Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes

by E. E. Brown

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 institution. But it is also to serve the uses of history for the future, especially as a record of the aspects of the institution 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 assault 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 constituency, 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 passed 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 noble, personal devotion and effort, to triumph over and fight their way against all the prejudices and obstructions which popular ignorance, prejudice and superstition 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 asserted themselves than in opposition to hospitals and medical schools. When that noble institution, the Massachusetts 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 practitioners might have the benefit of the knowledge thus gained in dealing with their rich patients. Let any one visit the wards of that institution to-day, or read its annual reports, noting the thousands of cases of its work of mercy in restoration or relief of all classes 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 institution. An appeal of the most artful and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance and passion 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 pass 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 practitioners 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 naïve 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 class 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 class.

In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son of Doctor John Warren, was appointed assistant 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 "Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts General Hospital on Allan street, was established; the two institutions 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 assistant 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.