For that were stupid and irrational;
But he whose nobler soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger Nature shrinks from."
This recognition of our profession was accorded much more unstintingly nearly two thousand years ago, at a time when it was much less deserved, when Cicero wrote (De Natura Deorum) "Homines ad Deos nulla re propius accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando." (Men are never more godlike than when giving health to mankind).
But we can hardly delay longer here and at this time with the subject of heroism in medicine. I shall not have completed the matters which I wish to present to you to-day until I invite your attention to a short sketch of the careers of four or five of the men who, during the past two or three hundred years have set the example for men of all times and most climes, whose lives are so replete with that which is interesting, instructive or important that they may be well held up before a graduating class as illustrations of everything which may be advantageously imitated. They belong to that class of whom Longfellow wrote:
"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime."
One of those was Jean Fernel, who was born in France about 1497 and died in 1558. I do not know that his life history offers anything so very startling, although he came to be regarded as the most memorable physiologist of his generation, but he adopted a motto which I think we all might well select for our own, and it was because of this motto that I have mentioned his name at this point. It was this: "Destiny reserves for us repose enough." If each of you will take this individually to himself he will find in it stimulus enough for all kinds of hard work.
The first of the eminently great men now to be mentioned in this connection was Herman Boerhaave, born in 1668 and died in 1738. He enjoyed the reputation of being perhaps the most eminent physician who ever lived. The eldest son of a poor clergyman with a large family, he was originally intended for theology, and with this in view studied philosophy, history, logic, metaphysics, philology and mathematics, as well as theology. A mere accident, resulting from intense party spirit and doctrinal differences, prevented his devoting his life to theology, and he turned next to mathematics and then to chemistry and botany, subsequently studying anatomy and medicine. He graduated in 1693 and began at once to practice in Leyden, with such success that he was early offered the position of ordinary surgeon to the king, which, however, he had the moral courage to decline. Subsequently he taught medicine and botany, to which chairs was also added later that of chemistry. This fact of itself will show to you something of the condition of medical science of that day, when one man could teach chemistry, botany and medicine. His rarest talents, however, were developed in the direction of clinical instruction, and in this particular field he won such repute that hearers were attracted to Leyden from all quarters of the world and in such numbers that no university lecture-room was large enough to contain them. His practice grew in extent and remunerativeness in pace with his reputation, and when he died he left an estate of two millions. So famous was he that it is said of him that a Chinese official once sent to him a letter addressed simply "To the Most Famous Physician in Europe." That he had fixed convictions and practices may be better understood from the fact that so little difference did he make between his patients that he kept Peter the Great waiting over one night to see him, declining to regulate his visiting list by the means or position of his patients.
Boerhaave was universally regarded as a great student and a great physician, but it was probably his qualities as a man which led to the astonishing extent of his reputation. Essentially modest, not disputatious nor belligerent, he had a remarkable influence over the young men who came near him, while he had a habit of speaking oracularly or in aphorisms, which are not always so profound as they sound and yet often make a man's dicta celebrated. Save that he introduced the use of the thermometer and the ordinary lens in the examinations of his patients, his teachings do not form any really new system. In the classification of men he would be regarded as a great eclectic, in the purer sense of the term. Probably his greatest service to medicine was in the permanent establishment of the clinical method of instruction, and perhaps his next greatest real claim to glory is the character of the instruction and the inspiration which he gave to two of his greatest scholars, viz.: Haller and Van Swieten. He was not the founder of a school. He left no great nor memorable doctrines for which others should contend, but he left a name for studiousness, honest and logical thinking, which was a priceless heritage for the university with which he was connected.