Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 16

Mr. President: Thanks for your invitation to be present on this interesting occasion--the hundredth anniversary of your medical school and the dedication of a new building of fair proportions, well adapted to your wants, as far as a non-professional can judge. You have a.s.signed to me the honorable task of speaking for the contributors to the building fund. I little thought, as I used to gaze with awe at that prim, solitary, impenetrable little building in Mason Street, and with imaginative companions conjure up the mysteries within, that I should ever dare to enter and explore its interior; nor have I yet acquired that relish for morbid specimens which characterized my lamented kinsman, who devoted so many years to acc.u.mulating and ill.u.s.trating your pathological collection. It is an ordeal to a layman, Mr. President, especially to one who has reached the sixth age, to be so forcibly reminded, as one is here, of the

last scene of all That ends this strange, eventful history, _Sans_ teeth, _sans_ eyes, _sans_ taste, _sans_ everything,

and it is a further ordeal to a.s.sume to speak for others, whose motives for aiding you I may not adequately set forth. This I can say, that we are citizens of no mean city; that private frugality and public liberality have distinguished the inhabitants of this 'Old Town of Boston,' from the days of the good and wise John Winthrop, whose own substance was consumed in founding this colony, to the present time.

Down through these two centuries and a half the multiform and ever-increasing needs of the community have been discovered and supplied, not by Government, but by patriotic citizens, who have given of their time and substance to promote the common weal, remembering 'that the body is not one member, but many, and that the members should have the same care, one for another.' It is this public spirit, manifested in its heroic form in our civil war, that has made this dear old Commonwealth what we all know it to be, despite foul slanders. Far distant be the day when this sense of brotherhood shall be lost. Purple and fine linen are well, if one can afford them; but let not Dives forget Lazarus at his gate.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth acc.u.mulates, and men decay.

"Whatever doubts may arise as to some of our benevolent schemes, our safety and progress rest upon the advancement of sound learning, and we feel a.s.sured that the increased facilities furnished by this ample building, for acquiring and disseminating knowledge of our fearful and wonderful frame, will be improved by your brethren. Some of the papers read before the International Medical College, in London, two years ago, impressed me deeply with the many wants of the profession. And who are more likely to have their wants supplied? for the physician is not regarded here, as in some countries, as the successor to the barber surgeon, and his fees slipped into his upturned palm as if he were a mendicant or a menial. Dining with two Englishmen, one an Oxford professor, the other the brother of a lord, a few years since, I was surprised to hear their views of the social standing of the medical profession, and could not help contrasting their position here, where, if not all autocrats, they are all const.i.tutional, and some of them hereditary, monarchs, accompanied by honor, love, obedience, troops of friends. But however ranked, physicians have the same attributes the world over. I have had occasion to see a good deal of English, French, German and Italian physicians under very trying circ.u.mstances, and have been touched by their affectionate devotion to their patients. The good physician is our earliest and our latest friend; he listens to our first and our last breath; in all times of bodily distress and danger we look up to him to relieve us. 'Neither the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday, deters him.'

Alike to him is time, or tide, December's snow or July's pride; Alike to him is tide, or time, Moonless midnight, or matin prime.

"The faithful pursuit of any profession involves sacrifice of self; but the man who calls no hour his own, who consecrates his days and nights to suffering humanity, treads close in the footsteps of his Master. No wonder, then, that the bond between them and their patients is so strong; no wonder that we respond cheerfully to their call, in grat.i.tude for what they have, and in sorrow for what they have not, been able to do to preserve the lives and to promote the health of those dear to us.

And how could money be spent more economically than to promote the further enlightenment of the medical profession? What better legacy can we leave our children, and our children's children, than an illumined medical faculty?"

After these addresses a reception was given to the subscribers to the building fund by President Eliot and the faculty of the Medical School.

In referring to Doctor Holmes' brave, outspoken words, an eminent Boston clergyman wrote as follows:

"The only qualification which we have heard of the universal and enthusiastic appreciation of the sage, the vivacious and the rich utterance of our admired doctor and foremost man of letters on this occasion, was in a somewhat regretful feeling that he should have turned the full power of his humor and of his caustic satire upon the mean and contemptible effort of an unprincipled demagogue to defame the Harvard Medical School. We do not sympathize with even this qualified stricture on the remarks of Doctor Holmes here referred to. True, his address was an historical one, designed for an historical review of the past of the inst.i.tution. But it is also to serve the uses of history for the future, especially as a record of the aspects of the inst.i.tution and of the interest and confidence of our living community in it during the year marking such a conspicuous event for it as the inauguration of the new edifice prepared for it by the munificence of those who appreciate its almost divine offices of mercy and benevolence. And during this very year, an a.s.sault of the most dastardly character has been made upon it by one who, high in office and with vast power of influence over an ignorant and easily prejudiced const.i.tuency, knows as well as any one among us the utter and wicked falsity of his allegations.

"Doctor Holmes was forced to make some recognition of these slanders addressed to the uninformed, credulous and gullible portion of our community. He would have been generally censured if he had pa.s.sed them by. The only question for him and for a critically judging community would concern the true spirit and way in which he should recognize them.

We can conceive of no more fitting and effective course than that which the sagacious doctor followed. The occasion was one in which it was for him, in defining and greeting the steady advance made during a century in medical and surgical science among us, to remind his hearers that those to whom we are indebted for this advancement, have had, with their own n.o.ble, personal devotion and effort, to triumph over and fight their way against all the prejudices and obstructions which popular ignorance, prejudice and superst.i.tion have engaged to annoy and withstand them. In scarcely any one of the multiplied interests of average society have popular weaknesses and follies more mischievously a.s.serted themselves than in opposition to hospitals and medical schools. When that n.o.ble inst.i.tution, the Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital, was devised, about three quarters of a century ago, the most besotted folly and suspicion were engaged against those who planned and fostered it. It was charged that under the guise of benevolent service for homeless sufferers and for the victims of accident or special maladies, it was really to be artfully used for the trial of new medicines and risky experiments on the poor and humble, that pract.i.tioners might have the benefit of the knowledge thus gained in dealing with their rich patients. Let any one visit the wards of that inst.i.tution to-day, or read its annual reports, noting the thousands of cases of its work of mercy in restoration or relief of all cla.s.ses of sufferers, and then recall the asinine abuse visited upon its projectors. The millions of money which have been poured into its treasury, mostly from the private benevolence of our own citizens, is the crown of glory for that inst.i.tution. An appeal of the most artful and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance and pa.s.sion has been made this year for purposes which we need not search the dictionary to characterize with fitting epithets. How could Doctor Holmes on this great occasion pa.s.s it by? How could he have treated the offence and the offender with a more fitting combination of wit and scorn? Most happy also was his suggestive allusion to the self mastery by which pract.i.tioners at the dissecting table have to control, in the interest of their high service, revulsions and shrinkings incident to disgusting offices unknown even to chambermaids and stable boys.

"But as Doctor Holmes well said, there are more attractive and instructive matters to engage our most grateful interest in the occasion to which he gave such a grand interpretation. The century of medical history which he sketched with such a nave and vigorous narrative has its most suggestive incidents lettered on the walls on the main stairway of the imposing edifice just opened for use. Little Holden Hall in Cambridge; the obscure structure on Mason street; the melancholy building on Grove street, with its tragic history, in which the donor of its site was turned to a use by no means serviceable to science, make up the genealogical, architectural ancestry of the new hall. The development in the material fabric is no inadequate symbol of the progress in every quality, accomplishment and attainment characteristic of the advance of the profession in the last hundred years."

The name of Doctor Holmes will always be so intimately connected with the Harvard Medical School that we give below a brief sketch of its past history.

In the year 1780, the Boston Medical Society voted "that Doctor John Warren be desired to demonstrate a course of anatomical lectures the ensuing winter." The course of lectures proved so popular that the corporation of the college asked Doctor Warren to draw up a plan for a Medical School in connection with Harvard College. At the commencement of the school, October 7th, 1783, there were three professors: Doctor John Warren, who lectured on anatomy and surgery; Doctor Aaron Dexter, who took the department of chemistry and materia medica; and Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse, instructor in the theory and practice of medicine.

During the first year of its establishment the attendance was rather small, consisting of members of the senior cla.s.s of the college and those students who could procure the consent of their parents. The name of the first graduate recorded was that of John Fleet, in 1788, and he seems to have been the only graduate of that cla.s.s.

In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son of Doctor John Warren, was appointed a.s.sistant professor of anatomy and surgery. He proved a most enthusiastic laborer in behalf of the school and to it he gave his large anatomical collection, which was considered the most complete in the country. In his will he bequeathed his body to the interest of science, and provided that his skeleton be prepared and mounted, to serve the uses of the demonstrators on anatomy. It was he, also, who took the first steps that led to the establishment of the Medical School in Boston. At 49 Marlborough street, he opened a room for the demonstration of practical anatomy, and here a course of lectures was started in the autumn of 1810 by Doctors Warren, Jackson, and Waterhouse.

In 1816, the "Ma.s.sachusetts Medical College" was formally inaugurated in a building erected on Mason street by a special grant from the Commonwealth. At this time the faculty consisted of Doctors Jackson, Warren, Gorham, Jacob Bigelow and Walter Channing.

In 1821 the Ma.s.sachusetts General Hospital on Allan street, was established; the two inst.i.tutions have since been intimately connected as the resources afforded students by the Hospital are here given to members of the Medical School.

In 1836, Doctor Jackson resigned his position, and Doctor John Ware, the a.s.sistant professor of theory and practice was appointed in the chair.

Eleven years later Doctor John Collins Warren resigned, having served the interests of the school for forty-one years.

In 1847, through the liberality of Doctor George C. Shattuck, Sr., a professors.h.i.+p of pathological anatomy was established, and Doctor John Barnard Swett Jackson was appointed to fill the chair. It was during this year that Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was chosen Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology.

In 1849 Doctor Henry J. Bigelow was appointed to the chair of surgery left vacant by the resignation of Doctor George Hayward, and in 1854, Doctor Walter Channing was succeeded by Doctor David Humphreys Storer.

In 1855 Doctor Jacob Bigelow resigned, and was succeeded by Doctor Edward Hammond Clarke.

The building on North Grove street, erected by a grant of the State upon land donated by Doctor George Parkman, was first occupied by the school in 1846. In this building, which was considered amply commodious at that time, were stored the Warren Anatomical Museum, the physiological library founded by George Woodbury Swett, the gifts to the chemical department by Doctor John Bacon, and the collection of microscopes given by Doctor Ellis. Since then the number of medical students has constantly increased and the accommodations becoming inadequate, steps were taken for the erection of the new building.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The site occupied by the medical college was once covered by the tides.

CHAPTER XIX.

TOKENS OF ESTEEM.

Said one of the medical students in Doctor Holmes' last cla.s.s at Harvard:

"We always welcomed Professor Holmes with enthusiastic cheers when he came into the cla.s.s room, and his lectures were so brimful of witty anecdotes that we sometimes forgot it was a lesson in anatomy we had come to learn. But the instruction--deep, sound and thorough--was there all the same, and we never left the room without feeling what a fund of knowledge and what a clear insight upon difficult points in medical science had been imparted to us through the sparkling medium!"

The position of Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University, was resigned by Doctor Holmes in the autumn of 1882, that he might give his time more exclusively to literary pursuits. He was immediately appointed Professor Emeritus by the college, and Doctor Thomas Dwight, a teacher in the Medical School, succeeded him in the active duties of the chair.

The last lecture of Doctor Holmes before his students, was delivered in the anatomical room, on the twenty-eighth of November. As he entered the room, a storm of applause greeted him, and then as it died away, one of the students came forward and presented him, in behalf of his last cla.s.s, with an exquisite "Loving Cup." On one side of this beautiful souvenir was the happy quotation from his own writings: "Love bless thee, joy crown thee, G.o.d speed thy career."

Doctor Holmes was so deeply affected by this delicate token of esteem that, afterwards, in acknowledging the cup by letter, he said that the tribute was so unexpected it made him speechless. He was quite sure, however, that they did not mistake _aphasia_ for _acardia_--his heart was in its right place, though his tongue forgot its office.

In the address to his cla.s.s, the Professor gave an interesting review of his thirty-five years' connection with the school. Then he referred to his early college days, and to his studies in Paris, and added many delightful reminiscences of the famous French savants whose lectures he attended at that time. A full report of this address may be found in the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for December 7, 1882.

This, one of his most interesting essays, is also reprinted in one of Doctor Holmes' later volumes, ent.i.tled _Medical Essays_.

On the evening of April 12, 1883, a complimentary dinner was given Doctor Holmes at Delmonico's, by the medical profession of New York City. The reception opened at about half-past six, and soon after that hour Doctor Holmes entered the rooms with Doctor Fordyce Barker. The guests, numbering some two hundred and twenty-five in all, were seated at six tables, the table of honor occupying the upper end of the room, and decorated with banks of choice flowers.

The _menus_ were cleverly arranged in the form of small books bound in various-colored plush. A dainty design in gilt, representing a scalpel and pen, surrounded by a laurel wreath, adorned the covers, and inside was the stanza:

A few can touch the magic string, And noisy fame is proud to win them, Alas, for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them.

At the top of the leaf containing the bill of fare were the lines:

You know your own degree; sit down; at first and last a hearty welcome.

at the end:

Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.

A few minutes before the coffee was brought in, each guest received what purported to be a telegram from Boston, dated April 1, 1883. The message read as follows:

The dinner bell, the dinner bell Is ringing loud and clear, Through hill and plain, through street and lane It echoes far and near.

I hear the voice! I go, I go!

Prepare your meat and wine; They little heed their future need Who pay not when they dine.

--_O.W.H._

The back of the despatch was decorated with two pictures; one showing Doctor Fordyce Barker ringing a dinner bell and brandis.h.i.+ng a knife and fork, the other Doctor Holmes hurrying to answer the bell, with a pile of books under one arm and a bundle of bones under the other.

Among the guests present were George William Curtis, Hon. William M.

Evarts, Bishop Clark, Whitelaw Reid, Doctors Post, Emmett, Sayre, Billing, Vanderpoel Metcalfe, Detmoold Draper, Doremus, Hammond, St. J.