Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL.

UPON the seventeenth of October, 1883, the centennial anniversary of the Harvard Medical School, the new building upon the Back Bay was dedicated. The fine, commodious structure is situated upon the corner of Boylston and Exeter streets, and is at nearly equal distances from the Massachusetts General Hospital, the City Hospital, the Boston Dispensary and the Children's Hospital with their stores of clinical material, available for the purposes of teaching. Close by, also, are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the museums of the Society of Natural History and of Fine Arts, and the Medical Library Association. The building has a frontage of one hundred and twenty-two feet toward the north on Boylston street, and of ninety feet toward the west on Exeter street, and its corner position, together with the reservation of a large open area on the east, will always insure good light and good air.

The dedication exercises were divided into two parts, the opening addresses being given in Huntington Hall, at the Institute of Technology, and the remainder of the programme in the new building. Upon the platform, in Huntington Hall, were seated President Eliot, of Harvard University, the faculty of the Medical School, and numerous invited guests. Upon the walls just back of the platform, against a background of maroon-colored drapery, and directly over the head of the original, hung a portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Beneath this portrait was a fine marble bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow, who was seated beside Doctor Holmes.

President Eliot opened the exercises with the interesting address which follows:

"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 basement 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 assistant professors, nine instructors, thirteen clinical instructors, and nine assistants—working in the spacious 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 gratitude 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, instituting an admission examination, strengthening the examinations at the end of each year, and establishing 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 substitution, 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 spacious, 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 illustrate 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 zoölogist, 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 anæsthetics 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.