Jackson (J.D.j
Jtf>DRE55
IJKKOUK TIIK
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JBtate of Kentucky.
Third Anniversary Meeting,
IIKLD AT
DANVILLE, KENTUCKY, JANUARY 5, 1869,
             1JY
   10HM B. JACKSON. lUk^



PT MASHED BY ORDER OF THE S0CJE7
       Louisville, Ky.:
ijkll. * co., printers, 111 west (jrkex street.
           1800.
/ 
 
/PPJ*]^
  THE  BOYLE  COUNTY  MEDICAL SOCIETY
             OF THE STATE OF KENTUCKY,
At its Third Anniversary Meeting, held at Danville, January 5th, 1869
          BY JOHN D. JACKSON, M. D.
                     ___            v
     [From the Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal of February, 1869;
i2" ".
  Gentlemen [of the  Boyle  County Medical  Society:  We
meet to-night, on this, the third anniversary of our Soci-
ety's existence. Three years ago, our association was or-
ganized;  since then  we have met nearly an  hundred
times, and as often engaged in the discussion of questions
pertaining  to our profession.  Fortnightly, for three
years, have we 'continued  to assemble, despite all hin-
drances, and  now, on this triennial anniversary occasion,
and especially at this season,  so suggestive of reflection—
when the old year  has  died out, and we stand on the
threshold of the new one, with its vista of fresh hopes
and fair budding promises opening out before us—we
may naturally ask, cut  bono, what profiteth it ?  Have we,
by our organization, advantaged  ourselves beyond what
would have been were we unorganized?  What is  our
present  status compared with our past, and what are
our prospects for the future?
  These natural questions, so pertinent to the  time  and
the  occasion, we stand here  to-night, to endeavor to an-
swer. 
2
Address.
   Sometime since, in conversing with an old friend, a re-
 tired member of the profession, living adjacent to a town
 not a hundred miles from here,  we asked  him;  what
 tidings  of the sons of ^Esculapius of your place, and,
 tell me, especially, whether they have yet organized a
 society ?  He replied, "The sons of ^Esculapius, as you
 are pleased to call them, but rather sons of Ishmael, one
 from my stand-point of vision, would call them, have not,
 and I assert, never will organize a society."  I asked him,
 why.  He replied, that there were so many varying in-
 terests and so much discord among the  doctors, that, to
 a looker on, it seemed impossible to ever sufficiently har-
 monize them to organize a society, founded on mutual
 concessions, though the object might be for a common
 benefit.
   Upon my asking him to be more explicit, and give me
 some idea of the state of things, individually, he pro-
 ceeded in the following strain: "We have some eight or
 ten doctors in our midst, a sufficient number it is true, to
 form a society, but, when I tell you, that instead of seem-
 ing to be a band of brethren, engaged in a common cause,
 they seem to  feel that they are a band  of Ishmaelites,
 common enemies, every  man's hand naturally raised
 against his neighbor's, you will at once see the foundation
 upon which I  rest my opinion."  But, said I, perhaps
 you judge them too severely, you know that we are all
 naturally rivals, that most of us are dependent upon our
 profession for a support, and that what  has been called
 the first law of our nature—self-preservation, leads every
 man to  prefer himself to his neighbor.  Tell me, said I,
 what are the rules governing them in their intercourse
 with, one another, upon what grounds do they rely for
advancing themselves, or to get practice. Though a rivalry
must exist, yet there is such a thing as an honorable, indeed
a generous rivalry."  He then continued:  "I believe I am 
Address.
3
correct when I say, that no three of the doctors speak.
Let a new member of the faculty come to town to settle,
and they instantly view him as an interloper, trespassing
on their own rightful domains, and  treat him accord-
ingly.  Wo be unto  any of their number who  may com-
mit a mistake, or have any evil to befall him in his prac-
tice, for he at once becomes common prey for the balance,
who look  upon  the weakness  of  a  rival as   so much
strength lent  to themselves.   As to their code or rules
governing them in advancing themselves—the prime one
seems to be the old primitive one of 'every man for him-
self and the devil take the hindmost.'   Another cardinal
one, I think, is—'get practice, honestly if you can, but any-
how, get practice.'   The means  adopted to get practice
are multitudinous and the perseverance with which they
are followed  and the astuteness with which they are ap-
plied by  some, would do honor to any cross-roads' poli-
tician.  Marriage, the church, masonry, odd-fellowship,
teetotalism, democracy, radicalism, the kuklux klan and
the loyal league, are all impressed for aid, and the way in
which court  days and Saturday evenings are  spent in
the shaking  of  hands  and palaver, a spectator would
think the next week an important election was to come
off, and the doctor was the candidate for office.  Indeed
he would sometimes think the vote was surely to take
place on  Monday, judging from certain scenes on certain
church steps  on Sundays.  To sum up the matter," said
he, "though I blush to tell it, I have heard a doctor, with-
out circumlocution and with unmantled cheek, ask a cit-
izen direct  for his patronage."
  These, and some other things, he said of the art of ac-
quiring practice adopted by the physicians of his locality,
which I  thought would have formed a worthy  appendix
to the celebrated letter  of Mead*  to  Dr. Timothy Van

  * The letter, by the way, was not really written by Mead, but by an
enemy of his who fathered it on him. 
4
Address.
Bustle on the same subject.  Though my friend is rather
hypercritical, and withal naturally something of a cynic,
and  therefore probably drew the scene with rather too
heavy a hand, yet we can all recognize some lines which,
alas!  are but too commonly visible, in any but  well-or-
ganized communities.
  Though  in localities in which no organization of the
medical  body exists, the large  number of medical men
may act  in the true spirit of the  profession, and while
admitting that if there was no written code, that yet the
true physician would carry out its spirit, just as the true
gentleman  would always be found acting in accordance
with the spirit of the civil law, if even it was not the law
of the land, yet, just as the necessities of society at large
demand  organic laws, so, on precisely the same principle,
is organization and  a written code demanded by  every
profession. With the clergy, as with the military, it is in-
deed  the fundamental rule of existence.
   The truth is, that  owing to human depravity, we are
all naturally a little mean, and  are instinctively predis-
posed to be a little jealous  each of the other.  This is,
when we analyze it, but an extension of the natural  law
of self-preservation beyond proper limits.  Now, I think
I may truthfully say, that there is no more  effectual way
of repressing this evil phase of our nature, in its multifa-
rious disgusting forms, as we see it cropping out within
the folds of our profession, than by the accepted public
acknowledgment on the part  of  the better portion of
our profession of a written code. Let the public at large
once be fully cognizant of our standard, and half the in-
centives  to self-abasement have been taken away; for
they, the audience before whom we play our respective
parts, can at once measure each of us by our own rules,
and the most respectable part of society learns soon to
look with  disgust upon the tricks of the  tradesman in 
Address
5
the professional  man.  Sir Benjamin Brodie once said
that medicine is a most noble profession, but a miserable
trade.  Fully imbue society with this idea, and any over-
pushing, grasping desire  for  the  world's patronage, at
the expense of honorable independence and the  nobler
feelings, or at the sacrifice of the rights of others, and
the violator will,  by the public as by ourselves, be viewed
with profound scorn.
  The foundation of all pure  ethical precepts is  in the
golden rule " Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you," and its spirit, has ever been breathed into
all the established rules for professional intercourse with
which we are acquainted.  It is infused into the grand
old Hippocratic oath of fifty ages agone.  It permeates
the noble  precepts of that prince of surgeons of five hun-
dred  years ago, Grey of  Chauliac, who summed up the
character of the true surgeon by saying that " He should
be  courteous and condescending, bold in security, cau-
tious in time of danger, avoiding impracticabilities, com-
passionate to the  infirm, benevolent to his associates, cir-
cumspect  in  prognostication, chaste, sober, pious and
merciful, not greedy of gain, no extortioner, but looking
for his fee in moderation, according  to  the  extent of his
services, the  ability of his patient, the result of his treat-
ment, and a proper sense of his own dignity." And now,
in our own Code  of Ethics, as written by the ever-to-be-
honored Percival, and adopted by  the American Medical
Association,  we have as perfect a system of rules for our
government,  founded on as pure a system of morality as
the most rigid moralist  could ever  wish  for — a code
which, from its essential nature, must always purify and
ennoble those living in accordance with its precepts.
  How men  of our profession, of good sense and good
intentions, can  ever live and practice their vocation in the
same community without being on good terms with each 
6
Address.
other, is  not easily explicable; for there is certainly no
other profession the inherent nature of the practice of
which so inevitably and so repeatedly demands coopera-
tion, and mutual kindly services.   As has been said by
one of eminence in our profession :  " If society does treat
the medical man harshly and unkindly, is it any worse
than medical men treat each other ?  Many of the worst
things ever said of a physician, originally came from an-
other physician's  tongue; society is  often  merely the
whispering gallery, which echoes back these utterances.
Were we more charitable toward  each other, we would
silence half the reproaches which are brought upon the
profession."*   It would always be well for that man who
should be ready to rejoice at the mishaps of his neighbor,
and dishonorably profit by his misfortunes, to reflect that,
being human, we  are  all thereby fallible, and that the
day may not be far distant when he himself may stand
in sore need of, and most wistfully crave, all human sym-
pathy; and, furthermore, that he who does injustice to
one of his peers, directly wounds his profession, and, re-
flectively, himself.
   How different was the  noble conduct  of  Dr. Mead!
He and Dr. Friend were at the head of the profession in
London, and were rivals in practice, as  well as opposed to
each other in politics—Mead being a Whig, and possess-
ing great influence with the  heads of  the  party then in
power, while the latter was a Tory, and member of Par-
liament  for Lancaster.   Dr. Friend, being suspected of
some connection with the Atterbury plot, was arrested
and committed to  the Tower, where he was confined for
nearly a half year.  Mead was  about this time called to
attend Sir Robert Walpole, and during his professional
attendance, pleaded so eloquently with the Prime Minister
as to effect Dr. Friend's discharge on bail, he himself be-
* Dr. Theophilus Parvin. 
Address.
7
coming one of his sureties.  .Not only this, but he took
Friend aside, after his release, and presented him with a
purse containing 2000 guineas, the sum of all the fees he
had received from the patients of his Jacobite rival during
his imprisonment, enforcing its acceptance by saying: " I
cannot profit by the misfortunes of a rival."   What a
worthy example of magnanimity was the course of Dr.
Paul F. Eve, who, appointed Professor of Surgery in the
University of Louisville on Dr.  Gross' leaving the chair
to occupy a similar position in New York, when the lat-
ter returned to Louisville, after a year or two, at once re-
signed, telling the trustees to reappoint Dr. Gross—that
he was the ablest man for the position to be found in the
West, and that the honor of the school and the good of
the profession demanded his reappointment!
  The practice  of  our profession in the proper  spirit,
tends, of its very self, to ennoble us, and  this tribute was
paid to medicine more than a thousand years ago, by no
less a personage than Cicero, when he said, "Homines ad
Deos  nulla re proprius accedunt, quam salutem hominibus
dando."
  But, as the organization of individuals into communi-
ties is greatly auxiliary to individual effort, whether it be
for the furtherance of material interests, or the practice
of the moral virtues, so is our profession benefited by the
formation of Societies.  Certainly one of the most power-
ful levers impelling the advance of medical science during
the past half century, has been the establishment of the
numerous medical Societies which during that time have
grown up in the capital towns of Europe.
   Before  these,  every alleged discovery with any preten-
sions to importance, is brought up, and undergoes the
ordeal of scientific discussion by the ablest minds of our
profession.  Before these, a thousand pretentious theories
which would have lived sometime in the world, have 
8
Address.
promptly received their quietus; and it has been, on the
other hand, through its ventilation  here, that many an
opinion or method which would otherwise have been very
slow of development, has at once obtained its proper stand-
ing with the profession.   The great medical Societies of
the world are the  winnowing machines  of the  profes-
sion, serving the most useful purpose of sifting the good
from the bad, the true from the false.  Let the Academy
of Medicine, or the Imperial Academy  of Surgery, of
Paris,  alone  be  blotted out to-day,  and the loss would
soon be sensibly felt by the profession throughout the
world.
  Is there a member of the Boyle County Medical  Soci-
ety present to-night, but will agree with me in affirming
that, as an individual practitioner, he has been instructed
and elevated  morally as well as mentally from our united
association ?  And, furthermore, I  believe  I  speak the
truth when I say, that as the result of the  Society's or-
ganization and  operations, our profession  as a body, and
as a consequence, we, as individual practitioners,  have
been elevated an hundred per cent, in the  eyes of this
community in whose midst we belong.
  These may be mentioned,  not in the spirit of egotism,
but for self-encouragement, and to demonstrate the claim
that our organization has not been in vain- -the effects of
our Society abroad. I believe that the profession through-
out the State, who are  informed  as to the history of the
reorganization of the Kentucky State Medical Society,
with one accord give the credit of its revival to us, and
certainly that the plan of its resurrection originated here.
I am  aware of  three Societies within the State, which,
encouraged by our example, have been organized, adopt-
ing in  the main, the constitution, by-laws,  and form of
business governing this body, audi have reason to believe
that more than one other association antedating us in age, 
Address.
9
has been awakened  from its state of suspended anima-
tion and had new vitality infused into it, by  the example
of our prosperity.
  What, gentlemen,  are  our prospects for  the  future ?
Has our society reached its acme of efficiency, and is it
unreasonable to expect the fruits of  the year just before
us to excel the products of the one just ended ?
  While acknowledging that our organization, simple as
it is, is yet remarkably well adapted for effecting its ob-
ject, and while I  think I can say without  reflecting ego-
tism, that we have done well in the past, yet truth de-
mands that I should say that there  yet remains a wide
margin for improvement.
  Wherein we are yet lacking, and the direction in which
I think improvement can be effected, it becomes my duty
to endeavor to point out.
  It has been justly  said by an  eminent observer in  our
profession, "A  very  large class enter the learned profes-
sions  with no  higher motives  than such as characterize
commercial enterprises, pursuing them as a business, and
more anxious to erect monuments like that of Nebuchad-
nezzar in the plain of Dura, than such as fill the niches of
fame."*
         " Make sordid wealth the object and sole end
          Of their industrious aims."
  But, gentlemen, though we know that while we have
our own, with perhaps many other hungry mouths to fill,
we must ever instinctively feel, that to derive  an income
from our professional labors must be one of our first ob-
jects—an object the  worthiness of which we have sanc-
tioned  by the inspired authority, which tells us that " he
who provideth not for his household is worse than an in-
fidel"—yet we  should never forget that we have  it from
the same authority,  that " man  shall not  live by  bread
alone."
* Dr. D. Hayes Agnew. 
10
Address.
  Dr. George B. Wood once declared that "He who en-
ters the medical profession with a mercenary spirit, will
almost necessarily come short of its highest requirements.
Aiming at the appearance, rather than the reality of skill,
he will think more of the impression he may make on
others, than of a proper understanding and treatment of
the disease.  When  nothing is to be gained but the con-
sciousness of duty fulfilled, he will be little apt to spend
time and labor which  might yield him more if  applied
elsewhere, or at least would be abstracted from his pleas-
ures.   For the frequent self-denial, the steady devotion
of thought  and energy, the unwavering guard over his
precious charge, as  well when unseen as when  seen of
men, which characterize the right spirited practitioner,
he has no sufficient inducement.   He will  be, almost nec-
essarily, more or less superficial.  He never can be the
true model physician.  Just in proportion as medicine is
cultivated in the mercenary, or in the pure professional
spirit, will be its decay or advancement in  efficiency, zeal,
dignity and acceptance with God and man.  *   *   Get
the true professional spirit, and all that is needful or de-
sirable will be added unto it."
  The English Hippocrates, Sydenham, used to say : " I
have thought it a greater happiness to discover a  certain
method of curing the slightest disease, than to accumulate
the largest fortune."  And the illustrious Dr. Fothergill
once said: "My only wish was to do what little business
might fall to my share as well as possible, and to banish
all thoughts of practicing physic as a money-getting trade,
with  the  same solicitude  as I would the suggestions of
vice or intemperance.   *    *    *   I endeavor to follow
my business because it is my duty, rather than my  inter-
est; the last is inseparable from a just discharge of duty"
   Lord Bacon has  said " that every man is a debtor to
his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek 
A ddress.
11
to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty
to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help
and ornament thereunto."  Our code makes the sime ac-
knowledgement  in the paragraph  which declares that
" Every individual, on entering the profession, as he  be-
comes thereby entitled to all its privileges and immuni-
ties, incurs  an obligation to the extent of his best abilities
to maintain its dignity and honor, to exalt its standing,
and to extend the bounds  of its usefulness ;" and further
on  enjoins that  he "should, by unwearied  diligence, re-
sort to every honorable  means of enriching the science."
  Now, gentlemen, let us  ask ourselves the question  di-
rect, and let each answer it honestly for himself, whether
during the year just closed, he thinks he has been per-
fectly imbued with  the " pure professional spirit," or
whether he does not think we all yet have rather too much
of the " mercenary sort."  Have we always attended  our
society meetings, when it was possible ?  Have we always
prepared ourselves as thoroughly as we could for our de-
bates?  Have we always done what we could in the way
of prepared papers, and written records of cases to be read
before our society?  Have we, in every instance possible,
demanded  and held a post mortem,, when we had a fatal
case?  Have we taken advantage  of  the  opportunities
we have had of cultivating  anatomical science, the very
groundwork of  our  profession ?  Have we all kept case
books, and carefully recorded the progress and results of
each case in our practice?  Have we kept as many jour-
nals on our tables as we could afford to take and had time
to read, and purchased every new work, the perusal of
which was necessary to keep us abreast in the present
rapid march of  our profession?  Have we provided our-
selves with all  instruments  which the exigencies of  our
profession and the urgency of certain cases which are lia-
ble to fall into  our hands  at  any day, will not give us 
12
Address.
 time to send abroad for, w*hen the occasion arises for their
 use, and the want of which, under certain circumstances,
 might make us morally criminal, on the death of a fellow-
 being?  And have  we always kept ourselves so pure and
 unspotted from the world or quackery that, by a refusal
 of private social recognition of its practitioners, we take
 away from the public all  occasion of  confounding them
 with us?  To make application of an expression of St.
 Paul, " Have we  all done what we could to magnify our
 profession ?"
  But methinks I hear some one present say, We have
 no time for most of these things; the toils of our prac-
 tice, and the domestic  duties—with those of us bavins:
 families—so engross our time as to  leave us  insufficient
 leisure for the cultivation of medicine as a science.  Be-
 sides, some of us are growing  old, and  we  must leave
 everything of that sort to the younger  generation, follow-
 ing after.
  But I would ask any so objecting, to think for a few
 moments, and tell me, if he can, of any great work which
 we acknowledge as  of much authority in our profession,
 which has not been prepared  amid  just such, or more
 onerous duties than any by which the busiest of us is now
 harassed.  Let him  reflect that  some of the most valua-
 ble of  all the works for  which to-day our profession  is
 indebted to Sir Astley Cooper, were composed  in the
 midst of one of the largest private practices of any man
 who ever lived, and  at the time, too, when he was an hos-
 pital surgeon, and daily lecturer in a medical school. Let
 him look at those eighteen volumes of Gerard Van Swie-
 ten's " Commentaries on Boerhaave," the great text-book
 of the  medical  world a century ago,  and recollect that
 they were written by the court  physician  of  Joseph II,
in the midst of one  of the heaviest and most responsible
 of private practices, and that he still found time to orig- 
Address.
13
inate a medical school, give clinical  lectures, create a bo-
tanical garden, and to  exert his influence sufficiently to
found a university.  Let him read the lives of Boerhaave
and Haller and Hoffman, the bare titles of the latter of
whose  works fill thirty-eight  quarto pages,  and see if
they had learned leisure in which to do nothing else than
write.   Does not ever}* one know that Hippocrates, the
father of medicine, wrote those immortal records which
all acknowledge as the foundation  of our science while
engaged in what must have been almost constant practical
professional engagements.  Or let him come down to the
present year and hour, and know that the living, shining
lights of our own day and generation, are also the busi-
est privately occupied.   Let him know that Sir Thomas
Watson, and George B. Wood, and Austin Flint, and
Sir William Ferguson, and Erichsen, and Gross, and Sir
James Y. Simpson, and Hodge, and Meigs, each wrote
the works which we, and generations after us shall be in-
debted to them for, while busier than the busiest of us in
tliis  presence.   No, gentlemen, when we recollect that
Dr. John Mason Good found time to translate Lucretius'
" De Natura lierum," with his book in hand as he drove
or walked his daily rounds, engaged in one of the largest
practices in London; and when we read in the preface to
Dr. Willis' Biography of Harvey, together with a com-
plete translation of his works from the  Latin, what he
says in speaking of the biographical part: " This portion
of my work I  have only achieved with an effort, and at
something like disadvantage.   Incessantly engaged by
night and by day in the laborious and responsible duties
of a country practice, enjoying nothing of learned leisure,
but snatching from the hours  that  should rightfully be
given to rest, the time that was necessary to composition,
remote, too, from means of information which I must
nevertheless send  for and consult"—recalling these, and 
14
Address.
an hundred similar examples if we might, for one, I think
that there is  not one of us but  should feel humiliated
when reflecting on our wasted time, time which we have
let slip from us, never, nevermore to be repossessed.
  But, I imagine I again hear it objected, that we are but
unpretentious country doctors,  not  aspiring to lead the
profession,  and  even if we were all aflame with  am-
bitious  hopes  to  do  so,  that our  narrow sphere  would
make their realization an impossibility, that the village
doctor,  must from the very nature of things, ever be the
passive  follower of the hospital physician of the city.
  But,  I would answer, gentlemen, that this is not the
point.   I am  not speaking of  ambition, though if we
each had a little more of it in us,  it would  probably be
better for ourselves and our patients; the question is one
regarding the  fulfillment of that injunction of that code
which says that we are morally bound to exalt the  stand-
ing of our  profession, and by "unwearied diligence, re-
sort to  every honorable means of enriching  the science."
Because the hospital presents a wider and  more  easily
cultivated field than  ours, does it follow that ours must
be totally barren ? No,  the material in each case is just
the same, poor suffering hnmanity,  and while the con-
centration of large numbers of sick within a small space,
and the regulations  of hospitals, are such  that the ob-
server can study disease more readily, have his directions
carried out more effectually, and record and  tabulate the
results more easily,  yet  the antecedents, the  surround-
ings, and the  very   concentration  of patients  within
eleemosynary institutions, are so different from those of
the patients of private life, that the  uncorrected conclu-
sions of experience drawn from the former source alone,
are not  perfectly  applicable in every respect to those
whom we attend.
  I cannot recollect any evidence that either Hippocrates 
Address.
15
or Sydenham, was ever connected with a hospital, and it
would be well for those who would despise our  narrow
sphere, to recall the fact, that the greatest boon which our
profession has yet conferred upon humanity (vaccination),
came at the hands of a modest country physician, who
made his daily rounds just as we are doing; and let him
also know,  that the physician of America now, receiving
the most honors at home and in Europe, is doing so be-
cause of an operation conceived, executed and perfected,
while laboring in precisely  the same character  of field
as our  own.   Why,  gentlemen,  an  operation  which
has made the name  of its originator famous  throughout
the world,  and will send it down honored to coming gen-
erations, an operation by which thousands of lovely  wo-
men have  been, and  many more shall be rescued from
otherwise inevitable death,  was first planned and per-
formed right here in this our own little field.
   Let us all use  the opportunities at command, to the ex-
tent of our abilities, and although our  Society may never
be honored by one to whom the world shall owe so much
as it does to a Jenner, a Sims, or a McDowell, yet of one
thing we may feel assured, that we will all become better
practitioners, and our patients, to whom we shall be called
to administer, be proportionally benefitted.
   The plain truth is, that those who  intrust themselves
to our care, have the right to require of us a knowledge
of our profession fully up to  the  advances of the day,
and for the lack of the possession of such knowledge, in-
volving human  life and  health as it does, we stand re-
sponsible before  God  and in  the  presence of the law.
Ours is  not an exact science, but is making regular and
rapid progress toward a position in  which it may be
ranked with the fixed sciences.  While this rapid march
continues, to cease to  advance is to retrograde, and the
day the practitioner  of medicine ceases to be a student, 
16
Address.
 that day should see him, if a conscientious man, ready to
 retire from  the  ranks of the profession.  Unremitting
 study and labor will ever constitute our only reliable mo-
 tive power, so long as we continue members of that great
 army, in the  interests ofmedical science, warring with dis-
 ease.
   In the introduction to one of his anatomico-physiolog-
 ical treatises, Galen  calls his work "A Hymn to the  De-
 ity," declaring that, to his  mind, such an  offering  was
 more acceptable  in the eyes of the gods, than the sacri-
 fices of whole hecatombs of oxen, or incense from the
 most costly  perfumes.  Galen was but a pagan, yet the
 spirit of his  language, was worthy  of these most Chris-
 tian times, since every effort properly directed  toward
 the improvement of medicine, tends to alleviate the  suf-
 ferings of our race.  I believe the true physician  can, of
 all men, most truly say—"laborare est orare."
   If we believe  in the sentiment,  there  is one  resolve
 which I think we should make in common here to-night,
 that we should each of us keep a case book and in it faith-
 fully record  the  phenomena,  treatment and  results of
 every case of any importance falling to our lot during the
 present year.  The  keeping of an intelligible and con-
 scientious record,  must necessarily improve every indi-
 vidual keeping it, but let a dozen men in country prac-
 tice each keep one and the combined experience is about
 equivalent to  a large ward in a hospital.  Should  the
 members of every country district in the State, keep ac-
 curate records, for the  next  three  years, there would
 be data of the most valuable character, and such as  our
 profession stands greatly in need of, data from  which the
 statistics of modern country practice  separate  from hos-
pital practice could  reliably be made out.  Let us keep
accurate records of our practice, and we  will  gradually
lose a phase in our debates which has been  entirely  too 
Address.
17
familiar with us, and one  which does not look well in a
scientific body,  when seen too often.   I allude to the
common expression of opinion, without a reason for the
faith in us, and which is a frequent source of controversy
without  practical  benefit;  c g.—Dr. A.  says that  he
thinks a certain  disease less common than formerly, while
Dr. B. arises and declares that bethinks it more common,
to be followed by Dr.  C, who probably thinks it about
as common as it has always been.  Or,  let the question
be one regarding the presence of  certain phenomena in
disease, or  the results of the administration of a certain
remedy, and it is  the  same thing.  But if we could  all
draw upon the written records of our experience, instead
of our unconfirmed recollections, which are too often but
"vain imaginings," our opinions would be more nearly de-
monstrable.  "Litera scripta manet."  We should not for-
get that simple opinions are not experience, let them  be
asserted ever so boldly, but that, as Liston has said, "The
greatest number of  well-assorted  facts,  on a particular
subject, constitutes experience, whether these facts have
been culled in five years or fifty."
  Next in  importance with us to  the subject  just under
discussion is, I think, the making of post-mortems and ana-
tomical dissections.
  The first has always been deemed necessary to the  in-
telligent practice of our profession, and absolutely essential
to the advancement of medicine toward a perfect science.
Without it, nearly one-half the fruits of what we are  ac-
customed to call experience is lost;  for otherwise we have
no means of confirming the correctness, or correcting the
errors of judgment, regarding pathological  conditions
supposed to exist during life, and toward which our ther-
apeutics have  been directed.  It is true, that I  have
sometimes   heard  it objected, that practitioners in the
country  are so accustomed to examining the dead, that 
18
Address.
when the}' ever do so, their opinions are worth but little
from  their inability  to clearly  discern and  distinguish
normal from abnormal appearances.  But this is the most
futile of objections, being,  indeed, one of the strongest
arguments in behalf of their being more frequently held.
It has been remarked that one of the most correct indices
of the true standing of our profession in  any locality is
the frequency of post-mortems.
  As  to the latter—practical anatomy—I don't know that
I can  adduce any arguments,  or the opinions of any, en-
titled  to more authority concerning the necessity  of its
cultivation by us, than have been  adduced by Sir Astley
Cooper and Sir Benjamin Brodie.   The former has said:
" Let  it always be remembered, that operations cannot be
safely undertaken by any man, without his possessing a
thorough knowledge of anatomy.  This is the real ground-
work  of all surgical science.  It has ever been found that
half anatomists are bungling practitioners;  ignorance here,
as it always does, gives confidence without power.  *  *
*  With us the march of  improvement has  been  most
rapid; and it has principally arisen from the assiduity
with which the  modern surgeons have pursued their dis-
secting-room  avocations."   The latter, when once con-
versing in private with a young American who had just
taken his degree in medicine, said : "If you  wish, my
young friend, to give breadth to your medical  concep-
tions  and confidence to your hand, if you wish, indeed, to
make yourself a great surgeon, let me say to  you, as I
would to all with whom I have influence, never for a mo-
ment  cease the cultivation  of  anatomical science."  Now
it will not do to excuse ourselves  by saying that,  being
country doctors, we make no  special pretensions to sur-
gery, and that the remarks quoted were intended to  apply
alone  to those practicing surgery purely, and that when a
surgical operation is necessary, they are the ones to whom 
Address.
19
we send our patients  for its  performance.   The truth is
that the advice is in a great  measure as applicable to the
pure physician as to the surgeon ;  and, furthermore, the
accomplishments demanded at the hands of practitioners
in the country are really much greater than those of the
city practitioner, who can devote  himself to medicine
alone,  or to surgery exclusively.  For we, from  the na-
ture of our situation, must be physicians, surgeons and
obstetricians—all.   I admit that it is true that in  proba-
bly the majority of our cases we can send our patients
with surgical affections abroad  for operations,  but we
must recollect, gentlemen, that  in many instances we
cannot.  Every country doctor must be his own bleeder,
cupper and leecber; every country  doctor is in any hour
liable to be called upon to reduce a dislocation, or amputate
a mangled member, or set a fracture, or trephine, or oper-
ate  for inguinal  or femoral  hernia, or perform tracheot-
omy, or  extract a bullet, or  cut down upon and take up
an artery—operations  sometimes requiring  no little de-
gree of anatomical knowledge, and which make the oper-
ator sigh for  an opportunity of resorting to the cadaver
to revive his recollections.  I am ready to admit that the
difficulties and dangers of dissection are not small, to say
nothing of its disagreeableness, and that we are placed in
the  very unpleasant  and  anomalous condition of being
compelled to  be law-breakers to enable ourselves to obey
the law; but I think that it has already been satisfactorily
demonstrated that the good sense of this community, and
its respect for our profession, are such that we have no
just grounds for fearing outside interference with dissec-
tions,  when  made  with discretion, as, indeed, they al-
ways should be.  " We must dissect the dead, or mangle the
living."
What shall I say of the hated monster Quackery, which 
20
Address.
like a hideous hydra-headed shadow, ever stalks  abroad
accompanying our profession?  As the louse, the flea,
and tick are the constant companions of the canine tribe,
so it would seem  the  body-politic is destined always to
be preyed  upon  by  the quack.   Though the  crop of
medicasters, charlatans,  quacksalvers, nostrum-mounte-
banks, liniment-rubbers, wind-pumpers, clectric-humbug-
gers, et idomne gen its, has been as plentiful as  usual dur-
ing the past three years, yet I don't think  they  have
flourished in this vicinity, as much as was their wont in
former days.
   One prime source of the evil rests in the bosom of our
own profession,  for as has been said by another: "The
quackery  which  is practiced  among medical men  is a
much greater evil than that which is abroad in the com-
munity.  When  the rules of  an honorable professional
intercourse shall come to be understood by the public, as
well also as many of the tricks and manoeuvres which are
employed by thos3 physicians who, pursuing medicine as
a trade instead of a profession, stud}' the science of patient-
getting, to the neglect of the science of patient-curing,
one of the great sources of the success of  quackery will
be removed."*   Let us see to  it that our own escutcheon
shall be kept clean, if wo wish to avoid all  danger of its
being  confounded with the dirty banner of the  enemy.
As I once  heard a very eloquent divine say, in a revival
sermon, from the pulpit: "If we had but a revival within
the fold of the church, a great and blessed  revival indeed
would it be."  So might we paraphrase him and declare
that if the profession proper, were perfectly purged  of
quackery, what a riddance there would be.   In proportion
to the high and trusted stand, which our profession takes
in a community as  a scientific  and ethical body, is the
* Dr. Worthington Hooker. 
Address.
21
difficulty of quackery's obtaining a foothold, but when
torn by dissensions among ourselves, cliaos prepares a rich
field for its prolific growth.
  Our code declares it to be our duty as "physicians who
are frequent  witnesses of the  enormities committed by
quackery, and the injury to health, and even destruction
of lite, caused by the use of quack medicines, to enlighten
the  public on these subjects, and to expose the injuries
sustained by  the unwary from the devices and pretensions
of artful empirics and impostors."  To this end, I think
that it is the duty of each of us, on  every proper  occa-
sion, to endeavor to reason  and explain  away the preju-
dices and misconceptions of the more  intelligent portion
 of society, for it is this part after all which furnishes the
 main pillar of its support.   I think that not infrequently
 the mistake is made  of treating the subject with  some
 simple ejaculation of contempt, which proves ineffectual,
 when if we  took the trouble  of reasoning a little  with
 those who are intelligent and  honest,  though  misin-
 formed, our  efforts to eradicate error would  more fre-
 quently prove  successful.  As  showing  the standard by
 which we  would  have our profession judged, and thus
 combat the  wrong by showing the right, I think that  a
 very great deal of good has been  accomplished  for this
 community,  by our recent  publication* of the Code of
 Ethics.  I have now this suggestion to  make to the So-
 ciety, viz: That for the purpose of impressing the public
 more thoroughly  on  this point,  we raise  a fund for the
purpose of inserting  in the columns of our village  paper
for the ensuing year  sections 3 and 4 of  art. 1,-chap. 2 of
the code, which reads :
   " § 3. It is derogatory to the dignity of the profession,
" to resort to public  advertisements or  private cards or
* In the village jwper. 
 22                    Address.

 •' handbills, inviting the  attention of individuals affected
 ': with particular diseases, publicly offering  advice and
 " medicine to the poor gratis, or promising radical cures;
 " or to publish cases and operations in the daily prints, or
 •' suffer such publication to be made; to invite laymen to
 " be present at operations;  to  boast of cures and reme-
 "dies; to adduce  certificates of skill  and  success, or to
 " perform  any other similar acts.  These  are the ordi-
 " nary practices of empirics, and are highly  rcprehensi-
 " ble in a regular  physician.
   " § 4. Equally derogatory to professional  character is it
 " for a physician to hold a patent for any surgical instru-
 " ment, or medicine ; or  to  dispense a secret nostrum,
 " whether it be the composition or exclusive property of
 " himself  or of others.   For  if  such nostrums be of real
 " efficacy,  any concealment  regarding it is inconsistent
 " with beneficence  and professional  liberality;  and if
 " mystery alone give it value and  importance, such craft
 " implies either disgraceful ignorance or fraudulent ava-
 " rice.  It  is also  reprehensible for  physicians  to give
 " certificates  attesting  the efficacy of  patent or secret
 " medicines, or in any way to promote the use of them."
   This card, properly  quoted,  as an abstract from the
 code of the regular profession, to be inserted immediately
 above or below such flaming advertisements  as we now
 weekly see, and as are constantly making  their appear-
 ance throughout the year, I doubt not, would effect good
 by making the public hesitate and ponder well before re-
 sorting to traveling charlatans.
   If legislation could be brought  properly  to bear upon
 the evil, much would be done toward its repression.  With
.this object  in view, one of our  legislators has promised,
 during the coming session,  to introduce a bill into the
 Legislature similar to the medical act recently passed in
 the neighboring State of Ohio. 
Address.
2:)
  In conclusion, gentlemen, we ought always to remem-
ber that "of unity cometh  strength;'" and that, as what-
ever of individual honors come to us are  reflected upon
our Society, so as individual members composing the So-
ciety, whatever of honors or  glory  cometh to her is re-
flected back upon us.  Let us never forget that the pre-
amble of our constitution declares a prime object of this
organization to be " the cultivation of amity among us ;"
recalling which, let us foster  toleration, charity, forbear-
ance, the spirit  of forgiveness, and  all the kindlier feel-
ings, which I think,  considering  everything, have pre-
eminently characterized our association in the past; and,
as greatly promotive of this end, I would suggest that
we meet more frequently around the social  board.

   And  now, may I say, in the name of every  member
here present to-night, that whatever  of joy  or sorrow the
future may  bring to us, nerved to  a triple resolve by the
recollections of the three years just expired, may the
coming tliree always find us true and worthy worshipers
at the altar of science, ever lending the best powers of
head, heart and hand toward adorning and  keeping clean
the little niche in the great Temple of Medicine which
has fallen to  the lot of the Boyle County Medical Society. 
 
  Errata.—On page  5, sixthteonth  line, read "Guy" in-
stead of "Grey:"' page (>, lines 23, 2S and 34, read "Freind"
instead of "Friend:"  same page, line 28, read "Launees-
ton" instead of "Lancaster;"'  page 7,  line 2. read "Freind"
instead  of "Friend;'"  same  page, line 3, read "5000" in-
stead of "200(1;"'  page 8, line 23, read "There" instead of
'■These;"'  page 12, line  24, read "minister"  instead  of
"administer;"  same page and line, read "proportionately"
instead of "proportionally."
 
 
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