Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

"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 mediæval 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 practitioner 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 passed since John Jeffries was treading the bloody 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 glass until he has substituted a large amount of carbonic acid for oxygen in the air of the bell glass. But if another bird is taken from the open air and put in with the first, the new-comer speedily dies. So when the class 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: