ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
GRADUATING CLASS 
OF THE 
ALBANY MEDICAL COLLEGE, 
BY / 
v 
THOMAS HUN, M. D. 
1 877. 
|Villi the Compliment* of r'.t 
j. S. MOSHER, M. D., 
Ht'i/istrar 
ALBANY: 
J. MUNSELL, PRINTER. 
1877. A L) DRESS 
BEFORE THE 
GRADUATING CLASS 
OF THE 
ALBANY MEDICAL COLLEGE, 
BY 
THOMAS HUN, M. D. 
i 877. 
ALBANY: 
J. MUNSELL, PRINTER. 
1877. ADDRESS. 
Hippocrates, the founder of medicine, before he would admit 
a candidate into the ranks of his disciples, bound him by an 
oath to lead a pure and honest life ; never to prostitute to any 
base use the knowledge which was to be imparted to him ; and 
to devote himself in the exercise of his profession to the service 
of his fellow men with fidelity and zeal. At this day no such 
formality is exacted of those who are admitted into the ranks 
of our profession ; but it is, nevertheless, thought fitting to 
seize an occasion like the present, while we tender to you our 
best wishes for your future success and happiness, to admonish 
you of the high duties you have assumed and of the obligation 
you are under to perform them faithfully and conscientiously. 
It has, perhaps, never occurred to you to estimate the weight 
of the responsibility which from this day rests upon you and 
upon us. In the practice of your profession the health and lives 
of men are to be entrusted to you ; and we have certified to the 
world that you possess the capacity and skill which fit you to 
assume this trust. In virtue of the certificates which have just 
been placed in your hands, you are to possess a power which is 
given to no magistrate nor to any other citizen, that of deciding 
on the lives of men without any appeal or any accountability, 
except to your own conscience. Nor is this all. In many ways 
you may abuse the opportunities which your professional cha- 
racter will open to you. You will be admitted into the interior 
of families ; you will be made the depository of secrets which 
are carefully concealed from all the world besides ; you will see 2 
your patients in their most unguarded hours ; their weaknesses, 
their vices will be exposed to you. A word spoken by you in 
resentment of some real or fancied wrong, or even in idle gossip, 
may inflict a deeper and sorer wound than any you have been 
called to heal. Learning and skill are not, then, the only quali- 
fications for the faithful performance of your professional duties ; 
they demand integrity as well as capacity. As the lives of men 
are to be entrusted to your skill, so their reputations and the 
peace of their families are to be entrusted to your discretion and 
your honor. 
Such are the important interests which are to be placed in 
your keeping ; and accordingly as you are well or ill-fitted for 
the trust; accordingly as you now go forth honest and well 
instructed men, or the reverse, you may become the greatest 
benefactors or the greatest pests of society. Surely, we cannot 
estimate too highly the good which, as well qualified physicians, 
you may do, nor the evils which ignorance and dishonesty in 
your profession may bring about ; and if, unfortunately, it 
should turn out that you are unworthy of the trust, if, instead 
of preserving life and mitigating suffering, you should in your 
ignorance increase the mortality and pain of disease ; if you 
should basely use your professional opportunities for unworthy 
ends, how great would be our shame in having falsely certified 
to your capacity and integrity ; how great would be your crime, 
in having recklessly undertaken a task in which incompetence 
and dishonesty bring forth such disastrous results. 
Though you are now to leave the halls in which you have 
been educated, your connection with the college is not to cease. 
Its fame must depend mainly on the character of those it sends 
forth into the profession, and all who are interested in its wel- 
fare will watch with concern your future career. If any of you 
should prove unworthy of the honor which has now been con- 
ferred on you it will be a source of regret and mortification to 
your instructors and a stain on the character of the college ; but 
if, on the other hand, we hear of you as pursuing a high and 
honorable professional career, introducing improvements into our 
art and diffusing its blessings over a wide circle, then, with a 3 
feeling of a deep satisfaction it will be said, “ That man was 
brought up in our school.” 
Before we separate this evening I would say a few words on 
the present condition of our profession, and on the course it be- 
hooves you to adopt in it. 
You enter upon your professional career at a time when the 
public mind is singularly unsettled in regard to the practice of 
medicine, and when there is much to discourage your efforts to 
fit yourselves for the proper discharge of your duties. Medicine 
has in all ages been a field from which dishonest men have reaped 
an abundant harvest, but, perhaps, at no time more than at the 
present day. Lord Bacon makes the following remarks in 
relation to medicine in his day, and I quote them at some length 
because they apply so well to our own time : 
“ This variable composition of man’s body hath made it an 
instrument easy to distemper ; and, therefore, the poets do well 
to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of 
medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man’s body and to 
reduce it to harmony. So then the subject being so variable, 
hath made the art by consequence more conjectural; art being 
conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left for 
imposture. For almost all other arts and sciences are judged 
by acts and masterpieces, as 1 may term them, and not by the 
successes and the events. The lawyer is judged by virtue of his 
pleading and not by the issue of the cause. The master of the 
ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the 
fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the poli- 
tician, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but 
is judged most by the event which is ever but as it is taken ; 
for who can tell if a patient die or recover, or if a state be pre- 
served or ruined, whether it be art or accident ? And, therefore, 
many times the impostor is prized and the man of virtue taxed. 
Nay, we see the weakness and the credulity of men is such as 
they will prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physi- 
cian For at all times, in the opinion of the 
multitude, witches and old women and impostors have had a 
competition with physicians. And what followeth ? Even this, 4 
that physicians say to themselves as Solomon expresseth it upon 
a higher occasion: if it befall to me as it befalleth to the fools, 
why should I labor to be more wise ? And, therefore, I cannot 
much blame physicians that they use commonly to intend some 
other art or practice which they fancy more than their profession. 
For you shall have of them antiquaries, poets, humanists, states- 
men, merchants, divines, and in every one of them better than 
in their own profession ; and no doubt upon this ground that 
they find that mediocrity and excellence in their art maketh no 
difference in profit or reputation towards their fitness ; for the 
weakness of patients, and sweetness of life, and nature of hope 
maketh men depend upon physicians with all their defects.” 
There are several causes which concur in maintaining this 
strange delusion which maketh men “ to prefer a witch or a 
mountebank before a learned physician.” One great cause is 
undoubtedly that assigned by Lord Bacon, that while “ in other 
arts and sciences men are judged by acts and masterpieces, in 
medicine they are judged by successes and events.” The means 
by which a physician works for the cure of disease are for the 
most part hidden from the patient and friends, or at least are 
unintelligible to them, and hence they can only judge by the 
result ; but since many diseases terminate favorably Under no 
treatment or even under bad treatment, and since certain diseases 
go on inevitably to a fatal termination, so that some patients 
die under skillful management, and some get well under gross 
mismanagement, no correct judgment of the ability of the phy- 
sician can be formed without taking into account the nature and 
severity of the disease and the curative means which have been 
employed. Besides this, traces of the notion prevailing among 
savages that diseases are to be cured by charms and incantations, 
still linger unconsciously among civilized people, and to this 
must be added the error, not yet wholly eradicated even from 
the profession, that medicines have some curative property in 
themselves apart from what depends on their intelligent use, 
which is very much as if one should suppose that the production 
of a piece of statuary depends on some peculiar property of the 
chisel and mallet and not on the genius of the artist. All these 
sources of error interfere with sound judgment in this matter. 5 
One of the strangest phenomena of the present day is the 
existence of different schools or systems of practice, so that in 
this state we find besides our own medical body, two complete 
organizations established by law, representing what are called 
Homoeopathic and Eclectic schools of medicine. The establish- 
ment of different schools or systems of legal practice or engineer- 
ing would not be any more unreasonable than this, and it is 
worth while to inquire into the meaning of this absurd state of 
things, and to define the true position of our medical body to 
those sects which pretend to rival it. 
There is, and there can be but one science and art of medicine ; 
it is that which is taught in medical schools all over the world, 
and which you have begun to learn. It bears the name of no 
man, for it is the work of the human race ; it is limited by no 
distinctive title, for it embraces all that has been attained in the 
knowledge of man in a state of health and disease, and of the 
means which have been devised for the relief and cure of phy- 
sical suffering. It is fotinded on no general proposition nor 
doctrine, but on the whole science of man, in all its length and 
breadth. To call our body Allopathists is as absurd as it is 
insulting. It is supposed to mean that our practice is founded 
on the proposition that “ contraries are cured by contraries,” 
which we repudiate as a vain and unmeaning jingle of words. 
We are practitioners of medicine, not of Ilonueopathic nor 
Allopathic nor Hydropathic medicine, but of medicine, without 
any limiting adjective. We do not inquire whether like is cured 
by like, or contrary by contraries, for we consider these phrases 
void of contents and destitute of meaning, and no more appli- 
cable to the treatment of disease than to building a bridge or 
conducting a lawsuit. We have learned the structure and func- 
tions of the human body in a state of health and disease, and 
the action upon it of hygienic and therapeutic agents, and when 
we are called to a case of disease we observe the symptoms and 
examine the physical signs, and by means of the knowledge we 
bring with us we interpret the symptoms and signs, determine 
the nature of the disease, and devise means of cure. It takes 
more time and labor to learn this than to repeat phrases or as- 6 
sumed propositions, but we consider the method, if more diffi- 
cult, at least more reasonable and effective. 
The medicine we profess had its origin with Hippocrates, or, 
at least, first received from him a scientific form, for its true 
origin was with the first man who undertook to contrive means 
for the relief of disease or accident. From this beginning it has 
come down to us through many changes and revolutions, in the 
course of which it has been enriched by the experience and labors 
and meditations of successive generations of men who have de- 
voted themselves to its cultivation. By slow degrees, each step 
serving as a preparation for the next, it has advanced to its 
present condition, which, although far from perfection, is the 
whole of what man has thus far been able to accomplish in this 
direction. Among the laborers in this field we find some of the 
most illustrious men of ancient and modern times, so that if 
medicine still lags behind some of the other physical sciences, 
if it is wanting in the precision and certainty attained by them, 
the cause is to be sought in the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, 
and not in the lack of capacity of those by whom it has been 
cultivated. 
Thus nourished on the traditions of the past and living on the 
labors of the present, medicine has by a continuous growth 
become what it now is. Imperfect both in theory and in practice, 
it demands and looks for further progress, but strives for this, 
not by discarding the attainments of the past, but by adding to 
them, and carrying them forward. It seeks to correct its errors, 
and fill up its deficiencies by careful observation and study. 
Fully recognizing its imperfection, it holds up no standard of 
orthodoxy. It strives only for truth, and rejects no contribution 
until it is proved to be worthless. In a word, medicine at the 
present day resumes all that has been done in the past and is the 
starting point for future progress. 
Such is the origin and such the mode of growth of the science 
of medicine, and such is the relation it bears to the art of pre- 
venting and curing diseases. This art is long and difficult ; its 
acquisition demands drudgery and repulsive labor. After years 
of earnest work you have just mastered its general outlines, 7 
which you may fill up by a course of study and observation at 
the bedside, and after a long life thus spent you will even more 
than now recognize and lament your deficiencies. Outside of 
medicine thus constituted spring up systems which, discarding 
its traditions and methods, having consequently no roots in the 
past nor organic connection with its present, propose to furnish 
the means of practising the art without learning the long and 
difficult science on which it is founded. These systems recom- 
mend themselves to an incompetent public by their apparent 
simplicity, and to the indolence of the practitioner by the ease 
with which they are learned. They are short exits to medicine, 
royal roads smooth and easy to travel, and leading, if not to the 
true end of medical art, at least to notoriety and pecuniary 
success. 
These systems are brought forward before the medical body, 
are examined, discussed, and being found untrue in science and 
worthless in practice, are rejected, and then it is claimed by their 
authors and followers that it is impossible to get a fair hearing 
from the medical body, that its members are so wedded to old 
usages that discoveries and improvements are rejected simply 
because they are novelties and interfere with prejudices. Ac- 
cordingly, since they cannot maintain a position in the profes- 
sion, they separate themselves from it, decry its science and 
methods and make their appeals to the public. 
Now of all possible charges that can be brought against the 
medical body, surely no one is more preposterous than this one 
of resisting innovations. Our journals teem with novelties, our 
text books in a few years fall behind the science and can with 
difficulty be brought out fast enough to keep the profession 
acquainted with the advances made. Not a single instance can 
be adduced of any improvement in medicine or indeed in any 
science in modern times which has not been greedily received 
by the scientific world. I suppose the names of Galileo and 
Harvey will occur to you, but the persecution of Galileo was 
theological and not scientific, and although the discovery of 
the circulation of blood by Harvey was not at the first well 
received in some quarters, yet it was only twenty-three years after, that his statue was placed in the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, and surely ever since his name has been held in 
reverence by the scientific world. But to come down to the 
present day ; look at the exploration of diseases of the chest by 
percussion auscultation and the other physical signs, which was 
introduced many years subsequent to the publication of Hahne- 
man’s grotesque system, has this been coldly received ? Or look 
at the recent advances in histology and pathological anatomy 
and their application to the interpretation of disease ; have these 
been coldly received ? Or 1 might remind you of the brilliant 
discoveries in organic chemistry and physiology, or of the dis- 
covery and use of anaesthetics, or of valuable additions to our 
materia medica. Have these been coldly received ? And I 
might swell the list far beyond the limits of your patience, 
especially if I take into account all the supposed discoveries in 
medical science and practice which have been rejected only when 
their emptiness has been demonstrated, but which prove at least 
that suggested improvements in medicine do not have to go 
begging for a fair examination. Or let any one compare the 
text books of the present day on any branch of medical science 
or practice with those of fifty years ago, and then say whether 
the medical body is opposed to progress. 
But when a system presents itself wearing the garb of impos- 
ture and announcing a pretended discovery without semblance 
of reason or the least atom of proof, as, for example, when we 
read that dropsy, hernia, spontaneous dislocations, cancer, and 
over one hundred other enumerated diseases are caused at all 
periods of life by itch imperfectly cured in childhood, and that 
one of the remedies for eradicating this disease from the body 
is one-millionth of a grain of oyster shell, each dose of which 
produces 1,000 enumerated symptoms, extending over a period 
of from thirty to forty days, and when we turn in disgust from 
such wretched folly, an outcry is raised by the indignant in- 
ventor and his dupes that an impartial hearing cannot be ex- 
pected from men so imbued with prejudice, and with a most 
consummate impudence such men liken their case to that of 
Harvey and Galileo. Never is a foolish conceit kicked out of 
8 9 
scientific society but that a cry is raised of Harvey and Galileo. 
Oh ! with what contempt would the well disciplined minds of 
these great men look on the vagaries of those who would fain 
take a place by their side. No doubt these philosophers must 
have been grieved by the opposition their discoveries met with 
from their contemporaries, but how much more intense would 
have been their vexation could they have foreseen that their 
names were in future to be associated with those of so many 
blundering blockheads, whose crude notions had been spurned 
with contempt by men of sense, and who for that reason would 
fain hold themselves before the world as victims of scientific 
persecution. 
While, then, there is no disposition in the medical profession to 
oppose the introduction of improvements, there is great unwilling- 
ness to abandon the precious treasure of science bequeathed to 
us by past centuries, and to adopt the idle speculations of system 
makers, who in their presumption would spin out a new science 
from their brains. The activity pervading every department of 
medicine is a sufficient answer to those who charge it with re- 
sistance to progress ; and here a fact worthy of remark presents 
itself, that all those great advances which in our day have 
changed the whole face of our science and art have had their origin 
within the profession and not in the outside systems. Turn over 
your text-books of histology, normal and pathological, of organic 
chemistry and physiology, or read the history of medicine during 
the present century, and see if you will find one result, how- 
ever small, attributed to these parasitic growths living on 
medicine without contributing to its nourishment. The sterility 
of the systems is a sufficient proof of their emptiness and of the 
unsoundness of their methods. 
T have now shown to you the characteristic errors of these 
systems ; but time will not permit me to follow them up and 
refute them individually. For you who know what medical 
science is, no refutation is needed ; and for those who have 
adopted them ignorantly and from caprice, no refutation would 
be sufficient, for it is vain to oppose arguments to opinions 
founded not on reason but on blind love of the marvelous. Be- 10 
sides, even if by refutation we could drive out of vogue the 
prevailing systems, they would be succeeded by others equally 
futile and perhaps more pernicious. The simplicity of the man 
who sat down by the riverside to wait until the water should flow 
by, so that he might pass over dry shod, was not greater than 
that of him who in our day should suppose that the great river 
of human folly and credulity will ever run dry. It would 
seem that henceforward there must be twro classes of medical 
practitioners, one to minister to popular caprice and credulity, 
and the other to practice the art according to the principles and 
rules derived from the long labors of the past. For a long 
time there will be folly enough in the public to support the first 
class, and this folly will be tempered with wisdom and pru- 
dence enough to keep the second class from starvation. 
I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the choice you have made, 
in passing by these royal roads to medicine, or at least to 
popular favor and emolument, and adopting the only path by 
which the temple of medical science is to be reached, that which 
lies through long and patient study. 
If our profession presents much that is discouraging and 
repulsive, it also presents much that is attractive. It is our 
privilege to be engaged in the study of the human body, the 
most interesting and comprehensive of all sciences, for in this 
study we are introduced to all the others, no branch of human 
knowledge being foreign to it. The idea of life lies at the basis 
of all philosophy. The body of man was by the ancients called 
a microcosm, or miniature world, in contrast with the macrocosm 
or greater world. No other science in the same degree enlarges 
the mind by the comprehensive views it lays open to us, nor so 
ravishes us by the admirable order it presents. It is a beautiful 
subject of contemplation, what Bacon calls this curious harp of 
man’s body which it is our business to tune and reduce to har- 
mony. “ In explaining these things,” says Galen, in an ana- 
tomical work, “ I esteem myself as composing a solemn hymn 
to the author of our bodily frame, and in this I think there is 
more true piety than in sacrificing to him hecatombs of oxen or 
burnt offerings of most costly pei-fumes, for I must endeavor to 11 
know him myself and afterwards to show him to others, to 
inform them how great is his wisdom, his virtue and his good- 
ness.” 
If the study of our science conduces to elevation of mind, the 
practice of our art is healthful in its moral influence. It is our 
business to relieve suffering, and benevolence grows by what it 
feeds on. Without improper boasting, I am sure it may be said 
that the medical profession has at all times been noted for charity 
and self-devotion. What a sacrifice of ease and leisure is made 
by physicians, in their attendance on the poor, and with what 
readiness do they expose themselves to contagious diseases ! 
How much is now doing by physicians, in the study and appli- 
cation of sanitary science, not only without pecuniary reward, 
but even in many instances at pecuniary sacrifice for the sake 
of an ungrateful public, which, when it condescends to adopt 
some sanitary improvement, appears to think it is doing a favor 
to the doctors. 
This great treasure of science — these traditions of self- 
devotion and honor — are now to be placed in your keeping. 
Let it be your care not to bury these precious talents in the earth, 
but to improve them and hand them down with increase to your 
successors, to add at least one stone to the pyramid which has 
reached its present elevation by the labors of those who have 
gone before, and thus pay to the future the debt you owe to the 
past. 
And now, gentlemen, in the name of your instructors, and of 
the officers of this institution, I bid you God speed in the noble 
mission to which you have devoted your lives. Whether your 
career shall be brilliant or not, will depend largely on your own 
efforts, but also on advantages of natural capacity and of fortune, 
which are beyond your control. For the faithful use of all the 
means of self-improvement and of doing good, which are placed 
in your hands, you will be held responsible ; for your success you 
are not responsible, and although I would by no means wish you 
to despise the advantages of fortune and social position, those 
great stimulants to exertion, yet I will assure you of one thing, 
that every day you live you will be more and more convinced 12 
that they are of less value than a quiet conscience and your own 
self-respect. Be careful, then, that in your eagerness for success 
you do not lose sight of that which alone can make success 
valuable— the consciousness of having merited it. 
Whatever fate Providence may have in reserve for you, 
whether prosperous or adverse, brilliant or obscure, we earnestly 
hope you may always possess this one consolation, which is far 
above all external advantages, in the reflection that the talents 
which God has placed in your hands have been faithfully used 
in the service of your fellow-men.