Dr. O'Dwyer's conduct, with regard to the continued use of antitoxin under the discouraging conditions we have sketched, stamps him as a great member of his humanitarian profession, whose only purpose was the relief of suffering and the cure of disease, without any thought, moreover, of self-glorification. The use of antitoxin has made the necessity for intubation occur much less frequently than before, and thus has undone some of the good contemplated by Dr. O'Dwyer, but has accomplished it in a way which he eminently approved and helped on as far as lay in his power, even at the time when others were doubtful, not without good reasons, as to the results that were being obtained from the use of antitoxin.
Perhaps the best index of the sincere simplicity and frank goodness of O'Dwyer's character is to be found in his relations to the religious community of which he had been so long a medical attendant. In the words of one of their superiors, he was looked upon by the sisters at the Foundling Asylum as the father of the house, who had, as might be expected, the confidence and trust of every member of the [{348}] community. His relations to Sister Irene, the famed superior of the asylum, became those almost of brother to sister. Sister Irene (as is well known), though a woman who accomplished some of the best philanthropic work that, at least, our generation has known, was always in delicate health. For several years before his death, Dr. O'Dwyer scarcely ever let an evening go by without coming to see her personally. He, better than anyone else, realized how much she had done for the Foundling Asylum, and how much her wonderful influence was still accomplishing in making the extension of that work possible.
There is, of course, another side to this story of Dr. O'Dwyer's solicitude for Sister Irene that deserves to be noticed. Few women have ever accomplished work of the extent and character that Sister Irene succeeded in doing with so little friction. In the parlor of the Foundling Asylum there is an engrossed scroll--a tribute to her memory from the medical board of the Asylum--which shows how well she was appreciated. As a bit of hospital history it deserves a place here, especially as there seems no doubt that O'Dwyer's mutual relations to the sisters and to the medical staff were of a kind that helped wonderfully in securing the frictionless co-operation that meant so much for the institution. The memorial scroll reads as follows:
"Tribute to the memory of Sister Irene--to the Sister Superior who secured friends and funds for the building of the first and largest foundling hospital in America.
"To the sweet-souled woman--the friend of the foundling and fallen; to the best friend any medical board ever had, this tribute is presented with their sympathies to the Reverend Mother and the Sisterhood of the Sisters of Charity by the Medical Board of the New York Foundling Hospital."
While an extremely modest man himself, and one of very [{349}] few words, Dr. O'Dwyer delighted in teaching others anything he felt that he knew well himself. His conduct with regard to the teaching of intubation was especially admirable. He was ready to show any serious-minded physician just how the operation was accomplished, and many a young doctor obtained precious training in the exercise of the rather difficult manipulation involved in placing a tube in a child's larynx from the hands of O'Dwyer himself. He never lost patience with the awkward ones and never seemed to consider that too many calls were made on his time. He might easily have made money on the operation or the instruments, but deemed such considerations unworthy of his professional dignity. Personally he was a very reticent man, but, as a number of friends have said of him, "he made every word count;" and those who knew him best justly appreciated the expression of an opinion from him, since it was always sure to be the fruit of mature consideration and the result of personal clinical experience, usually extending over long periods.
The opinion held of Dr. O'Dwyer by his colleagues in the profession--and, be it well understood, there is no more searching appreciation of practical methods and theoretical opinions than that obtained by brother-physicians--is the best possible tribute to his greatness as an investigator, his honorableness as a practitioner, and his distinction as a man. We quote the summing up of his character given by Dr. Northrup, who had been his colleague for a score of years at the New York Foundling Asylum, and whose paper on the subject was read before the New York Academy of Medicine shortly after O'Dwyer's death:
"What the world knows of O'Dwyer," said Dr. Northrup, "is his genius as an inventor, his achievement in adding a great operation to the equipment of the profession, and thus [{350}] making the most conspicuous real contribution to medical progress within the last fifty years. This the world knows and has acknowledged. To us there is another and a pleasant duty to testify, that with this genius there was all that goes to make a man. His home life, his religious life, his civic life, his professional relations with both colleague and patient, his hospital relations, were such as befit a high-principled man. As highly as we esteem him as an inventor and genius and practitioner of wide knowledge, as much as we valued his superior medical judgment, we would write upon the monument of his achievements, 'O'Dwyer the Man.'"
In a previous passage of his address before the Academy, Dr. Northrup had said:
"If I were asked what most contributed to Dr. O'Dwyer's medical excellence I would say his habit of thinking and his good logic. He had a good medical mind, an excellent medical judgment. Above all, that quality of intellect which allows a man to grow after the age of forty. To the New York Foundling Asylum, with which Dr. O'Dwyer was connected for twenty-five years, he was everything; to the maternity service he was the expert obstetrician; in intubation he was the inventor and teacher; in the general medical service he was the constant consulting mind, whose opinion in times of difficulties and in the midst of puzzling clinical problems every one voluntarily sought. To the Sisters of Charity he was physician and friend, consulted with regard to every important concern of the house, whether medical or not. All adored him."
Dr. O'Dwyer's domestic life was most happy. He had married, very suitably, a woman of bright disposition, who was a foil to his own soberer and more melancholy ways, and the relations between husband and wife growing tenderer with the progress of years, their home-life became the model [{351}] of an ideal Christian family. When he lost her through death, more than half of his life seemed to have gone, and he never quite recovered from the blow. The circumstances of her death added to his sense of loss, as it must have increased his appreciation of her worth. She died a martyr to what she considered her duty as a Christian mother. During the course of a pregnancy she was taken with what is known as pernicious vomiting, an affection that is likely to prove fatal unless the irritated uterus should be relieved of its burden--a means that neither she nor her husband would consent to adopt. Her death thus was the result.