Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 15

"We are met to celebrate the beginning of the second century of the Medical School's existence, and the simultaneous completion of its new building. It is a hundred years since John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse and Aaron Dexter were installed as professors of anatomy and surgery, theory and practice, and _materia medica_ respectively, and without the aid of collections or hospitals began to lecture in some small, rough rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Harvard Hall, and in a part of little Holden Chapel, at Cambridge. From that modest beginning the school has gradually grown until it counts a staff of forty-seven teachers, ten professors, six a.s.sistant professors, nine instructors, thirteen clinical instructors, and nine a.s.sistants--working in the s.p.a.cious and well-equipped building, which we are shortly to inspect, and commanding every means of instruction and research which laboratories, dispensaries and hospitals can supply. Out of our present strength and abundance we look back to the founding of the school and to its slow and painful development. We bear in our hearts the three generations of teachers who have served this school with disinterested diligence and zeal. We recall their unrequited labors, their frequent anxieties and conflicts and their unfulfilled hopes; we bring to mind the careful plantings and the tardy harvests, reaped at last, but not by them that sowed. We meet, indeed, to rejoice in present prosperity and fair prospects, but we would first salute our predecessors and think with reverence and grat.i.tude of their toils and sacrifices, the best fruits of which our generation has inherited.

"The medical faculty of to-day have strong grounds for satisfaction in the present state of the school; for they have made great changes in its general plan and policy, run serious risks, received hearty support from the profession and the community, and now see their efforts crowned with substantial success. By doubling the required period of study in each year of the course, inst.i.tuting an admission examination, strengthening the examinations at the end of each year, and establis.h.i.+ng a voluntary fourth year of instruction, which clearly indicates that the real standard of the faculty cannot be reached in three years, they have taken step after step to increase their own labors, make the attainment of the degree more difficult, and diminish the resort of students to the school. They have deliberately sacrificed numbers in their determination to improve the quality of the graduates of the school. At the same time they have successfully carried out an improvement in medical education which required large expenditures. This improvement is the partial subst.i.tution, by every student, of personal practice in laboratories for work upon books, and attendance at lectures. The North Grove street building, erected in 1846-47, contained only one small laboratory for students, that of anatomy. The new building contains a students'

laboratory for each of the five fundamental subjects--anatomy, physiology, chemistry, histology and pathology--and that a large part of the building is devoted to these working rooms. It was a grave question whether the profession, the community and the young men who year by year aspire to become physicians and surgeons would support the faculty in making these improvements. The answer can now be recorded.

"The school has received by gift and bequest three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in ten years; it has secured itself in the centre of the city for many years to come by the timely purchase of a large piece of land; it has paid about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a s.p.a.cious, durable and well-arranged building; it has increased its annual expenditure for salaries of teachers from twenty thousand dollars in 1871-72, to thirty-six thousand dollars in 1882-83; its receipts have exceeded its expenses in every year since 1871-72, and its invested funds now exceed those of 1871 by more than one hundred thousand dollars. At the same time the school has become a centre of chemical, physiological, histological and sanitary research, as well as a place for thorough instruction; its students bring to the school a better education than ever before; they work longer and harder while in the school, and leave it prepared, so far as sound training can prepare them to enter, not the over-crowded lower ranks of the profession, but the higher, where there is always room.

"The faculty recognize that the generosity of the community and the confidence of the students impose upon them reciprocal obligations. They gladly acknowledge themselves bound to teach with candor and enthusiasm, to observe and study with diligence that they may teach always better and better, to ill.u.s.trate before their students the pure scientific spirit, and to hold all their attainments and discoveries at the service of mankind. Certainly the medical faculty have good reason to ask to-day for the felicitations of the profession and the public.

"Nevertheless, the governors, teachers, graduates and friends of this school have no thought of resting contented with its present condition.

Instructed by its past, they have faith in its future. They hope they know that the best fruits of their labors will be reaped by later generations. The medical profession is fortunate among the learned professions in that a fresh and boundless field of unimaginable fertility spreads out before it. Its conquests to come are infinitely greater than those already achieved. The great powers of chemistry and physics, themselves all new, have only just now been effectively employed in the service of medicine and surgery. The zoologist, entomologist, veterinarian and sanitarian have just begun to contribute effectively to the progress of medicine.

"The great achievements of this century in medical science and the healing art are all prophetic. Thus, the measurable deliverance of mankind from small-pox is an earnest of deliverance from measles, scarlatina, and typhoid fever. Within forty years anaesthetics and antiseptics have quadrupled the chances of success in grave surgical operations and have extended indefinitely the domain of warrantable surgery; but in value far beyond all the actual benefits which have thus far accrued to mankind from these discoveries is the clear prophecy they utter of greater blessing to come. A medical school must needs be always expecting new wonders.

"How is medical science to be advanced? First, by the devoted labors of men, young and old, who give their lives to medical observations, research and teaching; secondly, by the gradual aggregation in safe hands of permanent endowments for the promotion of medical science and of the sciences upon which medicine rests. Neither of these springs of progress is to fail us here. Modern society produces the devoted student of science as naturally and inevitably as mediaeval society produced the monk. Enthusiastic devotion to unworldly ends has not diminished; it only manifests itself in new directions. So, too, benevolence and public spirit, when diverted by the teachings of both natural and political science from many of the ancient forms of benevolent activity, have simply found new and better modes of action.

"With thankfulness for the past, with reasonable satisfaction in the present, and with joyful hope in the future, the medical faculty celebrate this anniversary festival, welcoming their guests, thanking their benefactors, and exchanging with their colleagues, their students, and the governing boards mutual congratulations and good wishes as the school sets bravely out upon its second century."

At the close of his address President Eliot turned to the large audience, and said:

"I have now the pleasure of presenting to you our oldest professor and our youngest; our man of science, and our man of letters; our teacher and our friend, Doctor Holmes."

From the delightful and characteristic address of Doctor Holmes, we are permitted to give the following extracts:

"We are in the habit of counting a generation as completed in thirty years, but two lives cover a whole century by an easy act of memory. I, who am now addressing you, distinctly remember the Boston pract.i.tioner who walked among the dead after the battle of Bunker Hill, and pointed out the body of Joseph Warren among the heaps of the slain. Look forward a little while from that time to the period at which this medical school was founded. Eight years had pa.s.sed since John Jeffries was treading the b.l.o.o.d.y turf on yonder hillside. The independence of the United States had just been recognized by Great Britain. The lessons of the war were fresh in the minds of those who had served as military surgeons. They knew what anatomical knowledge means to the man called upon to deal with every form of injury to every organ of the body. They knew what fever and dysentery are in the camp, and what skill is needed by those who have to treat the diseases more fatal than the conflicts of the battlefield. They know also, and too well, how imperfectly taught were most of those to whom the health of the whole community was entrusted....

"And now I will ask you to take a stride of half a century, from the year 1783 to the year 1833. Of this last date I can speak from my own recollection. In April, 1833, I had been more than two years a medical student attending the winter lectures of this school, and have therefore a vivid recollection of the professors of that day. I will only briefly characterize them by their various merits, not so much troubling myself about what may have been their short-comings. The shadowy procession moves almost visibly by me as I speak: John Collins Warren, a cool and skilful operator, a man of unshaken nerves, of determined purpose, of stern ambition, equipped with a fine library, but remarkable quite as much for knowledge of the world as for erudition, and keeping a steady eye on professional and social distinctions, which he attained and transmitted.

"James Jackson, a man of serene and clear intelligence, well instructed, not over book-fed, truthful to the centre, a candid listener to all opinions; a man who forgot himself in his care for others and his love for his profession; by common consent recognized as a model of the wise and good physician. Jacob Bigelow, more learned, far more various in gifts and acquirements than any of his colleagues; shrewd, inventive, constructive, questioning, patient in forming opinions, steadfast in maintaining them; a man of infinite good nature, of ready wit, of a keen sense of humor, and a fine literary taste; one of the most accomplished of American physicians; I do not recall the name of one who could be considered his equal in all respects. Walter Channing, meant by nature for a man of letters, like his brothers, William Ellery and Edward; vivacious, full of anecdote, ready to make trial of new remedies, with the open and receptive intelligence belonging to his name as a birthright; esteemed in his specialty by those who called on him in emergencies. The professor of chemistry of that day was pleasant in the lecture room; rather nervous and excitable, I should say, and judiciously self-conservative when an explosion was a part of the programme."

Speaking of the new building, Doctor Holmes said:

"You will enter or look into more amphitheatres and lecture-rooms than you might have thought were called for. But if you knew what it is to lecture and be lectured to, in a room just emptied of its preceding audience, you would be thankful that any arrangement should prevent such an evil. The experimental physiologists tell us that a bird will live under a bell gla.s.s until he has subst.i.tuted a large amount of carbonic acid for oxygen in the air of the bell gla.s.s. But if another bird is taken from the open air and put in with the first, the new-comer speedily dies. So when the cla.s.s I was lecturing to, was sitting in an atmosphere once breathed already, after I have seen head after head gently declining, and one pair of eyes after another emptying themselves of intelligence, I have said, inaudibly, with the considerate self-restraint of Musidora's rural lover:

"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean that you are indolent, or that I am dull; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.'

"You will see extensive apartments destined for the practical study of chemistry and of physiology. But these branches are no longer studied as of old, by merely listening to lectures. The student must himself perform the a.n.a.lyses which he used to hear about. He must not be poisoned at his work, and therefore he will require a s.p.a.cious and well-ventilated room to work in. You read but the other day of an esteemed fellow-citizen who died from inhaling the vapors of a broken demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad to see that every precaution is taken to insure the safety and health of our students.

"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use of much delicate and complex machinery. You may remember the balance at which Sanctorius sat at his meals, so that when he had taken in a certain number of ounces the lightened table and more heavily weighted philosopher gently parted company. You have heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by means of which all the living processes of a human body are made to declare the total consumption and product during a given period. Food and fuel supplied; work done. Never was the human body as a machine so understood, never did it give such an account of itself, as it now does in the legible handwriting of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, the myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, with all of which the student of to-day is expected to be practically familiar.

... Among the various apartments destined to special uses one will be sure to rivet your attention; namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory, known to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The most difficult work of a medical school is the proper teaching of practical anatomy. The pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional knowledge has always been in the face of numerous obstacles. Superst.i.tion has arrayed all her hobgoblins against it. Popular prejudice has made the study embarra.s.sing and even dangerous to those engaged in it. The surgical student was prohibited from obtaining the knowledge required in his profession, and the surgeon was visited with crus.h.i.+ng penalties for want of that necessary knowledge. Nothing is easier than to excite the odium of the ignorant against this branch of instruction and those who are engaged in it. It is the duty and interest of all intelligent members of the community to defend the anatomist and his place of labor against such appeals to ignorant pa.s.sion as will interfere with this part of medical education, above all, against such inflammatory representations as may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or midnight incendiarism.

"The enlightened legislation of Ma.s.sachusetts has long sanctioned the practice of dissection, and provided means for supporting the needs of anatomical instruction, which managed with decent privacy and discretion, have served the beneficent purpose intended by the wise and humane law-givers, without doing wrong to those natural sensibilities which are always to be respected.

"During the long period in which I have been a professor of anatomy in this medical school, I have had abundant opportunities of knowing the zeal, the industry, the intelligence, the good order and propriety with which this practical department has been carried on. The labors superintended by the demonstrator and his a.s.sistants are in their nature repulsive, and not free from risk of diseases, though in both these respects modern chemistry has introduced great ameliorations. The student is breathing an air which unused senses would find insufferable.

He has tasks to perform which the chambermaid and the stable-boy would shrink from undertaking. We cannot wonder that the sensitive Rousseau could not endure the atmosphere of the room in which he had began a course of anatomical study. But we know that the great painters, Michael Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed many careful dissections; and what they endured for art our students can endure for science and humanity.

"Among the large number of students who have worked in the department of which I am speaking during my long term of service--nearly two thousand are on the catalogue as students--there must have been some who were thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the proprieties. Something must be pardoned to the hardening effect of habit. Something must be forgiven to the light-heartedness of youth, which shows itself in scenes that would sadden and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even youthful womanhood has been known to forget itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I well remember the complaint of Willis, a lover of the gentle s.e.x, and not likely to have told a lie against a charming young person; I quote from my rusty memory, but I believe correctly:

She trifled! ay, that angel maid, She trifled where the dead was laid.

"Nor are older persons always so thoughtful and serious in the presence of mortality as it might be supposed they would show themselves. Some of us have encountered Congressional committees attending the remains of distinguished functionaries to their distant place of burial. They generally bore up well under their bereavement. One might have expected to find them gathered in silent groups in the parlors of the Continental Hotel or the Brevoort House; to meet the grief-stricken members of the party smileless and sobbing as they sadly paced the corridors of Parker's, before they set off in a mournful and weeping procession. It was not so; Candor would have to confess that it was far otherwise; Charity would suggest that Curiosity should withdraw her eye from the key-hole; Humanity would try to excuse what she could not help witnessing; and a tear would fall from the blind eye of oblivion and blot out their hotel bills forever.

"You need not be surprised, then, if among this large number of young men there should have been now and then something to find fault with.

Twice in the course of thirty-five years I have had occasion to rebuke the acts of individual students, once in the presence of the whole cla.s.s on the human and manly sympathy of which I could always safely rely. I have been in the habit of considering myself at liberty to visit the department I am speaking of, though it had its own officers; I took a part in drawing up the original regulations which governed the methods of work; I have often found fault with individuals or small cla.s.ses for a want of method and neatness which is too common in all such places.

But in the face of all peccadilloes and of the idle and baseless stories which have been circulated, I will say, as if from the chair I no longer occupy, that the management of the difficult, delicate and all important branch committed to the care of a succession of laborious and conscientious demonstrators, as I have known it through more than the third of a century, has been discreet, humane, faithful, and that the record of that department is most honorable to them and to the cla.s.ses they have instructed.

"But there are better things to think of and to speak of than the false and foolish stories to which we have been forced to listen. While the pitiable attempt has been making to excite the feelings of the ignorant against the school of the university, hundreds of sufferers throughout Christendom--throughout civilization--have been blessing the name of Boston and the Harvard Medical School as the source from which relief has reached them for one of the gravest injuries, and for one of the most distressing of human maladies. I witnessed many of the experiments by which the great surgeon who lately filled a chair in Harvard University, has made the world his debtor. Those poor remains of mortality of which we have heard so much, have been of more service to the human race than the souls once within them ever dreamed of conferring. Doctor Bigelow's repeated and searching investigations into the anatomy of the hip joint showed him the band which formed the chief difficulty in reducing dislocations of the thigh. What Sir Astley Cooper and all the surgeons after him had failed to see, Doctor Bigelow detected. New rules for reduction of the dislocation were the consequence, and the terrible pulleys disappeared from the operating amphitheatre.

"Still more remarkable are the results obtained by Doctor Bigelow in the saving of life and the lessening of suffering in the new method of operation for calculus. By the testimony of those renowned surgeons, Sir Henry Thompson and Mr. Erichsen, by the award to Doctor Bigelow of a s.e.xennial prize founded by the Marquis d' Argenteuil, and by general consent, this innovation is established as one of the great modern improvements in surgery. I saw the numerous and patient experiments by which that priceless improvement was effected, and I cannot stop to moan over a sc.r.a.p of integument, said to have been made imperishable, when I remember that for every lifeless body which served for these experiments, a hundred died or a thousand living fellow creatures have been saved from unutterable anguish, and many of them from premature death.

"You will visit the n.o.ble hall soon to be filled with the collections left by the late Professor John Collins Warren, added to by other contributors, and to the care and increase of which the late Doctor John Jackson of precious memory gave many years of his always useful and laborious life. You may expect to find there a perfect Golgotha of skulls and a platoon of skeletons open to the sight of all comers. You will find portions of every human organ. You will see bones softened by acid and tied in bowknots; other bones burned until they are light as cork and whiter than ivory, yet still keeping their form; you will see sets of teeth from the stage of infancy to that of old age, and in every intermediate condition, exquisitely prepared and mounted; you will see preparations that once formed portions of living beings now carefully preserved to show their vessels and nerves; the organ of hearing exquisitely carved by French artists; you will find specimens of human integument, showing its const.i.tuent parts in different races; among the rest, that of the Ethiopian, with its cuticle or false skin turned back to show that G.o.d gave him a true skin beneath it as white as our own.

Some of these specimens are injected to show their blood vessels; some are preserved in alcohol; some are dried. There was formerly a small sc.r.a.p, said to be human skin, which had been subjected to the tanning process, and which was not the least interesting of the series. I have not seen it for a good while, and it may have disappeared as the cases might happen to be open while unscrupulous strangers were strolling through the museum. If it has, the curator will probably ask the next poor fellow who has his leg cut off, for permission to have a portion of its integument turned into leather. He would not object, in all probability, especially if he were promised that a wallet for his pocket or a slipper for his remaining foot, should be made from it.

"There is no use in quarrelling with the specimens in a museum because so many of them once formed a part of human beings. The British Government paid fifteen thousand pounds for the collection made by John Hunter, which is full of such relics. The Huntarian Museum is still a source of pride to every educated citizen in London. Our foreign visitors have already learned that the Warren Anatomical Museum is one of the sights worth seeing during their stay among us. Charles d.i.c.kens was greatly interested in looking through its treasures, and that intelligent and indefatigable hard worker, the Emperor of Brazil, inspected its wonders with as much curiosity as if he had been a professor of anatomy. May it ever remain sacred from harm in the n.o.ble hall of which it is about taking possession. If violence, excited by false outcries, shall ever a.s.sail the treasure-house of anthropology, we may tremble lest its next victim shall be the home of art, and ignorant pa.s.sions once aroused, the archives that hold the wealth of literature perish in a new Alexandrian conflagration. This is not a novel source of apprehension to the thoughtful. Education, religious, moral, intellectual, is the only safeguard against so fearful a future.

"To one of the great interests of society, the education of those who are to be the guardians of its health, the stately edifice which opens its doors to us for the first time to-day is devoted. It is a lasting record of the spirit and confidence of the young men of the medical profession, who led their elders in the brave enterprise, an enduring proof of the liberality of the citizens of Boston and of friends beyond our narrow boundaries, a monument to the memory of those who, a hundred years ago, added a school of medicine to our honored, cherished, revered university, and to all who have helped to sustain its usefulness and dignity through the century just completed.

"It stands solid and four square among the structures which are the pride of our New England Venice--our beautiful metropolis, won by well-directed toil from the marshes and creeks and lagoons which were our inheritance from nature. The magnificent churches around it let in the suns.h.i.+ne through windows stained with the pictured legends of antiquity. The student of nature is content with the white rays that show her just as she is; and if ever a building was full of light--light from the north and the south; light from the east and the west; light from above, which the great concave mirror of sky pours down into it--this is such an edifice. The halls where Art teaches its lessons and those where the sister Sciences store their collections, the galleries that display the treasures of painting, and sculpture, are close enough for agreeable companions.h.i.+p. It is probable that in due time the Public Library, with its vast acc.u.mulations, will be next door neighbor to the new domicile of our old and venerated inst.i.tution. And over all this region rise the tall landmarks which tell the dwellers in our streets and the traveller as he approaches that in the home of Science, Arts, and Letters, the G.o.d of our Fathers is never forgotten, but that high above these shrines of earthly knowledge and beauty, are lifted the towers and spires which are the symbols of human aspiration ever looking up to Him, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible."

At the conclusion of this n.o.ble address, the portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes was presented to the Medical School by Doctor Minot, in the happily-chosen words that follow:

"Many alumni of the school, together with some of its present students, have desired that a permanent memorial of their beloved teacher, Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, should be placed in the new college building, in token of their grat.i.tude for the great services which he has rendered to many generations of his pupils. By his eminent scientific attainments, his sound method of teaching, his felicity of ill.u.s.tration, and his untiring devotion to all the duties of his chair, he inspired those who were so fortunate as to come under his instruction with the importance of a thorough knowledge of anatomy, the foundation of medical science. In the name of the alumni and students of this college, I have the pleasure of presenting to the medical faculty a portrait of Professor Holmes, painted by Mr. Alexander, to be placed in the college in remembrance of his invaluable services to Harvard University, to the medical profession and to the community."

The bust of Professor Bigelow was then presented to the school by Hon.

Samuel Green, in the following words:

"The pleasant duty has been a.s.signed me, Mr. President, to present to you, as the head of the corporation of Harvard College, in behalf of his many friends, this animated bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow. The list of subscribers comprises about fifty names, and includes nearly all the surgeons of the two great hospitals in this city; several gentlemen not belonging to the medical profession, but warm personal friends of Doctor Bigelow; a few ladies who had been his patients; and all the surgical house pupils who had ever been connected with the Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital during his long term of service at that inst.i.tution, so far as they could easily be reached by personal application. The bust is given on the condition that it shall be placed permanently in the new surgical lecture room, which corresponds to the scene of Doctor Bigelow's long labors in the old building. It has been made by the eminent sculptor, Launt Thompson of New York, and is a most faithful representation of the distinguished surgeon. It outlines with such accuracy and precision the features of his face and the pose of his head that nothing is wanted, in the opinion of his friends, to make it a correct likeness.

"I need not, in the presence of this audience, name the various steps by which Doctor Bigelow has reached the high position which is conceded to him as freely and fully in Europe as it is in America; but I cannot forbear an allusion to some of his original researches. His mechanism of the reduction of a dislocated femur by manipulation was a great discovery in surgical science, and follows as a simple corollary to the anatomical facts which he has so clearly and minutely demonstrated. His operation of rapid lithotrity has deprived a painful disease of much of its terror as well as of its danger. Nor should I overlook on this occasion his quick and ready discernment of the importance of Doctor Morton's demonstration of the use of ether as a safe anaesthetic, which took place at the Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital in the autumn of 1846.

The discovery of this greatest boon to the human family since the invention of printing, was fraught with such immense possibilities that the world was slow to realize its magnitude; but by the clear foresight and prudent zeal of Doctor Bigelow, shown in many ways, the day was hastened when its use became well nigh universal.

"Doctor Bigelow has filled the chair of surgery in this medical school during thirty-three years, a period of professional instruction that rarely falls to the lot of any teacher; and he now leaves it with the honored t.i.tle of professor emeritus. During this long term of service he has taught, through his lectures, probably not fewer than one thousand eight hundred students, who have graduated at the Harvard Medical School, and perhaps seven thousand five hundred more who have taken their degrees elsewhere; and by these thousands of physicians now scattered throughout the land, those of them who survive, Doctor Bigelow is remembered as most eminently a practical teacher. Active in his profession, clear in his instruction, and enthusiastic in his investigations, he always had the happy faculty of imparting to his students a kindred spirit and zeal. _Haud inexpertus loquor._"

The remainder of the exercises took place in the new building. The dedicatory prayer was offered by Rev. Doctor Peabody, who consecrated the building "to science, humanity and charity, to Christian tenderness and love, and to all the ministries that can enrich humanity."

President Eliot then said:

"In behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard University, and of the Medical School, I declare this building to be devoted to medical science and the art of healing."

Professor Henry W. Williams, in behalf of the medical faculty, said:

"Friends of the Harvard Medical School: For a hundred years the medical faculty of Harvard College have earnestly sought to discover, and striven faithfully to teach, whatever might exalt the condition, relieve the woes and prolong the service of those minds and bodies through which man lives, and moves, and is. Year by year they have seen their horizon of knowledge extended and their sphere of duty enlarged. But, though zeal and self-sacrifice have not been wanting, their efforts to be useful have been continually hindered because of imperfect facilities and scanty resources. All is changed. In this more wonderful than Aladdin's palace, risen from the sea,[8] and which has already endured the wrath and mercy of the flames, we see a fulfilment of our hopes, and the means and a.s.surance of success. Thanks to generous benefactors, there will no longer be a lack of room or of appliances for our needs; our work will go on under fairer auspices, and we can offer to disciples of the healing art fitter opportunities and ampler aid in their studies.

"As spokesman of the faculty on this occasion, so full of felicitation and of promise, I would I could give to their message a host of tongues, to adequately thank those whose great flood of bounty has thus favored and endowed us. In occupying this beautiful and convenient structure, we shall ever feel that the place is dignified by the givers' deed. And we rejoice the more, because we know that this gift of three hundred thousand dollars has been bestowed by those who are accustomed to use their own eyes in their estimation of desert, and that it signifies a hearty approval of our endeavors, and an intent that medical science, as it is to be here embodied and taught, shall have a warm and generous support.

"In accepting this more than princely gift as a token that the value and necessity of well-educated physicians to every community is felt and acknowledged, we hail the privilege of goodly fellows.h.i.+p in which the donors and ourselves have become co-workers, to the end that blessings to the whole land may arise and be memorized in this inst.i.tution; and we trust that the efforts of the faculty to advance the knowledge, train the judgment and perfect the skill of those entering our profession will ever continue to deserve countenance and help.

Colonel Henry Lee's address was the next to follow: