Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

"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 fellowship 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 institution; 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:

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 assigned 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 accumulating and illustrating 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 eyes, sans taste, sans everything,

and it is a further ordeal to assume 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 accumulates, 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 assured 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 constitutional, 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 circumstances, 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 gratitude 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.