest we take 
in our own business, and the profession 
judges us by the results achieved. We 
should try and make ourselves worthy the 
good opinion of both. If to our earnest- 
ness of purpose to increase the interest in 
the work of the society, we add the laud- 
able ambition of attaining success in our 
profession and to assist in the advance- 
ment of medical science, surely our efforts 
will not fail of approbation, and we will 
be honored and respected by all those OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
143 
around and about us, for the good within 
us. 
u Ol't ’mid the forest's deepest glooms, 
A bird sings from some blighted tree; 
And in the dreariest desert blooms 
A never dying rose for thee.” 
To the physician the medical society 
has a theoretical, a scientific, and a prac- 
tical interest. Theories in medicine as in 
law, politics and religion, may be said to 
have governed the ultimate progress of the 
science since the days of Hippocrates. 
Many of them were conceived in ignorance 
and born in superstition, which the light 
of centuries has not obliterated. Some 
have been heralded forth as great discov- 
eries, and believed in until displaced by 
others apparently more rational, while a 
few have been followed to a logical con- 
clusion by pains-taking study and experi- 
ment, and produced the grandest results 
in the world’s history. The science of 
medicine relates chiefly to the work of 
reducing knowledge of its various branch- 
es to principles, that it may be applied to 
practice. 
This knowledge depends largely upon 144 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
observation and experience in the practice 
of the art. The practice of medicine is 
the art of healing the sick, and upon its 
successful application depends the fame 
and fortune of the physician. 
The well regulated medical society is 
the place where all these topics may be 
discussed and men studied as well as med- 
icine; there we find the theorist, who al- 
ways has a reason for the faith that is in 
him ; there we find the scientific man with- 
out practical methods, and the practical 
man without scientific methods. There we 
study the methods and character of the 
successful man, as success is measured, 
and perhaps gain an insight that will en- 
able us to apply the results to our own 
lives. Not only does a medical society 
benefit and improve its members, but it 
secures public appreciation and gives tone 
to the entire profession. It stimulates to 
personal investigation and in many other 
ways contributes to the advancement of 
medical science. The physician should 
not only associate himself in a medical 
society, with his professional brethren, 
but he should labor earnestly in its inter- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
145 
est. The only way to make a society of 
interest is to get interested in the society. 
And the only way to accomplish this is to 
do that which is of interest to the mem- 
bers and to the profession at large. 
11 No endeavor is in vain ; the reward is in the doing, 
And the prize the vanquished gain, is the rapture 
of pursuing.” 
When God walked with man in the 
Garden of Eden, then and there he was 
taught unbounded love for all things cre- 
ated, and holy reverence for the Being who 
created them. Purity and holiness were 
attributes of the mind. As the blood 
coursed through his veins, untainted by 
disease, so thought traversed the mind and 
moved the soul, unpoisoned by the touch 
of evil. As the earth poured forth her 
treasures unbidden, for his corporeal na- 
ture, so Heaven, through ministering an- 
gels, supplied, direct, his spiritual aliment. 
Man walked forth in the image of his 
Maker—perfect in form, in feature and in 
mind. There was harmony in all things 
—the carol of the bird, the plash of the 
waterfall, the roar of the lion, the bleat of 146 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
the lamb. The softest zephyrs stirred the 
forest leaves, and the moonbeam was un- 
broken as it rested on the streamlet. 
Beauteous and gladsome was the face of 
nature—all things were subjected to the 
dominion of man’s will—all made subser- 
vient to his interests and enjoyment. He 
felt no physical pain—he suffered no men- 
tal anguish; the burning heat and the 
biting cold—the excitement of hope and 
the bitterness of despair, were alike un- 
known to him. A created being, he held 
converse with his God. Yet he felt a void 
within—a want unsupplied. Humanity 
yearned after human sympathy. “It is 
not good for man to be alone! ” So a 
helpmeet was provided—the family rela- 
tions were established, and thus was fore- 
shadowed what, to the end of time, is to 
be a necessity of humanity. 
“A law of strange attractive force, 
That holds the feelings in their course; 
It is a presence undefined, 
O’ershadowing the conscious mind, 
Where love and duty sweetly blend 
To consecrate the name of friend.” 
The world grew older and sons and 147 
OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
daughters became its denizens. The wing 
of the evil one had overshadowed the pure 
and perfect one. The carol of the bird is 
hushed by the snare of the fowler. The 
lion no longer crouches at the feet of his 
master. The thunder of God’s wrath had 
been heard crushing amid the forest trees, 
and the lightning of his eye had withered 
the tall cedars. The heart of man had 
become a volcano of passions, which ever 
and anon burst forth in devastating fury. 
Ambition looked for a field to play her 
part in, and the hand of man had been 
raised against his brother. How changed 
—how changed the face of nature, once so 
beauteous and gladsome! The trail of the 
serpent has left its mark upon all things 
created; yet still men cling together, as 
those who have a community of interest 
and feeling. Patriarch and people, chief- 
tain and tribe, are one and undivided. 
They feel pressing upon them as with an 
iron hand a necessity of humanity,— 
“A love for sickness and for health, 
For rapture and for tears ; 
That will live for us, and bear with us 
Through all our mortal years.” 148 
SUNSHINE ANT) SHADOWS 
Man feels pressing upon him a necessity 
of humanity; and thus associations are 
formed of those who can harmonize in 
pursuits and feelings. They unite for 
mutual support and encouragement—for 
intellectual improvement and for social 
enjoyment. This principle is coeval with 
the creation of man, and was instituted in 
the Garden of Eden. To this principle of 
nature we trace the origin of all our or- 
ganizations and societies. Yet a large 
portion of mankind are ever wont to decry 
the good in them,. But such is the frailty 
of man. “To err is human, to forgive 
divine.r’ 
The most colossal form of human con- 
ceit, probably, is that of the individual 
who thinks all other creatures inferior 
who happen to be unlike himself. 
We all know and feel the influence of 
associations—how productive they are of 
either good or evil. In our professional 
gatherings, the habit is acquired of think- 
ing well of our neighbor, and this is the 
first step toward seeking to do him good. 
We learn to look upon our fellow-worker, 
not as one who can be used to advantage, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
149 
but as one who has claims upon our sym- 
pathy and kind offerings. 
In our pilgrimage we should ever teach 
humility; and there is no better way of 
teaching it than by its daily practice. If 
nature has endowed one with superior 
gifts, he should use them for the benefit 
of his fellow-laborers; but not by unnec- 
essary display to excite jealousy and envy. 
True merit is never obtrusive, nor does it 
ever go without reward. The lowliest flow- 
er often exhales the sweetest perfume, and 
is the especial object of the naturalist’s 
care. 
At our medical societies we meet at the 
fountains of Truth and Brotherly Love, 
and for a brief period, muse beside the 
still waters. How refreshing thus to come 
together and interchange friendly greet- 
ing, and exchange friendly ideas; renew 
our faith, add hope to hope, strengthen 
our friendship and unity; how pleasing to 
feel that when the tocsin is sounded for 
the procession to move onward, we are to 
march together, hand in hand, through 
the remaining portion of our pilgrimage, 
lessening each other’s hardships and shar- 150 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ing each others’ responsibilities ; or, in the 
language of the poet Schiller; 
“Have love. Not love alone for one, 
But man as man thy brother call, 
And scatter like the circling sun, 
Thy charities on all.” 
Though we do not hold the key to the 
Book of Life, we can bring the sunshine of 
hope and comfort to the home of the sick 
and suffering, smooth many of the wrin- 
kles of care and lessen its sorrow. 
There are two hours in life’s history in 
which the physician is appealed to as one 
bearing a sacred mission the hour of 
travail and of death. In the agonizing wail 
of labor anticipating motherhood we rec- 
ognize the voice which gave 10 the world 
and humanity that priceless treasure—a 
mother’s love, the love which impels her 
to scold and then take to her bosom and 
kiss the small tot in the nursery and wel- 
come to her home, her arms and her heart, 
the wayward son of manhood’s years, 
though his hands are colored with the 
crimson of murder. It is in this hour the 
physician may have the responsibility of OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
151 
holding two lives in his hand—one bear- 
ing the fruits of maturity and love, the 
other cast helpless upon the ocean of life, 
as a jeweled petal blown from the rosary 
of God, an unblossomed bud of humanity. 
The grandeur of motherhood, the com- 
plete fulfillment of law in the design of 
Nature, the beauty of helpless innocence 
of the child—that immaculate seal upon 
the altar of love—all conspire to unite in 
an impressive appeal to the duties of the 
occasion. To be instrumental in the sav- 
ing of life at this moment is a trust wor- 
thy the greatest of human efforts. Surely 
a life of unselfish devotion to the cause of 
humanity would make him a fit companion 
for the gods. 
“ To such a life there is do death; 
What seems so, hut transition. 
His life, his mortal breath 
Was hut a suburb of the life elysian 
Whose portals we call death.” 152 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
CHAPTER VIII. 
PILGRIMAGE OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
STAGES; YOUTH, MANHOOD AND OLD AGE. 
SECTION I. 
YOUTH. 
“ Man’s life’s a book of history ; 
The leaves thereof are days; ' 
The letters, mercies closely joined, 
The title is God’s praise.” 
—Mason. 
In Youth, as Medical Students, we should 
industriously occupy our minds in the 
acquisition of useful knowledge; in Man- 
hood, as Physicians, we should apply our 
knowledge to the discharge of our respec- 
tive duties to God, our patients and our- 
selves ; so that in Old Age, as Retired 
Physicians, “we may enjoy the happy re- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
flection consequent on a well-spent life, 
and die in the hope of a glorious immor- 
tality.” 
A Pilgrimage has been defined by Web- 
ster as “A journey to a place deemed 
sacred.” Life has been termed by some 
a pilgrimage, and perchance no term could 
be chosen more expressive of its uncertain- 
ty, dangers and hopes. It bears ns on like 
the current of a mighty river. Our boat 
at first glides down the narrow channel 
through the playful murmurings of the 
little brook and the windings of its grassy 
borders. The trees shed their blossoms 
over our young heads ; the flowers on the 
brink seem to offer themselves to our 
young hands; we are happy in hope, and 
we grasp eagerly at the beauties around 
us; but the stream hurries us on, and still 
our hands are empty. Our course in Youth 
and Manhood is along a wider and deeper 
flood, amid objects more striking and mag- 
nificent. We are animated by the moving 
pictures of enjoyment and industry pass- 
ing before us; we are excited by some 
short-lived success, or depressed and made 
miserable by some equally short-lived dis- 154 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
appointment. But our energy and our de- 
pression are both in vain. The stream 
bears us on, and our joys and griefs are 
alike left behind us. We may be ship- 
wrecked—we cannot be delayed ; whether 
rough or smooth the river hastens to its 
home, till the roar of the ocean is in our 
ears and the tossing of the waves is be- 
neath our feet; and the land lessens from 
our eyes, and the floods are lifted up 
around us, and we take our leave of earth 
and its inhabitants, until of our further 
voyage there is no witness save the Infinite 
and the Eternal. 
“ Thus man, the sport of bliss and care. 
Rises on Time’s eventful sea; 
And having swell’d a moment there, 
Thus melts into eternity.” 
Marcus Aurelius once said to a friend, 
who was exhausting his breath upon the 
unequal distribution of the favors of the 
gods—“It is not in your power to become 
a great natural philosopher, a poet, a 
mathematician, an orator, or an historian ; 
but it is in your power to be an honest and 
virtuous man, which is far superior to them OF THE PHYSICIAN, 
155 
all. Use well the gifts the gods have given 
thee, and leave off repining at the good 
they have denied. For the very talents 
thou sighest after are far from conferring 
happiness on their possessors.” 
Inter silvas aeademi qucerere verum—as the 
poet says; to search out truth through 
academic groves may be a very pleasing, 
but often is a very unprofitable occupa- 
tion. The splendor derived from success- 
ful studies seldom repays the occupant for 
the lassitude and exhaustion of the mind— 
the feverish debility and throb of nervous 
excitement which thrill through all his 
frame. The peasant in his cot perhaps 
has more real enjoyment, and certainly 
has more peace and calm contentedness 
than the philosopher, crushed to an un- 
timely grave by the very magnitude of his 
studies. 
You may behold the scholar pale over 
his midnight lamp, and far distant the 
golden dreams of honor and applause, 
which he is never destined to realize. How 
disconsolate is the condition of an intel- 
lectual being, who thus suspends his hap- 
piness on the praise and glory of the world ? 156 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ If every one’s eternal care 
Were written on his brow, 
How many would onr pity share, 
Who share our envy now.” 
The good Aurelius gave an advice wor- 
thy of being inscribed in letters of gold. 
He who places his heart on material ob- 
jects, or expects to draw the streams of 
consolation from the resources of the 
world, must be exposed, in every vicissi- 
tude, to the keen pangs of anguish. The 
slightest calamities will disquiet and trou- 
ble his soul. In adversity he is cast down, 
and every stay on which he leaned for 
succor, like the infidelity of Egypt—as a 
broken reed—will pierce him to the heart. 
From the gay and lofty summit of his 
pride and presumptive daring, he sinks to 
the deplorable level of his own weak and 
worthless presumption. 
Qn-tntum mutatus oh illo—is that sunken 
hopeless condition. The glory of the world, 
uncertain as it is, is not within the grasp 
of many minds. And even those who are 
able to seize the gay and gilded prize, it 
stings in the very embrace, and perishes 
in the enjoyment. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
“ The thoughtless world to majesty may how, 
Exalt the brave and idolize success ; 
But more to innocence their safety owe, 
Than power or genius e’er conspir’d to bless.” 
But the path of virtue that leads to 
happiness on high lies open to every 
traveler; and he can neither be mistaken 
in his course, nor disappointed in his ac- 
quisition. He has with him, and around 
him, in the darkest hour, in the lone desert 
or the crowded city, a Being who knows 
his pain, and hears every sigh of his com- 
plaints. He made the soul and is able to 
delight and ravish its inmost faculties, 
with the communication of joys unspeak- 
able. 
How noble was the sentiment expressed 
by Sir Isaac Newton. Speaking of infinite 
space he said “It was the sensorium of the 
Deity;” as if a fibre touched, in the most 
minute, remote, or worthless of all his 
creatures, could move the spirit of the 
eternal Godhead. This view of his power 
and his providence inspires the heart with 
a holy hope and high dependence, far 
above the influence of a troubled and a 
fleeting world. 158 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
Queen Elizabeth, when her triumphant 
fleet had swept from the briny deep the 
invincible Armada of Spain, had medals 
struck, with this most beautiful and ap- 
propriate motto : Afflvvit Deus, et dissipan- 
tur, “God blew with his wind, and they 
were scattered.” How exalted the thought! 
The belief of a divine and superintending 
Providence taking care of us and our con- 
cerns, elevates and ennobles the mind. It 
transports a mortal creature to the high 
and holy meditations of angelic beings, 
and fills the soul with the purity and 
peace of heaven. 
u There is a home for weary souls, 
By sin and sorrow driven ; 
When tossed on life’s tempestuous shoals, 
Where storms arise and ocean rolls, 
And all is drear—’tis heaven.” 
The young physician, starting out in the 
morning of his professional pilgrimage, 
finds many, many things that try his pa- 
tience and trouble his soul. It would re- 
quire a volume to enumerate all of them. 
He has to deal with the whims and fan- 
cies, not alone of the patient, but of many 
of his or her friends, who perhaps mean OP THE PHYSICIAN. 
159 
well in all things, but lack materially in 
discretion and judgment. He has been a 
close student, has improved his oppor- 
tunities, and is well posted—really knows 
a, good deal, possibly more than he will a 
few years hence. 
His daily work will bring him in con- 
tact with empty heads and emptier hearts. 
Business and social exactions will present 
themselves and demand attention. Men 
there are who, not appreciating their own 
time, will not hesitate to rob him of his. 
He is often compelled to give an unwilling 
ear to the endless tale of woe of some one 
who has a grievance—fancied or real. 
Happy will it then be for him whom a 
habit of self-reliant introspection enables 
to find food for thought in a mental store- 
house of facts, or whose imagination, cul- 
tivated by a close acquaintance with the 
poets, endows him with power to draw 
from natural sounds and sights melodies 
that soothe, pictures that please, and in- 
struction that adds both strength and skill, 
to acquirements already filled with power. 160 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
“ The wisdom of the present hour 
Makes up for follies past and gone ; 
To weakness strength succeeds, and power 
From frailty springs;— Press on ! Press on !yy 
He has the vigor and enthusiasm of 
youth about him, and his sheepskin, beau- 
tifully mounted within a gilded frame, 
adorns the office wall. He feels that 
“ The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing 
horn ” of fame is waiting for him just 
around the corner to sing for him her 
triumphant songs of praise and glory ; and 
as he muses on the morning of his life, his 
imagination is wrought up to a point 
where he believes the songs sung are iden- 
tical with those that will be producer! by 
the gentle zephyrs from the Elysian fields, 
playing through the tops of the trees of 
Paradise. 
He has to come in contact occasionally 
with the veteran doctor whose degree was 
given in the year 1, and whose diploma 
was attested by the names of Hippocrates. 
Galen and Sydenham. He has occasion- 
ally to come in contact with the quack, 
and the unprofessional—the sneak-thief. 
He is unavoidably thrown in consultation OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
161 
with him, and often has to witness and 
bear many things that are both humilia- 
ting and shocking to true professional dig- 
nity. For instance, in diseases of the 
chest, this evil genius will percuss at once, 
to make the patient believe that he is re- 
ceiving his share of the grand tabulum of 
human knowledge, of which he imagines 
that he possesses a very large amount. He 
demonstrates that a body filled with air 
will make a louder and clearer sound than 
a solid one. Having duly impressed this 
fact upon the patient, he proceeds to be- 
labor him with his fingers, and then comes 
auscultation. The glory of this procedure 
is enhanced, if the entire family and 
neighbors of the patient »ib near by. Hav- 
ing spent the requisite time in listening 
to the sonorous rales, he straightens up, 
carefully removes the instrument from his 
ear, waves it in the air a few times, and 
then proceeds to give the patient, friends 
and neighbors, a lecture on the crepitant 
and subcrepitant rales, metallic tinkles, 
friction sounds, winding up with “am- 
phoric resonance,” for the sake of its 162 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
sweetly rolling sound. But it knocks the 
rales, ronchi and bruits all “ sky high ” 
when the head of the house, the patient’s 
spokesman, says to the young physician; 
“ Doctor, I ask you to take charge of the 
patient.” The young physician of this 
day and time will never be a dude, for— 
“ A dandy is a thing that would 
Be a young lady, if he could; 
But as he can’t, does all he can 
To show the world he’s not a man.” 
He can’t afford to countenance this sil- 
ly affectation in himself or in any one 
else. But he is going to do some good in 
this world, mitigate its pain and sorrows, 
and help the sunshine to linger a little 
longer. All honor to him. We 'who have 
grown gray in the harness will give him 
the right hand of fellowship wherever we 
find him, and cordially welcome him to 
the ranks of the profession. 
In his rosy fancy a fortune, oftentimes, 
is awaiting him. A few fees already collec- 
ted assure him of that, and the bills come 
in and pile up very high in his imagina- 
tion. Honor will be bestowed upon him, OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
for is it not far better to be a professional 
man, than an overworked mechanic or 
clerk like his relatives before him ? Thus 
to-day he puts forth the tender leaves of 
hope; to-morrow may they bloom; and 
may he bear his blushing honors thick up- 
on him, is our fervent wish. For the pro- 
fession at large, I bid him God Speed! 
To many, no doubt, love’s gentle dal- 
liance has already given power to see a 
rainbow in an Oriental or an Occidental, 
or a Northern or a Southern sky, and 
painted all sunrises with the golden efful- 
gence of hope and promise. Those who 
have yet in store what has been aptly 
termed “ the enchantment of human life ” 
can doubtless draw, without assistance, 
pictures of what is to be, when some fond 
face lingers at the cottage window and 
awaits your gentle step; when, in a home 
made by your intellect and builded by 
your hands, you have coined your heart 
into currency of happiness, and with the 
extravagance of a spendthrift reck neither 
of yesterday nor to-morrow; when with 
the sweets of domestic life you live over 
again the home life of early youth, and 164 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
fond memory, with its enchanted scroll, 
“Rich with the spoils of Time,” gives 
form and color to a thousand joys of the 
past, while hope fills the future with con- 
tentment, love and plenty, and all other 
rewards of honest industry and exalted 
aspiration, and like the humble dweller of 
the cottage, whom the poet, Burns, so 
graphically pictures in The Cotter's Satur- 
day Night, when— 
“ At length his lowly cot appears in view, 
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; 
Th’ expectant wee things, toddlin through 
To meet their dad, wi; 2flichterin; noise and glee. 
His wee bit 3ingle, blinking bonnily, 
His clean hearthstone, his thriftie wifie’s smile, 
The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 
Hoes a’ his weary “kiaugh and care beguile, 
And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.” 
'stagger. 2fluttering. 3fire-place. 4anxiety. OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
165 
PILGRIMAGE OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
SECTION 11. 
MANHOOD. 
“I saw from the beach, when the morning was 
shining, 
A hark o’er the waters move gloriously on ; 
I came, when the sun o’er that beach was decli- 
ning,— 
The bark was still there, but the waters were gone! 
Ah ! such is the fate of our life’s early promise, 
So passing the spring-tide of joy we have known; 
Each wave, that we danced on at morning, ebbs 
from us, 
And leaves us, at eve, on the bleak shore alone.” 
—Moore. 
Our next view is that of the middle- 
aged physician, who has been in active 
practice a score of years. We gently alarm 
the outer door and quietly enter his office. 
We find him in a deep reverie; he is mu- 
sing on his life. Many of his youthful 
dreams have failed to materialize. Things 
are not so rosy as when he first set out on 
his pilgrimage. His memory reverts to 
the evening of the commencement; when 
proud and hopeful he stood, for the last 
time, with the boys of his old class, and 166 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
received his degree. He hears the sweet 
strains of music, and sees the beautiful 
flowers that enlivened and adorned the 
hallowed occasion ; and perceives the feel- 
ings of delight with which he received the 
beautiful wreath, woven by fair hands, 
unseen; and 
“ The sweet song died, and vague unrest, 
And a nameless longing filled his breast.” 
The wreath of flowers is faded and gone; 
its holy dust was scattered long ago; 
“ ’twas dying sure but slow, just as she 
died” who gave the wreath, “ some twenty 
years ago.” As he muses, he stands again 
in the cool and dusky silence of the old 
college building—venerated Alma Mater, 
with its air of stately age and its familiar 
odor, while the light of the occidental sun, 
broken into rays of gold and ruby, streams 
through the great painted windows, and 
softly falls upon the old museum, filled 
with pictures and bones, quaint-looking 
jars, and unspeakable effigies; and look- 
ing forth through the great arched door, 
he sees the dark and melancholy boughs 
of the dreaming cypress tree, and nearer, OP THE PHYSICIAN. 
167 
iii a shadow of rippling leaves in the clear 
sunshine of the door-way path arise before 
him the phantom forms of the departed— 
his beloved teachers—and he feels a strange 
desire to meet them there again and talk 
to each, face to face, “ as a man talketh 
to his friend.” But alas! how futile is 
this. Yet, perchance, ere long we shall 
meet in a distant realm, where, “ The 
crooked shall become straight, and the 
rough ways smooth.” Where : 
“ When the mists have cleared away, 
We shall know as we are known.” 
Thus, as he continues to muse on these 
hallowed associations, amid this mournful 
beauty, the picture of the college building 
is photographed in his memory, while 
every tree that waves its branches around 
it, and every vine that clambers on its 
surface, seems to clasp it in the arms of 
love. Nothing breaks the silence but the 
sighing of the wind in the great Yew tree, 
near the door-way, beneath which often 
was his favorite seat, and where the brown 
needles, falling through many an autumn, 
have made a dense carpet on the turf. 168 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
Now and then there is a faint rustle in the 
ivy, a fitful bird-note serves but to deepen 
the stillness; from a rose tree close by a 
few leaves flutter down in soundless bene- 
diction on the dust beneath. He hears 
again the fond farewells and tender vows 
of parting classmates; but it avails him 
nothing now to linger longer at the shrine. 
It was a sad parting, but never, while 
memory lasts, can it fade out of the heart; 
and the memory of the place, with its 
hallowed associations, can never be des- 
poiled of its loveliness ; and as he awakes 
from his reverie, the following beautiful 
lines of Lord Lytton, come uncalled across 
his mind : 
There is no death ! the leaves may fall, 
And dowers may fade and pass away ; 
They only wait through wintry hours, 
The coming of the May.” 
The physician belongs to that calling 
which bears more responsibility than all 
others combined. He thinks a little dif- 
ferently now of the mechanic or clerk, 
whose day’s work ends with the setting of 
the sun. He realizes that he has chosen OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
169 
the most exacting of all vocations. There 
is scarcely a moment that he can call his 
own. Night and day he is at the beck and 
call of his constituency—a slave, to obey 
the behests, commands, dictates and calls 
of all—regardless of age, sex, race or color, 
“or previous condition of servitude.” 
He is made to feel the force of the query 
expressed by the poet Burns : 
“ If I’m design’d yon lordling’s slave— 
By nature’s law design'd— 
Why was an independent wish 
E’er planted in my mind f ” 
The lawyer has months in which to pre- 
pare his briefs ; the parson abundant time 
for his sermons, but the physician must 
be ready in an instant for any and all 
emergencies. He is a teacher of hygiene 
by precept only; for his life-broken rest— 
irregular meals, exposure to storm, infec- 
tion and accident—necessarily render it 
impossible for him to observe or to prac- 
tice that which he teaches. 
During his years of practice, his former 
library, which possibly numbered only 
half a dozen volumes, has grown into a full 170 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
case, many of them with time faded backs, 
and here and there a new work on some 
special subject showing itself. His sign 
is fast becoming a victim of rust and time, 
and his sheepskin with its gilded frame 
now reposes in the garret. There are some 
old batteries and a surgical apparatus or 
two up there also, that worked well once; 
especially, in the hands of the gentleman- 
ly instrument dealer, who sold them to 
him. 
His account-books—day-book and led- 
ger, are near at hand, and ever ready to 
sing to him the names of a multitude of 
“promising men”—young and old, who 
surround him, and with whom he has had 
the honor of associating. They serve as a 
biography of men, wherein are recorded 
the faith, promptness, honesty, and, to a 
marked extent, the religion of the respec- 
tive individuals. 
The physician would like to take a post- 
graduate course occasionally; and he is 
aware that he should take a much needed 
vacation, but it would be difficult to spare 
the money or the time, and worst of all, 
if he goes, his patients might possibly OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
171 
stray away after strange gods, fabled he- 
roes, etc. He would like to visit the old 
Alma Mater, the scene of his early labors, 
and strike glad hands with his classmates 
that will be gathering there again. But 
alas! many of the gallant boys of that 
noble class he could not see if he went— 
the long grass waves over them, and some 
of the stones that mark them are entirely 
shrouded with ivy—for the average life of 
a physician is only forty-five years, and 
half the number have passed off the stage 
of action into 
“ The undiscovered country, from whose bourne 
No traveler ever returns.” 
I cannot feel content to close this ar- 
ticle without paying a grateful tribute to 
the memory of a departed physician, who 
fell in the prime of manhood’s years. One 
under whose guidance, and in whose office, 
it was my fortune to begin the study of 
medicine. We are doing nothing out of 
the ordinary when we pay a tribute to the 
memory of a deceased brother. The an- 
cient Greeks and Romans were wont to 
gather about their fallen heroes, and re- 172 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
count their virtues and the trophies they 
had won. Memorials in brass and marble, 
in undying verse and imperishable utter- 
ances, have come down through all ages 
to inspire the ambition of youth and stir 
the pulse of manhood. It is fitting that 
we should pause a brief moment, amid the 
absorbing cares of daily life, and mark the 
footprints of those who have attained a 
worthy prominence among men ; and while 
we weave a garland of flowers to deck the 
grave of our friends who have gone from 
among us, the lesson of our mortality and 
the duties we owe to each other and our 
families. It has been truly said that 
peace hath her victories not less than war. 
Of all these victories, those of the phy- 
sician and surgeon are the most marked, 
because the most conspicuous. This noble 
genius was a conqueror, not of his fellow- 
men, but of the dangers which beset them. 
Nor are his conquests finished yet. Long 
years after the bodily form of this beloved 
preceptqr has passed away, the precepts 
he impressed so clearly, the result of his 
experience, will remain to mitigate pain 
and sorrow, and to soothe many otherwise OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
hopeless pillows. The history of his life, 
now that the volume is closed, will live in 
the memories of men and go on indefinite- 
ly. It has been often my good fortune to 
be associated with him professionally. In 
time of need he would adhere to his friends, 
“ closer than a brother.” Prominent among 
his characteristics were tireless energy and 
patience to stand against the tide. In all 
cases where will was required he was al- 
ways in the van. He was a born leader. 
Whatever enterprise he chose to engage 
in, he rapidly rose to the leader’s posi- 
tion. He was in every respect my ideal of 
what a physician should be; he knew no 
sham, he could not respect quacks, he 
could not act the professional sneaic thief. 
He never would do anything to take a pa- 
tient from another doctor. His dress, 
which was plain, neat, unsoiled; his man- 
ner, his social and professional intercourse, 
were in perfect harmony. He stood al- 
most alone with convictions of the powers 
and capabilities of his profession ; moral 
calculus fails to grasp the sum of his bene- 
ficence. 
He was a man of many superior quali- 174 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
ties of head and heart—a man of more 
than ordinary abilities and qualities— 
good, just and genial. Although dignified, 
he was full of good humor and jollity, and 
was apt at telling stories. I prized his 
friendship dearl}T. He, like the rest of us, 
met with many “ups and downs,” but met 
them with the fortitude of a martyr. He 
was true to his ideals of what he thought 
was right. It is well to note in passing 
that we are more than doctors, we are men ! 
How many kind acts have we done to the 
dead! Of how little importance, after all, 
are life’s successes or failures! 
“The Lost of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, 
And all that heauty, all that wealth e’er gave, 
Await alike the inevitable hour: 
The paths of glory lead hut to the grave.” 
There is a lesson to learn—be a little 
truer to our profession as men to each oth- 
er, and do a few more kindly acts, which 
are about the only things worth remem- 
bering at the end of life’s voyage. The 
professional life of this skillful man was 
such as to command all honors to his mem- 
ory. I owe as much to him as to any pro- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
175 
fessional man, living or dead. In loving 
remembrance and with heartfelt gratitude, 
I refer to the life and memory of the la- 
mented Dr. A. B. Pitzer, of Tipton, Ind. 
Dr. Pitzer was a man of rare executive 
abilities and prescience. He was polite 
and kind to every one. No man in the 
profession was better equipped in manners. 
Before his illness came upon him he was 
notably modest, seldom spoke of himself, 
or of his own achievements. I think yet, 
as I thought when I first saw him, that he 
was superior to almost any man of his 
age that I had ever met. 
“ Still o’er these scenes our memory wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care, 
Time hut the impression deeper makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear.” 
Kegarding him, as I have already said, 
with the deepest interest, and under cir- 
cumstances favorable for observation, I 
describe him as he impressed himself upon 
me. The great characteristic of his mind 
was strength, and his predominant faculty 
was reason. He possessed the power of 
impression—deep, lasting impression—of 176 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
interesting yon, not only in what he said, 
but in himself, of stamping upon the mem- 
ory his own image in the most eminent 
degree and the most extraordinary man- 
ner, of any person whom it has been my 
fortune to encounter. 
The late Dr. Holmes said: “Nature is 
in earnest when she makes a woman.” 
She undoubtedly was in earnest when she 
endowed Dr. Pitzer with these rare pro- 
fessional gifts which Nature alone can 
bestow. 
He entered upon his professional career 
armed at all points, and practice flowed in 
upon him, in a full and wealthy tide. 
Public sympathy rallied around to cheer 
and support him in a manner seldom 
known before. Every step of advance- 
ment but deepened the interest and vin- 
dicated more triumphantly the opinion 
held of him. His counsel was sought far 
and near. “He encountered hostility in 
his upward flight, [when did soaring ge- 
nius fail to do it ?] and meaner birds 
would have barred him from his pathway 
to the skies. With crimson beak and 
bloody talons, he rent his way through 177 
OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
the carrion crew, and moved majestically 
up to bathe his plumage in the sun,” 
Rarely indeed did ever a career more 
dazzingly splendid awaken the eye of 
young ambition than burst upon Dr. Pit- 
zer. The people sang his praise, and the 
community was full of his name, though 
he wore his honors with the ease of a 
familiar shoe “ He trod the new and dizzy 
path with a steady eye, and with that 
same veteran step which was so eminently 
his characteristic.” All difficulties had 
apparently vanished before him; and he 
at last reached the consummation of his 
earliest wishes, the ambition of his child- 
hood’s prayer. 
Dr. Pitzer’s health failed gradually for 
a year or two before his death, but his 
waning life sank, not the spirit of the 
man. And at last when the summons 
came, like the martyrs of old, he manned 
himself to die with dignity. 
Thus perished in the forty-ninth year of 
his life, Dr. Andrew B. Pitzer, a man de- 
signed by nature and himself for inevita- 
ble fame. A man whose natural abilities 178 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
were as faultless as his intellectual con- 
stitution was vigorous and brilliant. A 
man to whose advancing eminence there 
would scarcely have been a limit, had not 
the powers of his mind proved too great 
for the element of clay which enclosed 
them. 
“ His life was an inspiration ; 
His memory is precious; 
He sleeps well.” 
PILGRIMAGE OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
SECTION 111. 
OLD AGE. 
“ Look not alone on youthful prime, 
Or manhood’s active might; 
Man then is useful to his kind, 
Supported is his right. 
But see him on the edge of life, 
With cares and sorrows worn ; 
Then age and want, O, ill-matched pair! 
Show Man was made to mourn.” 
—Burns. 
Finally, we see the venerable physician, 
as he walks slowly with his aged compan- OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
179 
ion through the evening of life. He has 
seen “you weary winter-sun twice forty 
times return.” He stands the last of his 
old class; for only one physician in twen- 
ty reaches the age so graphically described 
by the Psalmist. 
He has seen many theories put forth the 
tender leaves of hope, bloom and blos- 
som, as it were, for a day, then a biting 
frost would nip the shoot, and they would 
pass away like blades of grass—into noth- 
ingness. For, since the time that Hippo- 
crates transcribed the votive tablets that 
he found in the temples (having found that 
most likely it was the things the patients 
had taken and inscribed there, rather than 
the action of the gods, that led to their 
recovery) even until now, there has been 
no end to the making of theories and 
books. Each generation has assumed that 
it possessed all the wisdom that had yet 
come into the world on medical subjects, 
and aimed to consign to oblivion all the 
works of its predecessors, with the same 
spirit which actuated Paracelsus, when, 
with great solemnity, he burned the works 
of Hippocrates and Galen. When he be- 180 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
gan the study of medicine, four-fifths of 
the practitioners of the country were non- 
graduates. All at once everybody turned 
to the medical colleges, and the hoary- 
headed practitioner and the beardless boy 
met on the level in the class-rooms. This 
developed an age of discussion, and hence, 
in medical societies, in clubs and in class- 
rooms, were discussed all the theories that 
were advanced by the teachers of that 
day. While they had not the germ theory 
(or germ fact) as understood to-day, there 
were followers of De Sault, agreeing with 
the English poet, Pope, in part at least; 
while they did not entirely agree that all 
humankind were worms, as Pope wrote to 
Moore, they were perfectly willing to con- 
cede the fact that all humankind were 
destroyed by worms, not intestinal, but 
infinitesimal. While we do know that 
the germ theory, (or fact, because it is no 
longer a theory) has developed a great 
improvement in the practice of medicine ; 
we are also willing to believe that Mason 
Good, in 1828, and the doctor who planned 
the cleaning of the city of New Orleans 
for General Butler, understood clearly the 181 
OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
value of cleanliness, and of pure air, and 
of sunlight; and knew the danger of dirt 
and filth, as men do to-day; although they 
might not have recognized the germ and 
known the size of its head or the curl of 
its tail. Although there have been won- 
derful strides made in the practice of 
medicine and surgery during the last fifty 
years, I fully believe that the generation 
of men who entered the arena fifty years 
ago did well; they proved themselves full 
of character and progress, both in war and 
peace; they rest in the Silences, but their 
work abides. Some were gathered like 
shocks of corn fully ripe; some were taken 
when in their prime; others were called 
away “while the dew of youth was still 
fresh upon them ;” and in the language of 
O’Hara: 
“ Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone, 
In deathless song shall tell, 
When many a vanished year hath flown, 
The story how ye fell; 
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight 
Nor time’s remorseless doom, 
Can dim one ray of holy light 
That gilds your glorious tomb.” 182 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
And, we your successors, have caught 
none of your grace, nor inherited aught of 
your glory; but, standing upon your shoul- 
ders, it may be permitted us- to believe 
that we do see farther than you saw; just 
as those who shall succeed us will see 
farther than we now see. I fervently hope 
and trust that the young men of to-day 
(who sometimes imagine that we have 
done great things, when we have really 
had but little time to do anything, and 
actually know but little, except what we 
have learned from the older men, who 
have been our predecessors in the busi- 
ness), from the vantage ground now pos- 
sessed, will march bravely on, and accom- 
plish as much in the next fifty years, as 
has been accomplished during the last. 
There'was a period in the world’s history, 
when to advance a new idea or theory 
along the line of progress for the benefit 
of humanity, was to court a familiar ac- 
quaintance with a public executioner. For- 
tunately, these gracious men lived in an 
age when it was not considered a crime to 
be a public benefactor; and many of them 
lived to see the matured fruits of their OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
well-aimed efforts ; while there are others, 
whose spirits are looking down from the 
realms above upon the present scene, who 
are rejoicing with joys unspeakable at the 
happy achievements. They, living, be- 
lieved the day not far distant when the 
idol of their life and labors would be 
achieved—that the hour would come when 
atonement would be made for the injustice 
done them. They died in this faith. It 
had supported them through many a long 
day of worry and trial, when the heart 
was almost ready to sink beneath the bur- 
den of bitter disappointment and despair, 
and beneath the load of obloquy and re- 
proach, which their persecutors—some in 
ignorance, but more in malice—had heaped 
upon them. 
They no doubt felt, at times, as did the 
noble (though ill-fated) Emmet, when in 
his last words, he says: “Let me repose 
in obscurity, and my tomb remain unin- 
scribed, until other times and other men 
can do justice to my character.” And in 
allusion to this last request—the “ charity 
of the world’s silence,” how tenderly can 
we join with the poet Moore, who, thus 184 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
beautifully mourns his fate, in the follow’- 
ing matchless lines: 
“ 0 ! breathe not his name—let i t sleep in the shade, 
Where cold and uuhonored his relics are laid— 
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed, 
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o’er his 
head! 
But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it 
weeps, 
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he 
sleeps, 
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, 
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.” 
But the time has come, and their epi- 
taphs have been written, and their charac- 
ter vindicated. We now stand before the 
public and the world with a swelling and 
grateful heart, but with a tongue and 
pen too feeble to do justice to the subject 
or the occasion. Nor would we mar its 
beauties or pleasures by narrating bygone 
difficulties—difficulties which, we trust, are 
forever buried in oblivion. Their achieve- 
ments and the edifice which they began, 
shall stand as a proud and lasting testi- 
mony of the world’s admiration. This 
monument rises like the piled cairn over 
our warriors of old—each man casts his OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
185 
stone; and in sacred memory of those fel- 
low-workers in the cause of suffering hu- 
manity, with the true feelings of great- 
ness, pays tribute at the shrine of genius. 
May the good work prosper, and when 
happily completed, then may it tell to fu- 
ture generations, that the age that could 
produce a McDowell, a Sims, a Gross, a 
Flint, or an Agnew, and a host of others, 
was rich also in those who could appre- 
ciate their talents and their labors. It, 
perchance, ill-beoomes us to speak thus of 
our science and her heroes, lest it be 
thought that cool judgment has given 
way to excited feeling. Yet who are bet- 
ter fitted to speak her praises than those 
who have been taught her principles—who 
have realized their power? We would not, 
however, be the mere eulogist of medicine 
and her illustrious sons, for she needs no 
eulogy of words. Clrcumspice: look around, 
is the best eulogy of medicine. Look at 
her institutions, bright with the fires of 
truth in every clime—look at her sons, 
their name is legion, humbly ministering 
daily to suffering mankind. Medicine is 
venerated for her blessings—gracious gifts. 186 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
The mosses of antiquity have gathered 
around her stately columns. The wisdom 
of the ancient sages is treasured within her 
archives. Her principles and materials 
are coeval with the origin of man. In a 
moment of time, as it were, by a single 
step, we come from the distant lands of 
the Orient, and from those shadowy times 
of the long, long past, to this our own 
country, and this our passing day. In 
this rapid transit we have passed through 
the period of highest art and refinement 
of Greek civilization, through the prowess 
of Roman aggression. We have traversed 
all the intervening centuries. Our way 
has been overcast by the shadow of the 
“ Dark Ages.” We may have seen the re- 
vival of literature, of science and of art. 
And to-day we have an illustration that 
medicine remains a power in the world. 
It is sleeplessly and constantly watching 
and laboring for man’s good; it never 
ceases to devise new plans and put forth 
new efforts for his deliverance from his 
ancient foes : pain, disease and death. At 
last we enter the office of the aged physi- 
cian. There are now several cases of OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
187 
books, well filled. His sign, the prey of 
rust and time, has scarcely a letter left, 
to indicate its former grandeur. Being a 
constant student from the day of his 
graduation, not only of medicine, but of 
collateral literature as well, he is an ele- 
gant conversationalist, the best generally 
informed man in the community, and has 
a social standing second to none in society. 
Devoid of shams and superstitions in all 
its forms himself, he sees through the thin 
cloak of deception in others. Humanity 
is the same to him, whether in the palace 
of the prince or millionaire, or in the low- 
est depths of squalid poverty. He sees 
oftener than any one else the grandeur 
and elevation that hide in the cabin or 
lowly cottage, as well as the vices and evil 
passions of the great, and like the Parson 
in Goldsmith’s Deserted Village. 
“ Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt and pain, by turns dismay’d, 
The reverend champion stood. At his control, 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul, 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 
And his last faltering accents whisper’d praise.” 188 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
With nature his God, duty his watch- 
word, and an approving conscience his 
guide, he has faced the King of Terrors in 
every form and escaped more pitfalls than 
anyone else not in the profession. Or in 
the language of the soldier, he has been 
under fire since the date of his diploma. 
And what is his reward ? Wealth, did you 
say ? Bias, one of the seven sages of Greece, 
once said: Omnia mea mecumporto—I car- 
ry with me all my possessions. This ad- 
mirable saying of that “Prince of Wise 
Men ” is as true of many of us to-day as 
it was of that humble dweller of Priene, 
in the days of ancient Greece. Fully one- 
third of his time and earnings have gone 
to charity. If he has been a great busi- 
ness man, he may have a competence. If 
not, he may share the melancholy fate of 
Homer: 
“ Seven rival towns contend for Homer dead, 
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.” 
One may say Public Favor ? But alas! 
the ways of the politician are not his. 
Another Fame ? Let us see, if you please. 
Worldly fame is uncertain, and not within OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
189 
the grasp of many minds. And even those 
who are able to seize the gay and gilded 
prize, it stings in the very embrace, and 
perishes in the enjoyment. Let us ask 
the old gentleman his reward. 
“ The discovery of the antitoxins for 
diptheria and tetanus, the discovery of 
anaesthesia and vaccinnation, aseptic med- 
icine and surgery, the banishment of ty- 
phus fever and that scourge of maternity 
—puerperal fever—and the limitation of 
cholera have lengthened the life of man 
ten years within my memory; and by 
means of sanitation and serum—therapy 
(undoubtly the therapy of the future) 
mankind will at last reach a point, where 
(barring fortuitous accidents) the allotted 
span of life will be achieved, and the end 
of each human being will be Euthanasia.” 
This is the reply that is wafted back on 
“ fleeting breath ” and failing voice, as he 
stands an instant, his white head bowed in 
the twilight of existence and vanishes in 
the gathering night; and a quiet voice is 
whispering in the chambers of thought— 190 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS 
"No farther seek his merits to disclose, 
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,) 
The bosom of his Father and his God.” 
Finis.