VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, 
DELIVERED BEFORE 
THE CLASS 
Graduating February 20th} 1872, 
FROM TIIK 
M iami jy/Jedical C°^ege 
OF CINCINNATI, 
B Y 
SUDZDsTIEY ITOBTOlfT -D. 
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND TOXICOLOGY. 
PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS. 
PRESS OF BRADLEY & POWER, 149 MAIN STREET, CINCINNATI.  
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, 
DELIVERED BEFORE 
THE CLASS 
Graduating February 2gth, 1872, 
FROM THE 
M iami ]\/[edical (College 
OF CINCINNATI, 
n y 
SIDUEY A. iNTOIYTOIsr, UVE. 3D- 
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND TOXICOLOGY. 
PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS. 
PRESS OF BRADLEY & POWER, 149 MAIN STREET, CINCINNATI. Cincinnati, March 1st, 187a. 
Prof. S. A. NORTON, 
Dear Sir At an informal Meeting held last Evening, the undersigned 
were appointed a Committee to solicit for publication a copy of your Valedictory 
Address, delivered at the Closing Exercises of the Session of 1871-72. 
Respectfully Yours, 
John Shattuck, M. D., 
Marion, Lawrence Go., 0. 
L. A Shepard, 
Cincinnati. 
William Judkins, 
Cincinnati. 
Miami Medical College, 
143 Twelfth St. 
Cincinnati, March 2d, 1872. 
Gentlemen : 
Please accept for yourselves, and those in whose behalf you are acting, my 
grateful acknowledgment for your compliment. The Address is very cheerfully 
placed at your disposal. 
Your Friend and Servant, 
SIDNEY A. NORTON. 
To Messrs. Shattuck, Shepard and Judkins, 
Committee. A 
VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. 
Mr. President, 
Ladies and Gentlemen: 
We have met here to-night for the purpose of confer- 
ring the doctorate upon this class of young men. We do 
this cheerfully, because we feel that they are deserving 
of the honor. Our relations with them have been of the 
most pleasant character. We have found them courteous, 
attentive and diligent. Their examination has been emi- 
nently satisfactory, and we believe that they are prepared 
to commence professional life with the assurance of 
success. 
We, therefore, commend them to you, or to whatever 
community they may elect to serve, as men to whom the 
most important issues may be entrusted and of whom 
much may be expected. 
Gentlemen of the Class :—Privilege and duty are 
inseparably connected. Every life, however humble, 
has its duties which are part of the inheritance of our 
common humanity. These duties are inalienable. You 
can not perform them by proxy. So far as you shake 
them off, you do violence to nature: you become to that 4 
1 raled ieto ry Add i ‘ess. 
extent outlaws and forfeit the privileges which attend 
their faithful performance. As you are men. nothing 
that relates to man should be foreign to your sympathies. 
So far as you have received talents which place you above 
the vulgar herd, so far are you bound to exercise these 
gifts, not only for your own gain, but also for the good 
of others. 
Every advance that you make in life, every advantage 
that you acquire, every increased facility for attaining 
wealth or honor brings with it an additional obligation. 
As the wave of life widens, it extends beyond the fam- 
ily, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the state, beyond 
all bounds of space and time. It includes all that breathe, 
and, whether designedly or not, its influence descends to 
generations yet unborn. 
The specific part that you are called to play in life is, 
happily, unknown. The world is all before you, where 
to choose. The role you are to enact, will be largely of 
your own selection. The applause you may win or the 
censure you may provoke, will be in the main dependent 
on your merits. The judgment that men will pass upon 
you, will in the long run, be found to be fair, although 
tempered, at times, with a little wholesome severity. 
The hypocrite and the knave can not long escape detec- 
tion : the wise man and the fool are soon recognized and 
assigned to the stations for which they are suited. 
Whether your part be humble or high, you can, at the 
least, play the role of the gentleman. You can be honest 
to yourselves and to all the world; you can be good and 
faithful citizens; you can be courteous to your peers; 
you can be generous to the unfortunate; you can be 
magnanimous to your enemies; you can be just to all 
men. 
Few reach the pinnacle of fame, but every man can so 
live and work that his life shall be almost a miracle to Duties of the Physician. 
those that know him. Every man can enshrine his mem- 
ory in courtesy and kindness, in love and good deeds. 
Every man can so live that the world shall be the better 
for his having tarried in it and not the worse. He can 
play the part that falls to him, faithfully ; and even if he 
obtains but little glory or wealth, he will at least obtain 
the reward of an approving conscience, and stand, at the 
last, uncondemned before the final Judge of all. 
The pleasant duty has been assigned to me of welcom- 
ing you to an ancient and honorable profession. This 
evening you are invested with all the legal rights and 
privileges which belong to the physician. You are 
become inheritors of an illustrious line continued from 
generation to generation by a kinship of genius and of 
labor. If you choose to accept the inheritance, you must 
also assume the duties which are entailed with it. 
I have no doubt that most of you entered upon the 
study of medicine from deliberate choice. I will not 
seek to extol your chosen profession by presenting it as 
an almost unequalled field for doing good. The world 
little knows, nor cares to acknowledge its indebtedness to 
your predecessors. It easily forgets the suffering which 
they have alleviated; the anxieties, bitter as the stroke 
of death, that they have dispelled from loving and 
aching hearts; the useful lives that they have prolonged 
by an intelligent and watchful care. 
On the other hand, let it be the constant object of your 
thoughts to magnify your profession by your lives. You 
can best do this, not by boasting of the results you may 
attain, not by expatiating on the amount of good you are 
doing, nor by comparing these results with those at- 
tained by men in other walks in life; but by so fulfilling 
the duties which fall to you that others shall confide in 
and rely upon you, and feel that your calling is a need to 
them and a blessing to the world. 6 
Valedictory Address. 
Let us now consider some of the conditions which per- 
tain to this calling and especially those that concern you 
who find at this time your commencement. 
A Grecian myth relates that when Daedalus wished to 
escape from Crete, he obtained wings and fastened them, 
by means of wax, to himself and to his son Icarus. So 
equipped, they flew away toward the north. Daedalus, 
following the middle course, arrived safe at the further 
shore. Icarus flew too near the sun; the wax, by which his 
wings were fastened, melted, and he fell into the Aegean 
Sea and was drowned. 
The fable has been thought to teach that the middle 
course is the safest. This conclusion is indeed a valid 
one. He who is content with mediocre rewards, who 
wishes to avoid accidents and dangers, and to reach, with 
safety, the ordinary goal, can do no better than to make 
it the guide of his life. But the fable does not teach 
that man should not have high aims in life. Icarus 
failed, not because the sun’s rays scorched him, but 
because his wings were not securely fastened. The les- 
son, gentlemen, which you are to draw from his fate is 
that it should be your first care to see that your wings are 
well made, and that they are cemented on by something 
more enduring than wax. Something that will stand 
not merely the heat of the summer’s sun, but the biting 
of the winter’s frost and the beating of the fiercest 
storms. In other words, if you would command success 
you must omit no precaution that is essential to success. 
The months you have passed in study open to you the 
portals of professional life. Do not mistake me. The 
labors of the past, the work already done, the learning 
acquired, merely open the gates. You are free to enter 
within them and to attempt any course, low, middle or 
high. You can grovel, if you choose, and not assay the 
strength of your wings. You can flit along from one Duties of the Physician. 
7 
twig to another ; you can pipe your little song and twitter 
away contentedly till the night comes, and do this so 
safely that nothing less than an universal cataclysm shall 
ruffle your pinions. Or you can soar aloft into the free 
and unclouded expanse until you reach a height worthy 
of attainment, honorable to yourselves, respected by your 
peers and reverenced by the world. 
If you have aspirations, let them be high, but do not 
imagine that you can dream yourselves into greatness. 
That is not the way by which the prizes of life are won. 
Life is not a lottery in which a blind chance presides at 
a wheel and thrusts her favors upon undeserving hands. 
It is only by unremitted toil and incessant pains that 
praiseworthy and enduring rewards are attained. Labor 
is the first essential to success. Neither is the notion of 
constant work an unpleasant one when it is rightly con- 
sidered. Labor is itself a pleasure, for it brings with it 
at every turn the sweet sense of something accomplished. 
It breaks up the dull monotony of leisure. It exchanges 
the dream of the visionary for the prophecy of the seer 
and makes its accomplishment certain. 
But your labor should be well directed. It will avail 
you but little to discover for yourselves that which has 
been long known by others. In fact, you can save time 
and energy by availing yourselves of the accumulated 
knowledge of the past and the fresh investigations of the 
present. This means study, not a random and hap-haz- 
ard reading taken up by accident and dependent on the 
caprice of the moment, but study, well contrived, dili- 
gently pursued and never ending. The ravenous appetite 
of the leech profits him nothing; he assimilates nothing 
but remains after his engorgement as he was before. The 
only study that is profitable is that which nourishes. It 
must be well masticated, well digested, and so enter into 
the channels of nutrition that it becomes a part of the Valedictory Address. 
vital structure. It must be so accepted and absorbed by 
the mind that the experience of other men becomes apart 
of your experience. This thorough study fits you to try 
all things, to judge between false hypotheses and the irref- 
ragable conclusions of truth. It affords you an immov- 
able fulcrum upon which you can weigh the facts of your 
own observation and assign to them their due worth and 
their proper place. 
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, embalmed his 
experience in five short, pithy maxims. “Life is short: 
Art is long : The occasion is fleeting : Experience is fal- 
lacious : Judgment is difficult.” Nowhere are the last 
three more specifically applicable than at the bed-side of 
the invalid. The fleeting moments demand that you 
shoul 1 exclude the fallacies of experience and make at the 
instant that judgment which he pronounces to be difficult. 
You can not do this, unless reading has made you a full 
man, and the continual application of your studies has 
made you a ready man, fertile in resource, prompt in 
action ; unless you have trained your mind to think in 
accordance with the method of science, which collates all 
related facts, excludes those that are merely coincident or 
accessory, retains and duly estimates those that are essen- 
tial and assigns them to their proper category. More 
than this, you must not be merely recipients or even 
distributors of knowledge. You must also be, to some 
extent at least, inventors and discoverers. It is only by 
becoming investigators that you can make yourselves the 
acknowledged masters in your profession. 
It should be a part of your aspirations to leave the art 
of medicine better than you find it. You owe this as a 
part of your debt to our common humanity. As you 
have received freely you are bound to give freely. You 
owe it as a duty to your profession. Art is long because 
it is taken up and continued by the votaries of successive Duties of the Physician. 
9 
generations. Its duration is vitalized by the assiduous 
eare that these votaries bestow upon it. 
In any art there are excrescences that must be pruned 
down ; there are dead and decaying branches that must 
be lopped off; there are new and vital germs that must 
be grafted in. You are bound to take part in this work. 
If, in your experience, you find that old methods are 
faulty, that a new treatment is practicable and warranted 
by a sound judgment, let the fact be known. The least 
mite you can add to the stock of knowledge is certain, at 
some time or other, to become of practical use. You are 
not called upon to estimate the value of your observation 
or experience. Leave that matter to take care of itself. 
The suffrages of others will settle the question of its 
worth. 
The great lesson of the present century is a continual 
iteration of the old truth that small beginnings may have 
great endings. The countless applications of the electro- 
magnet have sprung from Oersted’s observation, that a 
copper wire, while forming a part of the electrical circuit, 
becomes endued with magnetic properties; the steam 
engine, from Saverv’s observation that, when a flask filled 
with heated vapors is cooled, a partial vacuum is formed 
within it; the enormous growth of organic chemistry to 
a few happy experiments of Scheele, Woehler and Bun- 
sen ; the practice of vaccination from a random remark 
of a dairy maid accidently heard by an observant and 
thoughtful physician. I mention these examples, merely 
as types of what may be expected. What fresh secrets 
of nature are yet to be discovered no one can imagine; 
but surely among those that may be looked for with con- 
fidence, among the new motors, the new contrivances for 
making life happier and better, may be mighty additions 
to physiology, hygiene and therapeutics. 
All this should be an incentive to constant work. I 10 
Valedictory Address. 
do not offer, as an inducement, that labor will bring you 
wealth or honor ; but simply add that diligent labor can 
not fail to bring you increased resources and increased 
ability to help those who entrust themselves to your care, 
and to enable you to pay your debt to your profession 
and to the world. 
Among the many points that may profitably claim a 
share of your attention none promise greater results than 
those which relate to the conservation of the public 
health. The experience of the past winter in this city 
has shown that the general public may either be ignorant 
of, or indifferent to a method so long known and so effect- 
ually demonstrated to be useful as vaccination. 
The experience of every day life shows an almost utter 
disregard of the most evident principles of heating, ven- 
tilation and sewerage. So, too, the sanatory measures 
which essentially mitigate the scourges of the typhus and 
the cholera are very apt to be underrated and neglected, 
even when officially presented by competent and saga- 
cious men. Many of our dwellings, even the most pre- 
tentious, are not unfrequently so constructed as to be very 
efficient traps for their inmates ; effectually shutting out 
pure air and the disinfectant sunshine and inviting 
disease in its most insiduous forms. 
There is great need that physicians should be not only 
ministers to depraved bodies, but also apostles of hygiene. 
They may accomplish an infinite amount of good by the 
frequent reiteration and enforcement of those principles 
which contribute to the prevention of disease and the 
maintenance of health. It is a standing reproach to the 
age that after all the investigations which have been made 
upon the causes of epidemics, nay more, in regard to 
maladies which are known to be, in a large degree, pre- 
ventable, and whose mode of prevention is easily applied 
and effective, that these disorders are still rife among us. Duties of the Physician. 
11 
Pure water, fresh air and abundant sun-light are not 
hard to be obtained by those who know the need of them. 
Food is plentiful enough among us ; but the community 
is sadly ignorant as to what constitutes wholesome food. 
I need not give you statistics to prove that these essentials 
to health are sadly ignored. You are well aware that not 
one child in twelve survives in the ill-ventilated homes of 
Iceland; that the typhus becomes an epidemic when the 
drinking water is poisoned by decomposing organic mat- 
ters ; that the cholera is disseminated by foul water, if 
not by foul air; that the human stomach is maltreated by 
food and drink that it can not digest; that the majority 
of mankind eat, drink and sleep, taking no thought for 
their bodies, nor for their higher faculties, so far as these 
are dependant on their physical health. 
Besides these, there is another evil which is extending 
its ravages, and is becoming daily more virulent. I 
allude to the purely American characteristic of incessant 
and hurried exertion both of body and mind. Hundreds 
of our best men break down every year, simply because 
they do not allow themselves the rest that they give their 
brutes. The spirit of enterprise which drives our busi- 
ness men, makes their lives too often feverish and impa- 
tient and burns them up before they have lived out half 
their days. 
In regard to these and other matters which concern 
the general health, you are bound to disseminate the seeds 
of truth as widely as you have opportunity, and not to 
be content with the mere sowing of the seed. You must 
enforce the need of diet, temperance and repose by all 
legitimate means. Your first care must be to prevent 
disease. 
But sickness will come, and it can not be denied that 
your principal occupation will be in the treatment of 
disease. 12 
Valedictory A ddre.su. 
In regard to your intercourse with your patients, the 
advice of Polonius to Laertes is not inappropriate: 
“ This above all—To your own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou cans't not then be false to any man.” 
The man who makes it a cardinal principal to be con- 
scious to himself of right motives will not fail to earn the 
respect of all. He may err like other men, but his errors 
will lean to virtue’s side. The reputation for probity, or 
what is better, the possession of it, is essential to any man 
who is likely to be the confidant of others. How neces- 
sary then for the physician who is admitted to confidences 
which are withheld from the most trusted companions ! 
Reputation is no bubble to such a man. It is a solid 
reality, without which study is in vain, knowledge is 
worthless, and the fruits of experience unprized and un- 
sought. 
Confidence is a plant of slow growth. You will find 
it so in your experience after the flush of youthful enthu- 
siasm has subsided. Even in the matter of technical 
skill, you will find it hard to work off the distrust which 
you entertain for your own abilities and still harder to 
inspire confidence in others. So many things enter into 
consideration, knowledge, experience, judgment, discre- 
tion, and even the outer trappings of a pleasant address. 
And yet it is very necessary that you acquire the confi- 
dence of your patients and especially for their good. The 
influence of the mind in disease can hardly be over-estima- 
ted. Hundreds of cures, seemingly wonderful, have been 
effected by the simple exercise of the imagination. How 
else could Perkinism have attained such a development? 
How else can you account for the long array of certifi- 
cates which are attached to so many inert nostrums? 
The coming of the trusted physician into the sick-room 
is oftentimes as inspiring as the advent of Sheridan at Duties of the Physician. 
13 
Winchester. The patient feels that the master is at hand 
and the countless troop of imaginary troubles fade away 
like the mists before the sun. These imaginary troubles 
beget doubt and despair and are of themselves enough to 
prostrate the sufferer. It is of great importance in deal- 
ing with sick persons, and especially with those disposed 
to be hypochondriacal, that you be eheerful; that your 
voice does not carry with it the subdued and funereal 
accents of the undertaker and presage disaster with every 
breath. 
Extremes should be avoided. You can be cheerful 
without being boisterous, without finding it necessary to 
deafen your patient or to bruise him with clownish 
caresses. 
It has been shown that politeness has its foundation in 
a conscientious regard for the feelings of others. If a 
person has this, he has only to make this regard intelli- 
gent in order to attain to true politeness. Now, no man 
can feel otherwise than kindly towards another who is, or 
who thinks he is dangerously sick. More than this, the 
very word kindly implies that this feeling is innate. It 
is the feeling that we have towards our kin or kind and 
that we should cherish toward all mankind. If, then, we 
habitually inquire of ourselves what is likely to be agree- 
able to others: that is, if we instruct our conscience and 
act upon its dictates, we shall attain (if we do not already 
possess) the highest style of politeness. It is true that 
there are some who are naturally rude and there are 
others who affect rudeness, thinking it to be an external 
characteristic of genius, and such men have their place. 
I counsel you to avoid their ways. Boorishness never 
attains a high degree of esteem, although it may fascinate 
the vulgar for a time. The address of the physician 
should be always well poised; calm and deliberate, but 
not apathetic ; sedate, but not gloomy ; cheerful, but not Valedictory Add raw. 
clownish; kind, blit not obtrusive; unruffled by trifles, 
but careful of every thing that concerns his reputation. 
Discreetness in speech is a cardinal virtue in a physi- 
cian—to know when it is “ a time to speak ” and when it is 
u a time to refrain from speaking.” The whole truth to an 
agitated household, spoken when it is not necessary, may 
work damage to your patient. You yourselves may over- 
rate the danger, and by indiscreet remarks beget a want 
of confidence in your skill. Do I counsel you to dissim- 
ulate? Not at all. Dying is never necessary except to 
the inventor of it, but it does not follow that you are to 
proclaim from the house-tops all the truth that you im- 
agine you know. The truth and nothing but the truth, 
spoken when necessary, with due regard of time and 
place, and with a solemn sense of the great importance 
that must often attend your words ; but it is quite as 
culpable to overstate the danger of your patient and 
arouse unnecessary anxiety, as it is to withhold the true 
knowledge of his condition when you feel that jour skill 
is all in vain. 
If, then, you should be discreet in the sick-room, how 
much the more should you hedge your tongue in speaking 
of what occurs within its sacred privacies to a gossiping 
world ! Apart from the bad taste of making the ills of 
suffering humanity the theme of your conversation, it is 
your duty to be reticent in all things that may not prop- 
erly concern his sympathizing friends. 
The intercourse between the patient and his physician 
should be of the most confidential, loving nature. He 
entrusts to you, who are yourselves mortal, the issues of 
life and death. You become to him his sole earthly 
reliance ; he trusts to you in full assurance, or he clings 
to you with the clutch of despair. Be it yours to meet 
this trust, not only with skill, not only with the faithful 
exercise of an experienced judgment, but also with the Duties of the Physician. 
15 
loving heart of a fellow-man, who hastens to alleviate 
the sorrows he may remove or to sympathize in the mis- 
fortunes he cannot prevent. 
If time permitted, I should be glad to enlarge upon a 
few of the fields of usefulness which only indirectly con- 
cern you as physicians. One of these is so dear to my 
heart that you must permit a word or two. 
As you are professedly men of science, some things 
may be expected of you that are not required of the laity. 
You can wield a powerful influence in extending other 
sciences than that of medicine. Some of these, as Botany 
and Chemistry, are closely related to practical medicine; 
but all sciences are so interlaced that the gain of one is 
the gain of the other. The profession has not been back- 
ward in this respect in the past, nor is it at the present. 
All the physical sciences have been largely advanced by 
men who have passed some part of their lives as students 
of medicine. If you do not choose to enter upon these 
fields yourselves, you can at least lend a helping hand in 
the fostering of general scientific studies. 
Our young land has much to do in cultivating scien- 
tific pursuits and much to gain from the achievements of 
science. She calls upon all men who make any pre- 
tensions to education, to unite in advancing every kind 
of knowledge that is calculated to advance the interests 
of her people, whether in material wealth or in the 
grander gain of a perfect civilization. 
Finally, my dear friends, it remains to say farewell. 
These exercises close the official relations between you 
and your instructors. We do not thereby lose our interest 
in you. We shall watch your progress with friendly 
eyes and shall rejoice with you or lament with you, ac- 
cording as you meet with success or disaster. We hope 
well of you and pray that your future may be one of 
prosperity, of usefulness and of happiness. We entreat 16 
Iraledictory Address. 
you to be watchful of your fair reputations ai cl to allow 
nothing to sully your lives, either as men or as physicians. 
We place the reputation of the college in your keeping 
and trust that your alma mater will find in you sons 
that will do her honor and that will cluster around her 
in love