(5. £ J VALEDICTORY ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS, AT THE FIFTY-SECOND COMMENCEMENT OF totlefoit |pebicaJ Crilegc. BY S. G. PERKINS, M. D. lis, /. QMATCf, •The science of medicine employs the whole man for it relates to the whole man.-— tiiitflie. RUTLAND: (iEO. A. TUTTLE & CO., PRINTER* isf>;>. CORRESPONDENCE. Castleton Medical College, November 21st, 1855 S. G. Perkins, M. D.—Dear Sie—At a meeting of the Students and Alumni of Castleton Medical College we, the undersigned, were appointed a Committee to request a copy of your able and eloquent address to the Graduating Class of the Autumnal Session of 1855 for pub- lication. With sentiments of great respect, we remain, Very truly yours. Edward Merrill,, Edward W. Jenks, Spencer G. Welch Messrs. Merrill, Jenks and Welch,—Gentlemen : In reply to your flattering note of to-day, in which you. in behalf of the Graduating Class und students request a copy of my address, I have to say that I will willingly comply with your request, if you will allow me a few days for correcting the present imperfect manuscript. With assurances of my respect and best wishes for your future welfare, I remain. Yours truly, S. (i. 1'ERKINB CusUeton, November 21, 1855. \DDRESS. Gentlhmkn of the Society of Alumni: In the absence of those who were appointed for this purpose the officers of your Society have devolved on me the duty of addressing you at this your semi-annual gathering. Most of you are about leaving your Alma Mater to enter on the active duties of life, bearing with you her patent and warrant of wor- thiness as your introductory greeting to your elder brethren, who are already laboring in the same field of usefulness that you have chosen for yourselves. Hence, as year by year has gone by, and at each semi-annual gathering those of us who were to depart have always far outnumbered those who were to remain, custom, and the apparent needs of the occasion, have assigned to this address a valedictory tone—full of fare- wells and good advice. But, standing before you to-day, as the spirit and true mean- ing of its ceremonies dawn upon me, I cannot so accept the character of the occasion. I do not seem to see you as bid- ding adieu to anything or any body ; for the love and actual presence of your kind mother will go Avith you wherever in life you may be, and the counsels and instructions with which she has now so long been endowmg you will, if you are active men in your vocation, be called forth at every step of your pilgrim- age, and make her presence real. So too, with each practical jfcideavor to control the raging of disease or assuage its pains, 4 will the forms of those who have taught you be evoked in sure companionship with their teachings, and they, too, will actu- ally go with you across river and prairie and mountain, and stand by your side in every difficulty, if memory is faithful to her trust. So I do not seem to see you as departing from any- thing, but as standing, rather, on the threshold of a mighty edifice, which is at once temple and school and workshop,—a temple whose prayers, and a school whose teachings are alike couched in the forms of earnest labors :—where the mottos, Jjahorare est orare and Urperioitia docet are twined in one, and both lead up to a practical religion, whose creeds are deeds. Into this Temple it seems my office to welcome yon. Others have prepared you ; others have opened the portals to you, and it is mine to say to you words of good cheer as you pass through the arched gateway, and onward to the duties which fitness and necessity have assigned you in the ministra- tions at its altars. It is mine, perhaps, to speak of the duties to which you are now called ;—of their dignity and cunningly distributed arrangements ;—of the dangers which will beset you, and the joys which await you in your future, thus just now opening upon you. But how could I compress into a brief address the facts and knowledges for which a life-long experience is to be granted you ? How could I here unfold properly the volume of the dignity of our profession, whose first pages were written with the earliest annals of our race, and to which each succeeding year, from the grey dawn of time downwards, has added new leaves, written in clearer characters. As, on this occasion, the broad field of our common labors rises to our view, I, who have but a few years preceded you on its limits, can only give you here and there isolated hints of those facts and principles which are just beginning to dawn upon me, and for crowding which into a completed picture, a lifetime is given to each one of us. Let us first look, with what clearness this ne>v light will al- low, at the relations of our profession to others, and to the, wants and duties of our time ; that happily we may gather 0 therefrom hints as to our own relations to those whom we may meet and jostle in the crowded highway of life. Our time has, with all its resemblance to past times, features of its own, which distinguish it from all others that have be- fore walked the upper air, and been seen of men. Now, imder the apparently mild sway of King Mammon, all the nations of the world are being banded and knitted together by subtle yet strong cords ; so that never in the palmiest days of the Roman State was the whole earth so united. The offender against the will and dignity of a Ciesar could not more surely be tracked to the remotest quarters of the known earth ;—to any and ev- ery place where a man of those times would find life even tol- erable', as now any offender against the majesty of this poten- tate can be followed to all corners of the earth where the fruits of such offence can be enjoyed, and there despoiled of his booty, and brought with ignominy back. Help, too, has he ordered for all his true subjects who rightly court his favor, and there is now no port or mart in the wide earth where his sway is not acknowledged. Thus do we, only in a more refined form, re- peat the universality of the Roman dominion, and under new phases help to perpetuate her eternal life/ Yet a new thing is seen under the sun of this age. Beauty has blossomed forth under the genial skies of Greece in its most perfect forms of word and of marble ; stern, external Justice has been enunci- ated from the Roman Forum in forms which are the basis of all our legal action to-day ; and the fervor of Religion on the plains and hills of-ludea and under the burning suns of Arabia has burned with so fierce intensity, as to leave on all our life inef- faceable scars ; yet never before has calm-eyed Science walked the earth surrounded by her votaries. Grecian Mythology has no Divinity with her attributes ;—Roman Law no place for her in the civil polity ; and religious zeal no shrine where she can worship. In Saxon England, just after English Shakspearc had finished bis perfect pictures of the then recently past chiv- alric age ; just after English Elizabeth had laid the foundations of English commercial and naval power, and so the basis of our universal Mammonic sway, arose English Bacon, the first High G Priest of her order; the first teacher of her grandly simple mysteries. . Gentlemen! the usage of the present and the traditions of the past, alike assigned to us and our culture, peculiarly fit us for keeping forever undying this Torch of Knowledge, whose date, like Meleager's, is coetaneous at both extremes with our civil- ization. No other of those organized bands, which, under the name of learned professions, are doing the world's work, in the higher department of thought and activity, can with so much show7 of right claim this privilege. The domains of Theology are in the Past. From it must she derive her principles and their illustrations. Through a dim waste of Avords; of Avords heaped on Avords, and creed and formula heaped on creed and formula ; through the shifting lights of History, and the almost darkness visible of Tradition must she grope for the food of her intellect. The theologian can only reach with the tips of his fingers the strong props of present induction. There is a sus- picion of defilement should he attempt to grasp them. The Lawyer's domain is mainly in the Past. Precedent, usage and custom are his guiding stars; not present use and fitness: and that profession, long since divorced from any but a factitious use to humanity, dabbling in the muddy pools of political cor- ruption, and draAving from thence the main life Avhich animates its being, has long since called on heaven and earth to send some stout iconoclast to serve as its headsman. Our uses alone have need of instant science. To us alone, of all the Profes- sions that have come doAvn from the past, is given the privilege of incorporating into our life the discoveries of to-day, and of making them useful to Humanity. Turning from this contemplation to the varied forms of our age's industry ;—to the poisonous gases and pestilential mi- asms Avhich it generates, not only directly by its processes, but mdirectly by the concentration of life necessary for their most perfect development:—glancing for a moment at the luxury piled on luxury, Avhich fills every crevice of society, and leaAres hardly one cool and healthy matrix, where young vigor can be well born and Avell developed ; Ave see that there never Avas a 7 civilization which so needed the helping hand of a Avise, clear- eyed Science, both for prevention and for cure. There never was an age which called so loudly for a knowledge of the laws of life and of death, of health and disease of the outAvard frame. It calls for men with open eyes to enter its dungeoned Avork- shops and perfumed palaces, and discover and teach Iioav each tend to disease, and how both can be combined for health. Enless this is done soon, the bodies of our Saxon race, preyed on at both extremes of the social scale, will soon become too weak to bear the Aveight of destiny, and our civilization Avill only envelope the Avorld like a Nessus shirt, to consume Avith poison-fires the Herculean frame of embodied humanity. Thus does Medicine as a science, and as an art, stand re- lated to our time. It has as long a genealogy in the history of the Past; it draAvs a heartier life from the inspirations of the present; and has before it an illimitable future of usefulness. If any of our present learned professions are to overlive the disturbances Avhich rock our age to the centre of its practical and speculative life,—this noble profession of ours bids fair to accompany humanity, with neAvly developed creative poAvers, forever onwards lovingly and helpingly into the golden deeps of its future. Do not, I beseech you, regard these Avoids as windy tropes of arrogant Braggadocio, but as the expression of earnest thoughts that have long accompanied me, and sought for utterance. By accepting them you may aid in cheering many an hour of unrequited toil. But this picture has its contrast. Every noble form of life has its bane and especiaEantipafhy. To each class of animals belongs its peculiar parasite: our legal Guild has its ,l Shys- ters" and " pettifoggers," avIio, clinging in the skirts of its am- ple robe, manage to draAv therefrom a modicum of support, and sometimes even attain a portly size. For us a providence, benign, no doubt, in its cliastenings, has sent quacks into the world, and appointed us, by instinctive antipathies, as their es- pecial huntsmen. Our profession, to judge by its Avritten and spoken literature, is afflicted Avith a wide-spread Quackophobia ; with such fierce vigor does it strike at the windmills of Quack- 8 dom, that croAvn every height of vantage in the neAvspaper press, and in the erratic literature of almanac, pamphlet and handbill. The true Quack is the ne plus ultra of medical op- probrium in our family quarrels, and like that of heretic and infidel in theological ones, has such a damning signifiicance, that its discharge at an adversary is considered the end of con- troversy. But this term, like every other that is used as a missile in Avordy Avarfare, has acquired an extremely variable significance. With some, the mere lack of a Latin diploma is supposed to constitute the puiictum damnosum of defect, 1ioa\~- ever Avell the brain may be furnished Avith clear comprehension of disease and its remedies. For others, the use of any news- paper advertisement, as an announcement of special poAvers or faciHties in the cure of any given department of disease adver- tises at the same time a quack. Still others mark Avith espe- cial opprobium, the confinement of the attention to a single class of remedies, and forget, on the one hand, the proverbial poAvers of the man of one book and of one Aveapon, and on the other the inevitable tendency to routineism Avhich often enfolds the best in its subtle toils, and often magically confines men of naturally the Avidest scope and tendency Avithin the narroAV lim- its of a feAV drugs and appliances. Some consider the use of simple cold AArater, with the notion that it has curative poAvers, as unmistakably the plague spot of quackery; Avhile others re- serve all their denunciations for those avIio strive to coax and wheedle out formidable diseases by the aid of infinitesimal do- ses and sugar pills. Meanwhile the unorganized mass thus as- sailed are not idle. They give as well as take, and fling back Quack for Quack—mud for mud. Thus this quack-hunting turns out a sorry affair, and instead of chivalric tourney with beauty-croAvned victory, becomes a mere rabble melee and street fight, Avherein Avhocver mixes, be he on Avhich side he may, comes out bruised and dusted from the conflict. After denunciations and lamentations ; after appeals to common sense and special laAvs, quackery, so called, still flourishes far and wide, and, hydra-like, puts forth neAV heads, with sharper and cleaner tusks for every one that fierce denunciation or trench- 9 ant sarcasm strive to lop off. The Magnetic Powder and true Quack Exterminator is yet to be sought. Judging merely from the confusion of tongues Avhich prevails on this point, popular logic according to current samples might easily conclude, that there Avas really no such thing as a genu- ine quack extant as a veritable entity. Medical controversy has so misapplied this term, and medical routine has so kept misapplying it, that the term has lost all significance in the popular ear, except as an indication of the Avarmth of medical combat, and the Quack is fast becoming a myth. But there must be some central idea, Avhich Avill verify all these separate images of quackhood, that each one paints on the retina of his imagination : some specific difference of the quack from the true physician, Avhich underlies all these varying forms. As our rit- ual enjoins on us to abstain from all forms of quackery with as much rigidity as the Jcav from pork, or Brahmin from the de- filing contact of Parioh, it becomes us by all means to strive to find out Avhat a quack really is that on one hand Ave may not be defiled, and, on the other, be not lacking in brotherly help- fulness and charity. To my mind, Gentlemen, there is one type of complete man- hood which in its subtle spiritual essence is capable of penetra- ting every form of human activity, and irradiating with its pres- ence every kind of labor. No matter where, or Iioav, that labor is performed ; Avhether in cabin or in palace ; in field, or in Avork- shop, in study ; Avhether Avell done, or in the light of a more per- fect knoAvledgc, even ill done ;—if true good will and desire to benefit others conjoined with earnestness inform the deed, it is noble, and should and will, ever be acceptable in the sight of Oods and men. The light that shone on Calvary irradiates it, and he Avho gave his life for man acknoAvledges the doer as his brother. To all true men, avIio live in the light of that wisdom will the radiance which accompanies such a deed be apparent. Its glory Avill shine in their vyc^ with a radiance that far trans- cends the tinsel glitter, that accompanies the merely success- ful action. Sound Philosophy has long since ascribed to the forms of na- 10 ture their position in the scale of being in proportion to their spontaniety, and Philosophy and the instincts of the people, as recorded in their phrases, have acknowledged that a good will, Avas one active for others' good. Hence, by sure, though Avide-stepping deduction, must that be the highest form of Man- hood Avhich, in all its motions is moved from the inscrutable depth of its own being to accomplish outwardly on the plane of sense acts of pure beneficence. Seeker after Truth, Lover of the Right,—-Man of Principle,—True Artist, are only other names for the manifestations of Ideal man : names determined by the forms which his action takes, or by the standpoint of the beholder. For there is a point high in the serene heavens of Intellect—Heart and Sense, Avbere Truth, Love and Beauty tAvine in triple unity round the throne of Deity. As Physicians you are men ; called by fitness of faculty or circumstance to the vocation of healing others. The practice of this vocation is but another wrappage round your central Manhood, and should be instinct Avith its life to Avear the hue of proper beauty. Every departure in your practice from the central law of highest excellence of your manhood is so much degradation and defilement to your spiritual nature. With o\- ery violation of its precepts do our skies narrow. The Sun of Life refuses its light and heat, and nature and man groAv dark and desolate, and dreary and unloveable. There is on the other band, a beautiful Justice manifested in the working of this law, Avhich, with every deed done in accordance Avith its pure teachings brings inevitably its sure reward of spiritual advancement to higher and clearer planes of thought and will ; to a larger and wider manhood. With every deed done in the full light of its teachings are heart, intellect and sense opened to broader reaches of Love, thought and beauty in the Avorld around us, and so all nature, to our vieAV, becomes instinct with the divine life. Let us no longer hunt the quack Avith such fierce zeal. Let ue leave him building round himself walls of triple brass ; dark- ening the windoAvs of his soul. But let us, turning each to our- selves, strive to hunt out all forms of quackery from our OAvn 11 natures and actions, and so perfect our lives. The needs of the body for food and raiment and furtherance in its activity ; the needs of the soul's body, the human understanding namely, for books and all the means of culture are constantly urging us to Avar with the stout producers and holders of these commodi- ties, and so tending to make us forget this eternal laAV, that will never forget us. Let us each one strive to get rid of the chaff from our oayii eyes, before Ave pluck at the mote in the eye of a brother man. Let us beAvarc of judging too rashly, lest the judgment too clearly sIioav through Avhat colored win- dows ayc look out of our OAvn prison-house of body and environ- ment of mood. For ever doth the body with all its needs cling to the skirts of the soul, and striving thus to lift itself into her pure regions, hinders her proper motion, and by its blind crav- ings, tends to keep her chained in its darkness. Another consideration will perhaps still more tend to mitigate the raging of this hereditary disease of our profession. There is nothing more sure, than that " the thoughts of men Aviden with the process of the suns," and that year by year Positive Science builds, stone by stone, the Avails of her Eternal Tem- ple. There is much ado about Avhat is only scaffolding ; much that is merely temporary in her structure : yet still, year by year, and age by age, she sloAvly and surely adds to that fab- ric whose existence is to accompany that of humanity on this planet. But her organizations are not yet so perfect as to be ahvays endogenous in their form of growth and production.— Often, Avhen a Great Truth is to be added to her Structure, it first descends from the upper air outside the wide circle of her workmen and votaries. The Kingdom of Truth comes oftcnest without observation. It Avalks the earth long clad in rags and defiled by dirt. No learned Academy inaugurated the bless- in"1 of vaccination : no college of learned Professors developed the mystery of the circulation of the blood : no gowned and di- plomaed Doctor first showed us how universal water could be used in every department of healing art. The Presidents of the Sanhedrims of the world never become its Messiahs. So, often in some bye-place : often obscured by the humility of it.-; 12 birth, and contracted ami misshapen by adversity, and dark- ened and hindered by the ignorance of its very votaries, shall we find the infant child of a neAV truth, whose ripened manhood is to bless our race. We shall have need of much toleration, of much kind and tender helpfulness, if Ave would see the red, pulpy and besmeared infant grow beyond his helpless and inar- ticulate waitings, to a clear, self-sustained beauty and useful- ness. We cannot put by the duty which the age has laid on us, as a profession. We are its Scholars: its forerunners in the path it most delights to travel—that of Positive Science. We shall, as individuals and as a profession, fall behind the main body of this great advancing army of humanity, and become obsolete, unless we will fulfill our mission Avith cheerful alacri- ty, and be ready to discover, and adopt neAV appliances to its growing needs. There is no need of our leaving our path in search of noA-elties. If the great laAvs of Humanity irradiate our eyes will be clear and all external nature will shine with intelligence. Every phenomenon of her varied life will become a mystic Hieroglyph, replete with significance, and Ave shall carry with ourselves the key, AvhercAvith to unlock the hidden meaning. The varying forms of disease, the changeful beauty of Health, the motions of animals, and the thousandfold chem- istries and Dynamics of inanimate nature will become hints and helpers. We must not forget that our life is bifold, and that the tAVO extremes of learner and doer ;—of student and practitioner are needed to make up the full compliment of the perfect man.— Hitherto Ave have sat on the forms of instruction mainly ; that we might learn the first simplest sums of the alphabet of na- ture, Avhich our elder brothers have hoav with such pains de1 ciphered. The meaning and true intent as Avell as the sep- arate items of a true Natural History are yet as far from us, as was complete Egyptian History from the first decipher- er of the llosetta stone. The sum of our present knoAvledge is extremely limited when compared Avith the infinite variety of nature and the infinite needs of man. One of our greatest Philosophers has compared himself to a child picking up shells 13 on the shore of the Ocean of Truth; and though science since his time, has, by creeping on with steady pace, made great advances, we are yet in the infancy of her life. The Proteus of disease still needs at every step a Herculean intel- lect to bind, and make it yield an answer to our seekings.— Through every element have Ave chased it, and bv the aid of the microscope have tracked it to its remotest dens and narrow- est recesses, but Ave knoAV not yet the oracle Avhich we seek.— Fevers yet burn ;—Agues yet chill; and Cholera and the Yom- ito Avalk unchecked over our land. Wc knoAv not of the mystery of these diseases, in Avhat recess of the frame thev lurk, and by Avhat means they work their potent spells. The cacexia, that like a Nemesis dogs the steps of civilization,— whence comes it and Iioav can its progress be stayed '( Or if inevitable in its surety, it only Avaits its destined hour ; what is the lease it has granted us, and on Avhat terms '( These arc a feAV of the many questions yet remaining unsolved : questions to solve either one of Avhich Avere Avorth a life-time of patient thought and silent Avork: questions of which our age demands a solution from us, as from the steAvards of its health. If no solution can yet be given ; if the true answers arc yet buried too deep in the infinite depths of science for us to reach in our life-time ; the age demands at least an earnest effort to- wards such solution ;—a sIioay of progress ; and our oavh sense, duty and worthiness will not let us rest, Avithout having done Avhat in us lies to fonvard such a consummation, and leave to our successors the rich legacy avc have inherited, increased in value. Nor should our scholarship be confined to the narrow limits of Avhat is of immediate practical utility in our peculiar profes- sion : for thus, not only Avould our pure professional knoAvledge grownarroAV and thin, and become like a long column extend- ed forth with unprotected flanks amid hostile elements, and lia- ble to be broken and disconnected at any point, but we our- selves, as individuals, would lack much that universality of cul- ture, which perfected manhood requires. We must have the means of making all the phenomena of life suggestive and 14 assistant to us. The connection of mind with matter ; the laAvs of growth and decay in animal and vegetable ; the relations of heat and cold, of light and of darkness ; of all the impon- derable agents in Nature, whether as electricity they culminate in storm, or as Odyla their gentle pulsings are rarely seen, heard or felt; all these, and, indeed, infinite unnameable Na- ture herself must be turned on to our side, if Ave Avould clear out the Augean stable of disease. Besides, as before remarked, we are, as a profession, pecu- liarly the ministers at the altars of Positive Science. On us, more than on any other order of practical men, devolves the duty of keeping forever free from error the books of the LaAvs. and of interpreting them to the people. In every tOAvn and hamlet of our land it is to the Doctor that men first look for the explanation of a new phenomenon. Do the skies Avcar a pecu- liar hue ; does some meteoric sliOAverpass athAvartthe heavens ; does some Lux us Natune appear in barnyard or cornfield, or is some unaccustomed plant or mineral chanced upon by wander- ing hunter or erratic delver: the Doctor is first called on to ex- plain. • He, if he Avould keep his place in the hearts of the people ; if he Avould fulfill their instinctive sentiment of the du- ties of his office, must tell the A\Thy and the Avherefore, the Iioav and the use of every phenomenon of Earth and of Air. Fail- ing to do this, or failing to give good evidence that universal sci- ence has made no progress towards this, the clear eye of the people marks the defect in its Journal, and carries it inevitably to the debtor side of the long account, it keeps in its Ledger, with an arm at its service that it has raised, and sustains at so much cost. Every such defect is posted, too, to the private account of the individual by the community Avherc he dAvells, and if it get too long, his name becomes a pregnant justification in popular logic for deserting the diplomaed doctors, and resort- ing to Ayhatever charlatan of loudest blazing pretension crosses their orbit. Do not mistake my meaning. I do not stand here, as an ad- vocate of Avalking Encyclopedism. I do not, Avliilc our means of wide culture arc so scant, and our national life is rusliing with 15 such foamy rapidity into practicality, seek to bar the progress of any into the field, for which he has been trained. I onlv seek to urge you to unremitted exertions, to make up by the means which your hcav profession will supply Avhatever deficien- cies you may discover. Human curiosity is as infinite as the mysteriousNature which unfolds it, and feeds its undying hun- ger, and no brain, that is just passing from Academic Halls, can bearAvith it one tithe of the solutions which our poor science has furnished for the interpretation of Nature. I have, per- haps, been only repeating, in longer phrase, that Avorld-old truth, which every man, Avho has climbed the heights of con- templation, has sadly experienced. Grecian Poet, German Goethe, and our own Longfellow have alike given utterance in slightly varying form to the truth, the latter has -o beautifully expressed in his kw Psalm of Life " Aeh (Jott ! Die Kurst ist lang; Und Kurtz ist unser Lelien." " Oh God ! How long is Art: and how short our life"; seems wrung from the Aviso Faust in his strivings to comprehend the infinite. J have but been calling your attention to the immense demands that will be made upon our knowledge, and to the ex- tremely meagre satisfaction which our means of culture enable us to give ; and urging it on you as your duty and your privi- lege to devote the brief span of your earthly life to the making more narroAV this Avide gap between want and have in the enu- merations of Positive KnoAvledge. But, after all, it is not as gownsmen, or as cloistered Schol- ars, that you are mainly to be knoAvn. You have just enlisted for life in a mighty army. Its posts are scattered over the wide earth. Its duties are coextensive with humanity, and call for active and continued exertion in its behalf. Ever after the accession of a hcav thought will come a new deed to clinch the thought in its place, and make it part of you. Ever alter a new deed Avill come infinite suggestions of better possibilities, and thus thought and deed, like spirit and body, will mutually help each other onwards through the tangled mazes of life.— Thus can you realize in its purest expression the Joys of the 16 true Artist Life: creating from the base materials around you young and glowing health : Aveaving, if you are Christian men, the subtle chains of sympathy from house to house and from neighborhood to neighborhood : officiating at the first entrance of humanity on this planet; ministering to its onward course, and alleviating the pangs of the dissolution of soul and body, when the ripened germ escapes from its prison, and rises to bloom in ever-groAving perfection. When such are your active relations to all humanity, I need not again urge on you the beauty and absolute use of a Avide Sympathy, and of clear, pure good-Avill. I need only remind you, that nothing short of this will thoroughly unlock the doors of the life you seek to enter upon ; that nothing else will open to you the secrets of the foe you are to fight; and that nothing will so clear the eye, and nerve the arm for the conflict, as this. No pretence will here avail you. The sure instincts of the sufferer, sharpened by the pangs of disease, Avill become agents of Nature's universal laAvs, and penetrate every concealment, and expose every hypocrisy, Here, if you are aviso, you Avill only strive to practice the So- cratic maxim : " ahvays try to be Avhat you Avish to seem."— Indeed, you can hardly in your active life, surrounded as you Avill be by deceitful self-interest and innumerable temptations to it, carry with you, as a charm to keep you from evil, a spell so potent as these Avords. They are pure gold, and will attest their OAATn value on every mart of action. " Always strive to be ivhat you tvish to seem." Bind it on your foreheads, and Avcar it in your hearts ; and the airy shapes of aspiration will become tangible realities : thought and hope will be chained in sure se- quence to life, and the former will become clearer and stronger, and the latter more beautiful. Tavo considerations seem to me especially cheering, as ayc look forward to the active life of our profession, and the circum- stances Avhich environ it. The first is the universal, helpful brotherhood, Avhich, in spite of Avide differences of thought and of process belong to it as a Avhole. The second is the attitude of brotherly helpfulness, in Avhich it stands towards all human- ity outside the pale of its organization. As regards the first, 17 we can hardly settle on the outskirts of civilization ; on the far- off prairie ; amid the forests of Oregon, the placers of Califor- nia, or in the islands of the Pacific, but that we Avill be linked ' to our brethren by subtle affinities and connections. The inter- change of letters and of arts is so sure and thorough, that cun- ning brains and busy hands in London and Paris and New York, in every workshop and Hospital and hamlet will think, and Avork for us; and use every effort, that the fruit of their la- bor may reach us in our seeming isolation. Under all the shoAV of contention and outward seeming conflict of opinion, will Prctsnitz and Hahneman and Thompson and Beach, as Avell as the lights of English and French medicine and surgery bring help to our thought, if Ave are right-minded. Under all the competition of trade, run currents of furtherance from the Avork- shops of cunning artificers of Medical and Surgical tools all over the world. The second consideration I have already in part adverted to. In spite of the greed, which has disgraced our profession, and made it the butt of ridicule by the satirist, and the frequent theme of denunciation by many earnest men; its attitude is necessarily helpful toAvards all humanity. The poor and the rich, the bond and the free alike furnish the facts, on which our knowledge must be based, and the staple for further pro- gress. We must treat disease Avherever Ave find it, if Ave Avould win true knowledge, and really accomplish our active mission in its perfection. Hence we are bound to a catholicity in our charities by adamantine chains of strong necessity ; by every consideration of interest, as well as duty. This necessity must tend to keep our hearts ever open, and our souls ever young. Thus have I briefly, in the space allotted to me, glanced at some of the relations your new life holds with nature and men around it. Much must be left unsaid ; much be only imper- fectly said in the short time allowed to such an address. I have spoken to you of the dignity and worth of our profession, as shoAvn by its relations to others, and its use to humanity. I have called your attention to the essential characteristics of the 18 false Physician, and to the double nature of Scholar and Art- ist, which the needs of the Physician require. It only remains to say, in behalf of the teachers who have taught you, and the citizens amid whose homes you have tem- porarily sojourned, that the regret of parting is diminished by the thought, that your going forth will be useful to humanity. That now your novitiate is past, you are fitted to ward off dan- ger from, and to add new powers to, the soul's finest instrument and best servant—the human body. Whenever the loosening of the bands of your harness of toil shall alloAv you to revisit these scenes, or a kindly yearning shall in after years call you back, you will find the fire still burning on the altar of your Alma Mater, and our social hearths will welcome you to our quiet homes.