VALEDICTORY DELIVERED AT THE NINTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT n r the miUftl Department OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC, AT MERCANTILE LIBRARY HALL, D(M-i,mhiT Till, 1871, By L. C. LANE, M. D , Professor of Surgery, &c. r U K LISHED B Y THE G K A D U A T K S. SAX FRANCISCO: PRINTED BY J. F. BROWN, No. 534 COMMERCIAL STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY. 1 S 7 1 . VALEDICTORY DELIVERED AT THE NINTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE Medical Depaptmamt OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC, AT MERCANTILE LIBRARY HALL, December Vtli, 1871, By L. C. LANE, M.D., Professor of Surgery, &c. PUBLISHED B Y T H K (J KADU A T E S. SAN FRANCISCO: PRINTED BY J. F. BROWN, No. 534 COMMERCIAL STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY 1871. MEDICAL DEPARTMENT Uni'versi a c i f i c FACULTY. A. J. BOWIE, M. D., Emeritus Professor of Surgery, and President of Faculty. J. F. MORSE, M. D., Emeritus Professor of the Principles and Practic of Medicine. HENRY GIBBONS, M. D., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, and Clinical Medicine. L. C. Lane, M. D., Professor of Surgery and Surgical Anatomy, and Clinical Surgery. EDWIN BENTLY, M. D., Prof, of Descriptive and Microscopic Anatomy and Pathology. CLINTON CDSHING, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women. C. N. ELLINWOOD, M. D., Professor of Physiology. L. C. LYNE, M. D., Acting Professor of Ophthalmology and Otology. THOMAS PRICE, M. D., Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology. HENRY GIBBONS, Jr., M. D., Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. STUDENTS. J. O. HIRSCHFELDER, JAMES GYE, CORNELIUS SCANNELL, BENJ. T. MOUSER, EMMET L. WEMPLE, HENRY BERG3TEIN, JNO. MILLINGTON, G. EUGENE DAVIS, DAVID POWELL, W. D. JOHNSTON, CHAS. P. FAULKNER, S. E. KNOWLES, ALBERT H. PRATT, SAMUEL McClTRDY, GIDNEY WORTH, HENRY E. NEIL, A. L. LENGFELD, W. W. STILLWAGON. MARK PIETRZYCKI, GEO. CAMPBELL, JOHN WAGNER, ALFRED S. DANA, JAS. W. KEENEY, ALBERT J. HOWE, FRED.CRANSTON, GEO. H. JACKSON, O KADUATING CLASS K. E. KNOWLES, JNO. MILLINGTON, W. D. JOHNSTON, DAVID POWELL, GEO. H. JACKSON. A. L. LENGFELD, JAMES GYE, AD EUNDEM GrRADUATJ. W. W. STILLWAGON, M. D. VALEDICTORY. Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : The occasion which your Alma Mater this evening celebrates—the marriage of five of her sons to the pro- fession of their choice—the launching of their barks upon the sea where the great battle of life awaits them— is one of such importance that she would fain ask you for one more audience—ask to speak a few parting words. The young man on the eve of leaving his home, to take part, as an individual, in the struggles of life, often finds long, tedious and prosy, the words which parental caution whispers in his ear, but ere the career of life is finished, his mind runs back to such words, and memory holds fast to them as precious treasures, As your Alma Mater invests you with the battle-cloak and shield, she expects you so to wear them as to bring no dishonor upon the lineage and escutcheons of the old and noble race to which, this night, you are legally wed. Methinks I hear some of you ask, how may we so wear the chlamys and bear the shield, as to satisfy the hopes of the institution which now grants us its high- est honors, of the profession with which these honors affiliate us in the future ? I will endeavor to answer your question. First of all, a physician is expected to be an edu- cated gentleman. He is expected to be educated, not in the trite meaning of this term, but in a manner uni- versal and encyclopedic in character. Some imagine the physician's attainments to be a kind of seven-toned harp, whose several strings shall ring individually a chemical, anatomical, physiological, obstetrical, thera- peutical, surgical, and chemical note; such notes, indeed, his harp should give, clearly and without defect, but his learning should reach much further—it must and docs embrace all the objects of nature and their phenomena. • 4 Hence a lifetime is but a short period for such a curri- culum. But of this anon. The physician must be a gentleman ; nor do I mean this in its modern, ill-used sense; but in its primitive meaning, before conventional usage or affectation had disfigured and perverted the term ; when it implied character in which courage was w^ed to gentleness, heroism to humanity, broad intellectual culture to sim- plicity, self-respect to a sacred respect for the rights of others; in fact, as the great dramatist has it: " A form and combination, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man." The profession to which we introduce you, expects from you earnest work ; thorough, untiring and undi- vided devotion ; a fixed resolve, an unflinching purpose to add something to the common treasurv of medical knowledge. With a determination like that of Alaric of old, who, when repulsed before the gates of Rome, vowed that either as a victor he wrould give the land as a heritage to his people or it should give him a grave, you should resolve to give to the future for a heritage at least one new fact ; such determined resolution can- not be baffled; sooner or later triumph crowns it; for though Rome gave to Alaric an unknown grave, yet, to his followers, full of inspiration drawn from their leader, it gave a realm. You who are full of hope, of enthusiasm, and of the future, let the great ones of the past inspire you, and never rest till you have added one truth to the public domain of medical science. One apparently unimportant observation may bring with itself immense results; witness that of Galileo of a swinging lamp in a church at Pisca, his deduction therefrom of the laws of the pendulum, the consequent construction of accurate time-pieces, and finally the chronometer, which, next to the compass, the mariner takes for his guide on the deep. Witness the observation that a frog's legs were convulsed when two different metals wrere caused to touch its sciatic nerves, thence the construction of the Voltaic pile, thence of a ma- '0 chine which enabled Davy to revolutionize chemistry, and finally gave mankind the means of transmitting thought more rapidly than thought itself; such the gift conferred upon the world by the simple observation of an Italian physician. Science, in return, has immortal- ized him by giving to one of its most noble sections the name of Galvanism. And still again, the apparantly trivial observation that the milkmaids in the rural dis- tricts of England were comparatively exempt from small-pox, was the first link in the chain of facts which led to the discovery of vaccination, thereby shielding mankind from the mephitic breath of the most cruel of plagues; for as Chalcas the sago, " Whose comprehensive view, The past, the present and the future knew," By his wisdom taught how to appease the plague-god, who, u going forth like Night," breathed death among the Achaian forces before Ilion, so did Jenner, by the magic touch of the lance-point upon the arm, teach his generation to escape this most loathsome disease ; and the boon did not, like the services of the sage, expire with his own generation, but will continue .to be the inalienable heirloom of all future ages. The instances cited are enough to show how the slight suggestion of a cause may teem with great results, and as monitors on the highway of time, they incul- cate the importance of observing, noting and recording every new fact; for such observation may, like the attractive force which the rubbed amber acquires, or the curve which the swinging lamp makes, become as the germ of a tree which, springing up, bears flowers and fruit, for the cheer and sustenance of generations present and future. And to you, gentlemen, whose years yet rejoice in youth, and whose minds, fertile as an alluvial soil, and warmed by enthusiasm as by a tropical sun, are des- tined, if properly cultivated, to yield a rich harvest, to you, standing face to face with such monitors as incen- tives, we look with confidence for a kindling in your hearts cf an ambition to work and struggle for a place 6 by the side of the great and the worthy of your profes- sion. In these remarks do not understand me as urging you to seek only for an immortality, and especially would I admonish you not to expect it too early. Young men are often too anxious to leap into the sphere of the immortals. To such I would say, re- member Icarus, who vaulted too far aloft on the wings which he himself had made ; his pinions were melted by the sun and he tumbled down into the sea ; and it is not probable that you would be so fortunate as to have, like him, a sea named for you. Neither would I have your flight too low, lest, Gambetta-like, you might be wounded by an enemy's shot, and, less fortunate than he, your balloon also might be wounded. But now, if ever you are to do it, is the time to make your resolves, to lay your plans, and to launch your- selves each into an individual orbit, in which, like a planet with permanent momentum, and well-poised motion, you will ever move with an individual iden- tity, undisturbed by any agency internal or external. In such a character the world looks for something more than a gentleman with educate dintellect. His heart must likewise be educated ; and in such a heart the passions and emotions will be found of vigorous devel- opment, but thoroughly subdued. For i f these be absent then the man might live, and even wear the imperial purple as did the sons of great Theodosius of old, for two or more decades, and yet scarcely leave a trait of personality to which the historian could point. But if the passions are given the ascendant, their unhappy victim is even worse than a planet freighted with in- ternal detonating elements, which, if bursted, leaves monuments of a former existence in surrounding aster- oids, while the man, sinking in the vortex of ruin, leaves naught save a dark and charred image in cotemporane- ous memory. For this training and discipline of the emotional nature, your professional career will afford a rich 7 field. The young physician soon learns that he can- not please every one. To some he will find himself personally disagreeable ; others dislike to see a young man advancing so rapidly, and such would seem to look upon themselves as having a special mission to throw impediments in his way. Such love to throw his character on the gridiron of criticism, the bars of which have different degrees of temperature, varying from ice-cold, through fever-heat, up to red-hot; the first represents those who say he is a very learned man but we don't think he will make much of a physician ; and from the same ice-point comes the wily, left-handed thrust of the old professional brother whose vision is somewhat jaundiced by envy, whose apprehensive ken fears being displaced, who says, he would be a good physician or surgeon if he were not so unlucky in his cases. The second grade of censure is represented by those who have a tolerably well-defined aversion, as shown in the pretty placidly spoken remark that they would not have you to treat their canine. And lastly the red-hot type of censure will appear in the shape of keen, bitter hate, and will come with wasp-like venom in the words, I wouldn't have him to doctor a sick feline for me. Again, the very nature of the practice of medicine is of a character calculated to develope all the higher moral virtues, those, in fact which distinguish the re- fined gentlemen from the coarser man. Need I recite the prosperous and adverse endings of human ailments, giving alternate shadow and sunlight to the practice of every physician. Like a pendulum his life vibrates between victory and defeat. The vanity which might arise from the one, runs no risk of extraordinary de- velopment, since the envious hand of the latter quickly plucks it up by the roots. One of the most talented young physicians I ever knew, as one of his earliest operations had a case of ovariotomy ; much depended on the result; all the en- ergies of his mind were bent to throw around the pa- 8 tient every circumstance which could favor recovery. Not recovery—but death—came and lifted to the lips of the unfortunate woman his cold chalice as the only reward for her daring. I have never seen disappointment touch more cruelly on the heart of any one, than did the loss of that patient this young physician ; but with that philosophy which springs from a well disciplined mind, he said, " For me perhaps it was better that it failed, for such a triumph at so early a day in my career, might have made me inordinately vain." Besides the discipline which the practice of medi- cine, from its inherent nature, will give your minds, the examples of noble character which the sick-bed will present, will be of a nature to widen and lift up the moral sentiment. The battle-field with its wild clash of arms, the roaring cannon, the trampling of cavalry, the sounding drum, the commander's approving eye, and the hope of victory, all conspire to lilt the wounded man above his anguish, and, like the hero of Corunna wTith his left arm nearly torn from his body by a cannon shot and his ribs all crushed, he may die with a smile of triumph on his lips. But it is far different with the wretched consumptive where death is hammering away incessantly, week after week and month after month, ere he makes a successful breach in the vital ramparts, through which he may leap and raise his pale ensign over the citadel of life. Yet through these long days of pain and still longer nights of weariness, there is often presented to the physician's eye a patience and a bravery greater than war can boast. We may safely assert that there is no profession which requires higher intellectual culture, than the medical; and this culture must be carried to such proficiency that it can act almost automatically or intuitively. The study of months or even years, is often, in its practical sphere of action, circumscribed to a few moments. Instance, spasm of the glottis, or a foreign body falling into the windpipe, requiring instant 9 performance of tracheotomy. In such a case, how infinitely asunder stand the medical and the legal man ; the former has no time to overhaul his tomes to learn whether the statute has changed, whether a recent decision of the Supreme Court will justify him in adopting this or that course, or whether the case may not be adroitly disposed of by a plea of demurrer, or whether the client may not be released on a writ of habeas corpus, or? worse coining to worst, if the Court may not be induced to grant a stay of proceed- ings ;—I say the medical man has no time lor any- thing of this kind, but his reading must have been done, and every fact so engraven on his memory, that as he runs he may read it. In fact, the young physi- cian, borrowing the words of the greatest of Earth's bards, should thus apostrophize the study of the principles of his profession: " Remember thee ? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, I nmixed with baser matter ! " In the practice of law, there is a charm which often fascinates the young man, and more than one medical student have I heard say, that he was sorry he had not studied law. There is, indeed, something captiv- ating to the mind of most persons, in the very manner of conducting legal business. For example a Judge, full of dignity and self-possession, sitting in front of his Court, every eye of which is fixed upon him, "With eye severe and beard of formal cut," Holds the scales of justice in his hand ; a couple of legally indisposed persons, known as plaintiff and de- fendant, present their cases for treatment, and to aid them detail their complaints, one Or more lawyers are arrayed on each side. To see that the scales of justice are impartially poised, twelve men, known as jurymen, are chosen as aids, and after the complaint 10 has been thoroughly illustrated and set forth, these twelve men then pass upon the character and amount of medication proper to be resorted to in the case. Meanwhile a large number of spectators are witnesses of the whole affair, and, as an item last mentioned though not the least in importance, large sums of money have been given or pledged to counsel. But what a contrast when we step from the domain of Law to the practice of Medicine! The physician, espe- cially in the beginning of his career, finds many of his cases summoning him to the squalid haunts of poverty ; no convenience—no comfort—but poverty and want, in all their wretched forms, have here found habitation ; while disease, a near kinsman to them, has in addition, added its quota to fill up the cup of misery. This is the character of the court where the phvsician is often called upon to practice his vocation. No Judge here to dignify the scene ; no jurymen, perhaps not one spectator, to be a witness of the eventful drama enacted ; and for all his work, more arduous than is ever done by advocate before couit and jury, not one farthing will ever be received. nor was one expected when the; task was undertaken. Nay, more, the physician who undertakes such labor, often does so at extreme personal risk, at the peril of his own life. For example, the great Howard, in his earlier years a merchant, afterwards a student of medicine, spent the remainder of his life in visiting prisons, finally dying in the Crimea while there on a mission to investigate the plague. On his death-bed he asked that no monument save a sun-dial should be placed over his tomb; yet his native land has given him a monument among her worthies, and were it not so, his name would be immortal, since in all cultivated languages the name of Howard is a synonym for benevolence. Before Howard fell a victim to the plague, he had visited all the prisons of Europe except that of Rome and the Bastile; to these two he was denied admittance. The French people, excited to des- 11 peration by the heart-sickening tales of poor Latude and others who spent a great part of their lives in the Bastile, razed the latter to the ground. Rome has long since abolished her Inquisitorial dungeons, and the prisons remaining all bear traces of the benevoEnt touch of Howard's spirit. The case of Howard is but one of a thousand noble hearts, that have thrown themselves into the waves of death, and have gone down while trying to rescue suffering humanity. And if I again refer to the legal profession, it is with no desire of casting a satirical shaft that I ask, where is the advocate who would undertake the case of a criminal, did he know, in de- fending him, that he drew upon himself as great a risk of being hung as threatened his client, Again, young gentlemen, there is a great duty which our profession imposes upon each of its members. Let me, in this connection, quote the great George Forster, to whom Humboldt acknowledged that he owed his first impulses to Natural History, and whose name German naturalists are to-day canonizing, though in his life-time, on account of his advocacy of human rights, he was driven from his native land and a price set on his head. George Forster says, writing from exile to his wife : " I have no home, no fatherland, no more friends ; all who were once my friends have forsaken me to form new connections and associations. My misfortune is the work of my principles, not the offspring of my passions. I cannot act otherwise—I would not were it to do over again. Had 1 been willing to act contrary to my convictions and feelings, I might now have been a member of the Academy at Berlin, with a handsome salary ; but to whom then could I sell the shame of having betrayed those principles which I have so often proclaimed." Forster believed in an innate excellence of humanity ; he trusted that this would, in the end, gain the ascendancy and render him justice ; the future was true to his hope, and one of Germany's leading 12 literary periodicals lately deemed itself honored in giving place to an illustrated engraving of Forster's birth-place. In an essay on Art, Forster has uttered a sentiment which is so applicable to the physician's career that I cannot forbear giving it to you. He says : " If the recognition of personal merit depended upon others, or were the only reward for which a great artist labors, I doubt then whether a single master-work would ever have been given to us ; but like the Divinity himself self-satisfaction in his own labor must be his chief re- ward. The artist must find his recompense in this, that in the bronze, the marble, the canvas, or in letters, his own great soul is laid out to view; let him who can, comprehend it there. But if the age be too small, if there be no co-temporary who in the work can discern the artist, in the artist can see the man, and in the man the creative genius, indeed, if the age can produce no heart in which the great work of art can awake a re- sponsive echo, still the stream of time will carry the work along on its bosom, until it meets a kindred soul in which this rapture shall awaken, there to live for- ever." He who understands these precious words of this poor exile, driven, for his defence of human rights, from all that he cherished most dearly, can understand how the physician is content to visit the hovel of pov- erty, to endanger his life at the bedside of pestilence, and to spend days and nights too, in unpaid toil and fatigue, in which limbs, heart and brain are taxed to their utmost; but he who cannot understand such sentiments, or who would scoff and throw stones into this fountain, whence the great, the pure and the good of our profession in all time, have drawn their inspira- tion, have found their solace, he, I sav, should stop and read the words inscribed over the portals of the temple of Medicine: Este procul profani—for they were written for him. To him, likewise, who expects the profession of 13 Medicine will pour wealth into his coffers, I would say, beware of disappointment, Had the classic epi- grammatist lived in our days and scrutinized the pur- ses of the majority of medical men, he would never have written Galenm dat opes, unless in irony. This is certainly so in the early career of nearly every medical man, and you, gentlemen, can hardly expect to be exceptions. But still, be not discouraged; patient- ly work and patiently wait; the harvest, though not a large one, will finally come. There is no more noble sight, no more sublime spectacle, than an honest man earnestly struggling in the line of duty, undismayed by whatever misfortune may overtake him. For as Sue has well said: "Behold a spectacle in which God himself takes delight—a just man struggling against adversity and overcoming it by his courage." I would not, however, place proverty as one of the aims of your life, nor advise you to endeavor to sacri- fice your lives on her altar by way of martyrdom. The Spartan custom of not mourning for those who had fallen on the battle-field, but for those who were so unfortunate as to return home, has much moral sub- limity in itself; but the mode of our times of rejoicing with those who have won our victories and have been lucky enough to return home, is probably more con- sonant with the character of our utilitarian age. You should look to it that your services, when meritorious, be paid for by those who have the means. Be- tween the upright physician and the charlatan there is here a wide gap, which, too often, is not seen by the unwary public, until they are forced to leap it. The quack makes the unsuspecting patient believe that he has some extraordinarily dangerous disease, and when he has thoroughly awakened the fears of his victim, he extorts from him a large fee. I know of no baseness equal to that of obtaining money in this way; highway robbery is more honorable, since it does give its victim a slight chance of defence. The man who will conde- scend to engage in this species of robbery, has a heart 14 in which every sense of shame has been extinguished, and every feeling of honesty and rectitude burned out by the remorseless and pitiless passion for money. In every city of our land there are scores of men who live thus and go on unscathed in their plundering career, notwithstanding the vaunted protection which our laws claim to furnish to the people. These men may be compared to Satan, as depicted by the fancy of Poe, who built himself a palace in Hell, adorned with every dainty touch of art, with walls " Of fabulous price and beauty," But so cunningly constructed that the very sighs, moans and cries of the damned, as they traversed these walls, were transformed into tones of the most delicious music. And hence I would say to you that even as in Art, it is the form and not the material which commands admiration, so in your professional career, it is not the amount you have gained but rather how you gained it, that will command respect, But whether your purses, like that of Fortunatus. shall always be well filled, or the scarce, well-worn pence of poverty be your heritage, remains written on a page of the future, and we will wait for the hand of Destiny to turn to it ; but the intellectual pleas- ures which your studies heretofore have brought you, as well as those which your daily profes- sional experience are to bring, will prove a price- less capital which no hand can wrest from you; this is a capital which no fall in stocks can depreciate, no rush upon the banks can lessen in value. The great temple of Natural Science, with its inalienable rights. its privileges and its freedom of thought, is yours. Natural Science, that which embraces universal nature whether organic or inorganic, is the offspring of Medi- cine. It is here, untrammeled by dogma or shackle of the past, that human intellect developes its highest power and strength. This is the intellectual freedom for which Galileo longed, for which the noble old anatomist Vesalius sighed, who, chased from city to city and from 15 island to island in the Mediterranean, at last died al- most of starvation. Vesalius undoubtedly thought it a strange world, where men would cut up and burn up their fellows for the sake of an opinion, and yet, for the sake of suffering humanity, would not allow their bodies to be dissected after they were dead. It was for this same liberty of thought that Michael Servetus sighed, as, bound to the "stake, he refused to recant the doctrines contained in his book entitled Restitutio ('hristianismi; it is in one of the chapters of this very book, that he plainly enunciates the circulation of the blood from the right heart, viz : that it goes to the lungs, traverses them, and then returns to the heart ; and this was a long time before Harvey's discovery of the systemic circulation. In the Imperial Library at Paris, is the work Restitutio ('''hristianismi, bearing the marks of fire on it ; for when the Council of Geneva sentenced Servetus to be burned, they or- dered his books to be burned likewise; but this vol- ume, more fortunate than its brave old author's body, escaped the flames, and now more venerable than the deciphered hieroglyphics of Egypt and Assyria, and more illustrious than the hall-burned parchments of Heiculaneum and Pompeii, it still lives, and in it lives the spirit of Micdiael Servetus, while on its scorched face fall the sunbeams of civil, religious and intellectu- al liberty for which he died. But this great charter of intellectual liberty, which, as a symbol of faith, hovers over the altar of Natural Science, does not unloose you from the ties of morality. Those great principles of justice and right, vaguely shadowed forth by Plato as the Beautiful and the Good, by Socrates as the teachings of his daimon, and which have been venerated by the great and upright of all ages, must still bo preserved and made the corner-st me of this modern Temple of Freedom. And you, young gentlemen, to whom I have said that in adopting Medi- cine as your profession you are expected to be educated gentlemen, no less strongly would I impress upon you 10 the necessity of presenting a character tarnished by no immorality. The very spectacle which your profession will daily offer, of what results from allowing immor- ality to assume the helm, will ever whisper into your ear "shun vice, for it brings poverty, disease, dishonor, and premature death." Nature in her simplicity ushers all upon the threshold of life equal and in a similar manner, yet man, by his perversity, has opened a thou- sand gateways by which he may escape from life. Among the aims of a physician none should stand higher than that of a long life. But the engineer who stands by the boiler forgets, in the midst of danger and death, that he too is mortal. But this should not be so; the great hygienic lessons which our practice opens to us should be brought home and used. There is no profession where the power of usefulness is so much augmented with age as ours. Years are required to master its principles. Many more years are required to acquire great aptitude in its practice ; and that apti- tude, different from knowledge, can never be imparted to others. It is like a treasure that cannot be purchased, nor sold, nor bequeathed. It is a product of individu- ality, and dies with the man ; hence, as long a life as possible is requisite for its exercise. Hippocrates has left us a good example in this respect; he lived to the ripe age of ninety years. Few men, however, could reach that period, but almost all might come much nearer to it than they do. To reach a mature age. much must be done, and still more must be shunned. To run far the horse should have a slight burden; no useless girth or gear should trammel ; so we, in like manner, who would run long in life, should cast off as useless baggage, all gnawing cares concerning the future. Ill-humor, like rust, as a source of friction, wears out the mind. Depression of spirits is to be avoided as the worst of evils, while cheerfulness and active occupation will give untiring wings to our spirits. Three hundred years ago, De Soto and Ponce de Leon came to this continent in quest of gold, and likewise 17 of a fountain ef which it was said that those who bathed therein would be restored to youth. The former, after traversing a large portion of the New World, found, as Bancroft says, nothing so remarkable as his burial place. To-day, were De Soto alive, he would know that the fountain of youth is not hidden away among the rhododendrons which adorned the land of the Chicasaws among whom he wandered, nor on the banks of the great river which gave him a grave, but that it is in every man's heart in whom the passions have been kept in control, in whom the moral sentiments have taken deep root, and, having matured, are covered with the white flowers of purity, and in whom the intellect, with wealth gathered from every field of nature, be- comes itself a creative power. Such a man, I say, though an octogenarian, has not left youth behind, but has brought it with him. Such a man, greater than earthly king or emperor, has an empire more secure than the Imperial domain of the Caesars wdiich fell a prey to Goth, Visigoth and Hun ; the throne upon which his intellect sits is insulted by no Alaric, scourged by no Attila, while age itself weaves a chaplet of immortal youth and crowns his brow therewith. When Humboldt was visited by Bayard Taylor, he said tojthe latter, " You have traveled and seen many ruins, and now you look upon one more." " No," replied Taylor, "not a ruin, but a pyramid, and more perfect and enduring than the Parthenon." Hence, as a long life thus affords you ample sphere for cultivating and developing all your higher powers, and bringing to a successful conclusion all your hopes and plans, so it should have high place among your aims. I believe there is much truth in what Emerson says, that no man can die who has yet some high purpose unfinished. Finally, gentlemen, with such laurels to be gained, with such far-reaching consequences depending on your own exertions, how it behooves you to be well prepared for this great drama of life—a drama which, though of varied acts, can be played but once. An error once 18 made, is made for aye. No prompter stands behind the scenes to impart what you do not know or have forgotten. Fortune, stern, immovable and relentless, looks coldly on each act, allows no mistake to be made, or, if made, with one hand she writes it down to stand forever against you ; but, as a word of cheer, the same Fortune holds a crown in her other hand, ready to [dace it on your brow, if you perform well the eventful acts of this momentous drama. In conclusion: A sad duty devolves upon me, which, although by no means akin to the matters in which we are this evening engaged, is yet not inappropriate to this hour, viz : paying a tribute to the memory of your late teacher, whom death so prematurely snatched from his profession. And in this matter I will be brief, since the words of sorrow are few and simple, and when they become many and elaborate, they are but a flimsy veil through which the absence of true and heart-felt feeling may be detected. The late Dr. Isaac Rowell was possessed of a genius great, rare and original; of an intellect brilliant, fertile and inventive ; of a heart noble, generous and brave. To the bed-side of the patient he brought a rare amount of practical good sense, which was trammeled by no forms of affected technicality, nor cramped by any inflexible, stereo- typed authority. His mind, like a tropical field of boundless luxu- riance, now and then found time to wander away from medical themes, and to open up new paths of quaint invention and rare device; had he lived I am sure that future art would have owed to his genius more than oue curious invention or discovery. But these wanderings never bore him away from medicine ; in behalf of its best and noblest in- terests his heart ever warmed with the highest enthusiasm ; and it was his genius, and his intellect, and his hand, which seconded that kindred master who laid the foundations of the first medical institu- tion on tho Pacific coast, the school which this night enrolls you among its foster sons ; nine years ago science and humanity shed their tears over the tomb of the one; to-night our institution brings a ehaplet of immortelles as a token of remembrance and a badge of grief for the other; and, as one of her servants, she has honored me in allow- ing me to bring and entwine this simple leaf in the ehaplet conse- crated to his memory. IZ7I