With Compliments op the Writer, 
THE 
Now and Then of Medicine: 
A POST-PRANDIAL DISCOURSE 
DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary 
OF THE FORMATION OF THE 
Luzerne County Medical Society, 
—AT— 
Wilkes-Barre, Penn’a, January 13th, 1886. 
Bv EDWARD R. MAYER, M. D. 
rtntcb bg iltqucsf of tbc THE 
Now and Then of Medicine: 
A POST-PRANDIAL DISCOURSE 
DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary 
OF THE FORMATION OF THE 
Luzerne County Medical Society, 
—AT— 
Wilkes-Barre, Penn’a, January 13th, 1886. . 
EDWARD R. MAYER, M. D. 
bn Request of tbe Societg. E. B. YORDY, PRINTER, 
WILKES-BARRE, PA. THE NOW AND THEN OF MEDICINE. 
“ Dulce est desipere in loco.” It is wise, as well as pleasant, for 
the “ insatiate archer ” in the battle of life to relax occasionally 
his oft drawn bow from its wonted tension and to let the slacked 
string vibrate in a manner attuned to mirth, and more melodiously 
than when it is strained in rigid readiness for work of offence or 
defence. 
The members of our profession have many a solace and recom- 
pense, chiefly derived from the appreciation of their conscientious 
labors and from the affection and devotion of their clients. But, 
at the best, “ the lines are not fallen to us in pleasant places.” All 
our paths are not those of peace; all our beds not those of roses. 
Most of us pass our lives, from the diploma to the death-bed, in 
undergoing trying ordeals, amidst “ morns of toil and nights of 
waking.” The introduction to our profession, from the rudiments 
on, has only been accomplished through constant and patient 
labor in the dissecting room, the obstetric chamber, the laboratory, 
the lecture hall, and in the exhausting nocturnal study of a half 
dozen sciences. The threshold once passed, then commences a 
life time of struggle, activity, nightly and daily toil ; of self-sacri- 
fice and devotion; of slavery to the demands, and often to the 
whims, of the public ; of acquaintance with misery and poverty ; 
of calls upon our sympathy and confidence; of exposure to tem- 
pest, cold and heat, to fatigues, vicissitudes of fortune, alternate 
hopes and fears, and often to indignities almost past endurance. 
We are probably more liable than other men to “ the slings and 
arrows of outrageous fortune,” and “ the thousand natural shocks 
that flesh is heir to,” but, in addition, are more often the objects 
of improper censure, invidious comment, and libelous accusations. 
More frequently than others are we placed in positions which 
invite from male and female “ fellows of the baser sort ” attacks 
upon our character—and to cap the climax of our insecurity, un- 
founded suits for malpractice, and attempts to blackmail, such as 
some of the best of us here to-night have experienced. 
Our lives are thus, in the main, painted with sombre tints, if 
illumined by occasional hues of radiant coloring. Fortunately, 
however, the practitioner who is seasoned to his work, who bears 
about with him the talisman of rectitude of purpose, and who 
knows how to enliven his all-absorbing duties with incidental 
distractions, does learn to formalize the lessons of his daily life 
into a philosophic method, which, in spite of carking cares, 
enables him to present to the world the aspect of serenity and 4 
cheerfulness, and often to obtain for him their reality as well as 
semblance. If for no other reason, he is too busy a man to be 
despondent or melancholy, and loving his profession for its own 
sake, as he should to be worthy of it, he bears his burdens to the 
end, without complaint or protest. 
To aid him in securing that contented spirit which it is im- 
portant he should sustain through life, it is well, not that he 
dissipate by luxury, licence, or revel, but that he spend some of 
his leisure and some of his fees, “ those sweeteners of toil,” in 
obtaining amusement and social pleasure. How can he better 
accomplish this than by an occasional union with those of his 
own guild in a fraternal and convivial symposium ? This we are 
wisely and happily doing to-night. “ Far from the madding 
crowd ” of patients, we who have been able to escape for the nonce 
from the “ damnable iteration ” of the night bell and the frantic 
telephone, fellows in joy and suffering, in toil and vigils, now for 
a brief season of rest, play at being sharers in each other’s 
sympathy, mirth and even folly. Let us do this often ! 
Some one has written that “ a dinner lubricates business.” 
Certainly such a dinner as we are enjoying to-night is calculated 
to oil the machinery of our daily life, and to lessen the friction of 
its jarring cogs and wheels. It has been, as it should be, hilarious 
and convivial, a joyful rest from weariness, a fruitful occasion for 
interchange of thought, and a rebinding of the ties which unite 
us. It should enable us to return to our work with renewed 
vigor, after a brief contact with those material pleasures which 
are more “ of the earth earthy ” than our usual fare. 
The gastronomic advantages of a good dinner are by no means 
to be despised. Who would not rather titillate his palate with 
the luxuries devised by modern culinary science, and enjoy with 
skilled relish the fragrant succulence of filet de boeuf and cro- 
quettes de volailles than surfeit upon the coarse and hearty viands 
which made the banquet of our ancestors a rude debauch ? The 
boar’s head, the baron of beef, the pork pies, the great puddings, 
and huge haggis, such as Dr. Radcliffe feasted the Prince Eugene 
of Savoy with, have now given place to such esculent dainties as 
our host of the Valley House has set before us to-night. 
It may not be out of place, in this connection, to state that it is 
not generally known how much our improved cookery is indebted 
to medicine. In ancient times cookery was considered an im- 
portant part of the healing art, and the word “ curare,” among 
the Romans, signified to dress a dinner as well as to cure a 
disease. Sir Theodore de Mayerne, called by some the second 
Hippocrates and the physician of four kings, wrote, in the seven- 
teenth century, the best cookery book of the period. Doctors 
JHunter and Hill, in the eighteenth, and Kitchener, in the nine- 5 
teenth century, gave to the world the best cookery books of their 
eras. In the present time, the selection of nutritious and 
palatable dishes is largely due to the skillful direction of accom- 
plished physicians. 
This very desultory address was commenced with the intention 
of dealing with the relations, physical and psychic, of the Now 
and the Then in medical matters, and seems to have diverted in 
the direction of things gustatory more than is consistent with the 
dignity of the subject. Having long since sent off the bones of 
the cotelettes de mouton, let us return now to our othe muttons, 
and indulge in a glimpse at the professional and social lives of 
the doctors of yore, and contrast them with those of our own 
times and cloth. 
The immense difference between the habits and sentiments of 
this and of the previous centuries, including the eighteenth, seems 
like a wide ocean dividing continents. One can perhaps imagine 
a courtly physician visiting his patients, with a sword instead of 
a catlin or lancet by his side, but is shocked to hear of two medical 
men of high standing drawing their swords upon each other and 
fighting like bravoes in the open street. Yet such a duello 
actually took place between the great Dr. Mead and Dr. Wood- 
ward, in the streets of London. The latter, slipping, fell, and 
Mead called upon him to submit and beg his life. “ Not until I 
am your patient,” aptly replied the other. The great Harvey 
was said to have been in his angry moments as ready to let out 
the blood, the circulation of which he had discovered, with his 
dagger as with his lancet; and even in later times the personal 
conflicts between doctors were often savage and sanguinary. 
Most of the great doctors in England, duringthe reigns of the two 
Charleses and of Anne, were gallants, roysterers and bon-vivants. 
They drank hard, entertained liberally, and their dinners and sup- 
pers were debauches. The bottle and the board were then the 
doctors’ favorite companions, and many a physician died from his 
devotion to them. They not only practiced, but prescribed vora- 
cious feeding and heavy drinking, and some of them dispensed 
and sold both liquors and tobacco. Many of them received their 
patients and the apothecaries who came to consult them in 
taverns, and prescribed over their wine and pipes. The celebrated 
Dr. Freind continually visited his patients when intoxicated, and 
once, when entering the chamber of a duchess, was so confused 
as only to be able to exclaim, “ Drunk, by God! ” The patient, 
who happened to be in the same condition with the doctor, 
thinking he had divined her malady, sent him a huge fee to keep 
her secret, and became his most liberal patroness. Radcliffe was 
a confirmed drunkard; and Sir Richard Jebb, Beauford, For- 
dyce and Sheldon were not much better. 6 
That in the profession, in those early days, there was devotion 
to such science as was attainable, brilliancy of intellect and 
aspiration for better things, is amply testified by the mere men- 
tion of the names of Sir Thomas Browne, Mayerne, Harvey, 
Sydenham, Heberden, Sir Hans Sloane, and a host of others. 
They lived in a day when a belief in Astrology lingered, super- 
stition prevailed, true science had made no progress, and the 
mental atmosphere of the times, in spite of its partial impreg- 
nation with the aroma of the principles of Baconian induction, 
and of Newton’s discoveries in physical science, was not favor- 
able to true research or logical deduction. Let us take a leaf 
from the proceedings of the Royal Society of England, in the 
days of Sir Hans Sloane, only one hundred and thirty-two years 
ago, and see how feebly the first steps of the society in the 
direction of Natural History compare with the strides that body 
and others like it are now making : 
“June 5.—Magneticall cures were then discoursed of. Sir Gilbert 
Talbot promised to bring what he knew of sympatheticall cures. 
Those that had any powder of sympathy were desired to bring 
some of it at the next meeting. 
“Sir Kenefce-Digby related that the calcined powder of toades, 
reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate 
body, cures it by several applications. 
“June 26.—Dr. Ente, Dr. Clarke, Dr. Goddard, and Dr. Whist- 
ler were appointed curators of the proposition made by Sir G. 
Talbot to torment a man presently with the sympathetic powder.” 
Caricaturists and satirists, like Hogarth and Moliere, could not 
have struck the popular fancy as they did if their portrayals of 
classes of men had been merely travesties. It is hard to believe 
that the fantastic and grotesque figures capering as doctors in the 
sick room, in “ Le Medecin ]/[algre lui,” had their counterpart 
in actual life; and yet there is reason to suppose that there was a 
resemblance, if not a likeness. If there be anything in Voltaire’s 
description of his countrymen, the French doctors of days earlier 
than his own were more likely to have had simian, if not feline, 
characteristics, than our own Anglo-Saxon predecessors. Suffice 
it to know that the average British doctor of the seventeenth and 
earlier part of the eighteenth centuries was an odd figure. Portly, 
of sanguine hue and pompous air, ruffled and bewigged, carrying 
his long and big-headed cane, he was conceited, arrogant, turbu- 
lent, and derisive. Even in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury and the earlier part of this, the British surgeon was too apt 
to be of the type of the great Abernethy—blunt, coarse, and un- 
conciliating. 
“We have changed all this.” The eternal laws of develop- 
ment, variation of species, and survival of the fittest, have gradu_ 7 
ally evolved from the blustering boor, the harlequin and quack 
of earlier times, the courteous, erudite and polished modern 
doctor, with his suave professional manner and carressing ways. 
If he have affectations and mannerisms, he is, if at all worthy of 
his calling, at least a gentleman, and more apt than not to be 
learned, sagacious, prudent, conscientious, and helpful. Consid- 
ering his opportunities of licence, he is less disposed than most 
men to be immoral or intemperate, and, as a rule, he is more 
regardful of the trusts and confidences placed in his keeping than 
any other. 
The charlatan, however, has undergone no variation of species 
since the days of the Troglodyte, and is yet a duck of the original 
anserine type, and the same melodious quack as when his con- 
geners saved Rome. His outcries tend to destroy, not to save, 
those whom they awaken and alarm. If not the “fittest” of 
medical men, he and his type have both “survived” beyond all 
calculation. 
The success that in every age has attended the enterprises of 
medical pretenders, is a laughable and yet mournful evidence of 
the credulity and ignorance of the generations. Invalids or 
hypochondriacs, ignorant of the cause of their sufferings, have 
gone, and still go, from one to another charlatan, giving precious 
gold, whether, as in early days, for charms and talismans, or, in 
later ones, for cordials, elixirs, blood purifiers, kidney cures, 
patent pills, restoratives of youth, cancer cures, and the thousand 
advertised and certified nostrums which have their day and sway 
and are then forgotten. One amusing way in which the history 
of quackery repeats itself is, that in the earliest times, as now, 
there were specialists in fraud, who won honors and pelf, not only 
from the vulgar, but from the eminent. Good Queen Anne had 
weak eyes, and went from one empiric to another for the relief 
they all promised her, and every fresh advertising scoundrel won 
her favor for a time with a new collyrium. She knighted one of 
these, hight William Reade, originally a botching tailor, and to 
the last a very ignorant knave, as his “ Short and Exact Account 
of All the Diseases Incident to the Eyes” attests. He could 
neither read nor write, but dictated his absurd work to an 
amanuensis. Yet, after being knighted, and having put out a 
few hatfuls of eyes, he enjoyed the most lucrative and fashionable 
practice of his time. Our quack oculists, few of whom know the 
cornea from the iris, and none of whom can handle an ophthal- 
moscope, still put out eyes and deplete the pockets of the vulgar 
herd; but these are no days for them to be knights in, and the 
modern educated public shuns their doors. 
A capital illustration in modern times of the readiness of the 
untaught rabble to accept any pretender’s self estimate or adver- 8 
tisement, was furnished lately in Sicily. Towards the decline of 
the cholera epidemic there, last autumn, a Dr. Riforgiato came 
to Palermo, announcing that he had an unfailing remedy for the 
disease. He was, I believe, not an inoculator, nor a disciple of 
Ferran. But the mob, without proof, believed his mere assertion, 
carried him on their shoulders to the town hall, and demanded 
that he should be placed in charge of the hospitals. Such was the 
furor in his behalf that the insurrection caused by it had to be 
quelled by the military. The ignorant and undeveloped public, 
whether of the Latin or Anglo-Saxon race, and occasionally a 
cultivated fraction of it, largely endowed with the bump of won- 
der, and disposed to accept “ omne ignotum pro mirifico,” are thus 
gulled and cajoled by the pretensions of the direct successors of 
Paracelsus and the other charlatans of old. 
The empiric has gone through no process of evolution. His 
selection by his victims does not seem to us of the regular school 
to be at all a natural one. Now, as of yore, he is the vampire, 
sucking the life blood of his dupes, and fanning their fears and 
suspicions to sleep by waving in the air before them factitious 
advertisements and testimonials. 
But, in charity, it must be admitted that quackery, or rather 
delusion, is not all in the hands of mere impostors. There is a 
large body of honest and weak enthusiasts who, by nature credu- 
lous, untrained in the logical methods of science, uninformed as 
to the persistent laws of nature, help to swell the list of obstinate 
sufferers. There are the devotees of one therapeutic method 
who have founded upon a few well known and isolated facts as to 
the specific operation upon the tissues of minute doses of some 
drugs, a Procustean system, by which they either stretch or 
abridge all other known facts in medicine, and profess to have 
discovered a narrow but universal law which fits every case. 
Many of the supporters of this creed are honest enthusiasts. 
Those of them who attain to success and shekels, administer as 
potent pellets and potions as we do. Their following is still 
large, and their mode of practice so facile that their laymen and 
laywomen have taken it up. Here and there even one of their 
clerical enthusiasts will, on week days, condescend to change his 
austere garb for the “ motley wear,” and dispense to his flock, 
granules as well as grace. We all have in our memories the 
familiar figure of the ofificious female who goes about from house 
to house urging her sick neighbors to dismiss their doctor, to 
employ her own, or at least to substitute for their remedies the 
drops she carries in her case. 
Then there are those sainted women, and long-haired, lank, 
elderly apostles, who, commencing their career at the foot of the 
skyward-pointing ladder as volunteer homoeopathic prescribers, 9 
have gradually climbed to the bad eminence of the arrogation of 
such intimacy with the Almighty Creator of the world’s laws as 
to assert that He, overlooking the agonies of millions of His 
despairing creatures who are imploring His aid, will, upon the 
appeal of these self-constituted almoners of His bounty, imme- 
diately heal the disciples of the Faith Cure who come to Him 
through the medium of the favored few who alone have His ear. 
The success of these apostles is undoubtedly greater than that of 
their progenitors. Multitudes of apparent miracles are performed 
by them, in accordance with the well-known laws of “ expectant 
attention.” Cases of sympathetic epilepsy, neuralgia, hysteria, 
fixed joints, and even asthenopia, &c., do get well, as they oftener 
do under God’s really appointed means. But the wonders of these 
Protestant miracle-mongers do not compare with the better 
authenticated ones of Lourdes and the chapel Knock, or with the 
marvels of the mind, magnetic, and spiritualistic cures performed 
by blasphemers and infidels. 
In spite of the fruitful advances made in our era in scientific 
discovery, in breadth and liberty of thought, increased comfort 
and happiness of all classes, longer life and better health, there be 
pessimists who insist upon it that we are “ going to the dogs.” 
They dread the march of science, they fear that the extension of 
this or that form of religion, that some dreaded general unbelief 
in any religion, that agrarianism or socialism are about to upset 
the social fabric, and they sigh for the good old times, “ the brave 
days of old,” when missiles and fire-brands were used for argu- 
ments, and kingly rule and feudal tenure kept the masses in 
check. 
For one, I rejoice that I have been permitted to live in the lat- 
ter half of the nineteenth century, and to witness and share in the 
progress and marvels which have marked it as the best part yet 
of the revolving cycles. 
We have much more to be thankful for than for good dinners 
—more universal peace, kindness, comfort, freedom, and health, 
than our forefathers possessed. We live in the enjoyment of the 
coruscation of the most wonderful discoveries of the centuries, 
and in the fruition of the results of mental achievements surpass- 
ing the wildest dreams of the philosophic aspirants of old. We 
medical men have special reason to rejoice in the knowledge that 
the march of the sciences involved in our own studies and call- 
ing, has been pari passu with the general advance. 
In no other period of human history has knowledge stepped 
on with such tremendous strides as during the last forty years, or 
so many new chapters in the biography of the universe been 
written by philosophical speculation and experiment. The 
invention of printing, of the telescope and microscope, the dis- 10 
coveries of Newton and Laplace in astronomy, of Harvey in 
physiology, and later of Priestly in chemistry and Franklin in 
electricity, magnificent achievements as these were, have been 
cast into the shade by the successes of the present day, of which 
these were the precursors. It is not yet a half century since the 
discovery was made of the conservation of force, and the prac- 
tical identity of heat, light, magnetism, and electricity, and only 
a little more since Lyell first placed our geological knowledge 
upon a scientific basis. It is much less since the spectroscope 
enabled us to know the identity of the solar and stellar constitu- 
ents with those of our own earth. It is needless to speak here of 
the wonders of the telegraph, telephone, electric illumination, 
and the thousand practical applications of science which have all 
come within a few years. But perhaps the greatest attainment of 
this age of ideas has been the complete revolution of human 
thought which has been evolved by the speculations following 
the announcement to the world, only twenty-six years ago, by 
Darwin, of the theory of natural selection. This theory, ob- 
scurely hinted at since the days of Aristotle, was originally, as to 
its fundamental principles, propounded by Dr. Wells and Mr. 
Patrick Matthew, who, however, failed to see its wade application, 
and by Alfred Russell Wallace, who took in its scope, but mod- 
estly surrendered the right to expand it to the majestic genius of 
Darwin. By the latter the principles of the origin of species, or 
“ natural selection,” as he preferred to call it, the variation of types 
and the survival of the fittest have been so elaborated and con- 
firmed by experiment, analogy, and proof, that in the region of 
natural history little scarcely seems left to be completed. Hux- 
ley and Tyndall have still further extended these researches, and 
the immortal Herbert Spencer, the greater than Francis Verulam, 
has exhaustively applied the principles involved, to the wide do- 
mains of sociology, political and moral economy and the whole 
history of the human race. 
The complicated arrangements of organisms in the world’s 
Fauna and Flora, in groups within groups, resembling each other 
at the bottom of the scale and varying most widely at the top, all 
confirm the presupposed theory of Darwin, of “ descent with 
modification,” and are inexplicable on any other theory, while 
the facts found in the embryonic elements of organisms agree 
with all the facts of classification, and signify that the various 
forms of organic life have arisen by gradual digression from com- 
mon originals. If they do not signify this, the phenomena of 
nature then have no rational meaning whatever, and it is in vain 
that we explore them. The finest confirmation and most abund- 
ant proof of the Darwinian theory have been furnished by a dis- 
tinguished American savant. The arguments against the Dar- 11 
winian views, formerly urged on the ground of the absence of 
links between living and defunct species, could only then be met 
by the apology for the fragmentary character of the geological 
record which had, presumably, as yet revealed only one osseous 
form out of thousands. But these arguments have been com- 
pletely overcome by Professor Marsh’s discoveries of the descent 
of the highly specialised horse through a perfect series, from the 
eohippus in the lower eocene, through the orohippus in the upper 
eocene, with four complete toes on the fore-foot, the mesohippus 
of the lower miocene with a splint bone in place of a disappeared 
toe, the 7niohippus of the upper miocene, with only three well 
developed toes, the protohippus of the lower pliocene, and still 
further up in the scale, the pliohippus in the upper pliocene, with 
a hoof almost like that of the modern horse. 
It may be confidently asserted that the scientific public of the 
day, its journals, and all its members, with less than a half dozen 
trifling exceptions, have adopted and taken to their hearts the 
whole Darwinian theory as the only one capable of explaining 
the facts of the universe. The few sceptics who have had any 
scientific training and still recalcitrate “ while the lamp holds out 
to burn.” are influenced by theological or metephysical objec- 
tions, which, of course, are irrelevant in a pure question of science. 
It is manifest now that this great truth, for the triumphant estab- 
lishment of which only one link is wanting—a link not really 
needed to complete the chain of evidence—will finally prevail, in 
spite of the mistaken theological opposition to it, which will in 
the end, after fruitless contention, succumb and accept, as it has 
in every previous encounter with scientific achievements grace- 
fully, if tardily, yielded.* 
We have not reached the consummation of all knowledge by 
scientific discovery, and the field to be opened is yet immense, 
but the inspired genius of God’s latest and most perfect creature, 
with its developed reason, has now lifted the veil, explored the 
arcana of the universe, unearthed its secrets and solved many of 
its problems. At last the long hoped for and final reconciliation 
* Since the above was written an apt instance has occurred of swift retri- 
bution to the temerity which occasionally spurs the mind uninstructed in 
scientific methods of deduction, to “rush in” to that controversial arena, 
foreign to its province, which even “ angels fear to tread.” The Hon. Wil- 
liam Gladstone, leaving the domain of Parliamentary tactics and rhetoric, 
in which he is "facile princeps," has ventured to chop logic with the vet- 
erans of natural history, and to attack the work of an eminent scientist and 
divine, Mr. Reville’s “ Prolegomenes de l’Histoire des Religions,” recently 
translated under Max Muller’s auspices. It is almost pitiful to read Pro- 
fessor Huxley’s late reply to Gladstone’s jejune criticisms. The silver-tongued 
statesman should be struck so dumb by this defense of the truth as to be 
ever hereafter inarticulate about matters of science. 12 
between science and religion is dawning upon us as a probable 
result of pure scientific study. Herbert Spencer has proven that 
the law of universal evolution is a necessary consequence of “ the 
persistence of force.” To use the language of John Fiske, “ it 
has shown us that all the myriad phenomena of the universe, all 
its weird and subtle changes in all their minuteness from moment 
to moment, in all their vastness from age to age, are the manifes- 
tations of a single animating principle that is both infinite and 
eternal.” 
The doctrine of evolution asserts as a scientific truth, that there 
exists a power to which no limit of time or space is conceivable, 
and that all the phenomena of the universe, whether physical or 
psychic, are manifestations of this eternal and infinite power. A 
prose poet has called the universe “ the star-domed city,” and 
reminded us that “ God's glory beams through every crystal and 
grass-blade.” This language of poetry describes and means ex- 
actly and only what the dry scientific terms of the evolutionist 
mean when he speaks of the “ unknowable.” 
So, through these now confirmed speculations, we have attained 
a grander as well as more rational view of the glory and work of 
the Creator, “ the infinite power that makes for righteousness,” as 
well as a truer knowledge of man’s relations to his Maker, to his 
fellow-men, and other fellow-creatures. We are at last placed in 
possession of the knowledge of a universal system and a benefi- 
cent order of things that comports with the progress of our own 
intellects. The stars and the earth, its plants and animals, their 
exhumed remains, the growth of man, the development of his 
language, his social and public life, all these tell the same story, 
soon to be the new creed of every free and thinking person. I 
am not optimist enough to believe that the time is near at hand 
when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, universal 
peace prevail, the brotherhood of man be established, kindness to 
our fellow-animals be the custom, war and contention cease, pov- 
erty pass away, crime and violence be at an end. But I do be- 
lieve that the recent triumphs of science, their- application to the 
industrial arts, higher views of God’s sovereignty and govern- 
ment, are now and further will be, elevating and modifying the 
masses, who did not before think, read, or observe; that they do 
and will, in a geometrical ratio, multiply the intellectual cravings 
and acquirements of all classes of men, satisfy more perfectly 
material wants, elevate the moral character of our race, and finally 
help to establish that general concord of the peoples, that “ glory 
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards 
man,” which Christ taught, and which constitutes the true “relig- 
ion or binding together,” whatever desirable tribular, conven- 
tional, or local forms the religion may assume. 13 
And what has all this to do with medicine or with any medical 
subject-matter of such a discourse as I have been invited to give 
before a body of medical men ? Much ! We, as professedly men 
of science, are deeply interested in the progress of all knowledge, 
and as humane men and instructors of our fellows in all that con- 
cerns their bodily and mental welfare, should be solicitous that 
our environment be one of advance, culture, and breadth in all 
that relates to our calling. Our profession is founded upon the 
sciences of anatomy, human and comparative, of physiology and 
the laws of our being pertaining to it, and of chemistry, which 
has introduced and developed most of our therapeutic resources. 
Fifty years ago, while our profession was a beneficent and hon- 
ored one, had attained to much and was illustrious from its num- 
bers of earnest and distinguished workers, it was a vocation, an 
art, but scarcely a science. Since those days, stepping more than 
equally with the progress of general science and of the theories 
and facts we have been considering, not only with strides but 
with leaps, has our department of knowledge bounded on and 
upwards, and vaulted to an eminence never before climbed or 
aspired to. From this “ coigne of vantage,” we, who occupy it, 
can proudly survey the surrounding heights of other provinces 
and claim, at least, an equal altitude. We have at last a science, 
an aggregation of sciences, not perfected—for when will any hu- 
man work be perfected until the seal of the end of time is stamped 
upon it ?—but one in the front rank and sharing in eminence with 
other sections of science. 
The study of biology, upon which our present physiological 
knowledge is based, may be considered to have only commenced 
in 1839, when the cell doctrines of Schwann and Schlieden were 
first announced, and the former expressed the important gener- 
alization that nucleated cells are the basis of all animal and vege- 
table structures. I first heard of this only in 1842, when the 
distinguished Samuel Jackson, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
who had formerly been content to teach the old, crude, simple 
physiology, described to his classes, with eloquent and contagious 
enthusiasm, the wonders of the new doctrine. It was only in 
1846 that Morton introduced anaesthesia by ether—although, 
with fair arguments, an American predecessor in this discovery is 
claimed—and in 1847 that Sir James Simpson introduced that, by 
the previously discovered chloroform. What an advance there 
has been, since those days in the ’40’s, in our whole line of battle 
against disease and death, and how the ranks of the line have 
been recruited, and how rapidly the recruits have become veter- 
ans ! It would be out of keeping to take up your time with a 
detailed description of what we all equally know, of what has 
been done in physiology, surgery, and medicine, during the last 14 
forty years, most of it in the last twenty years, and the greater 
part of this in the last ten. The youngest of our members, who 
have graduated during the last five years, if properly instructed, 
have memorized concrete facts which we, the elders of the pro- 
fession, have been compelled to learn separately and in rapid 
succession. 
Perhaps, however, I may be allowed to render in a hasty 
account-current, a list of the most important of the triumphs of 
these latter days of achievement. We have to record an immense 
advance in physiology and the knowledge of structure and func- 
tions of the various organs and tissues, both healthy and morbid; 
the perfection of microscopic observation, and localization of the 
different cerebral powers; aetiological advance, particularly by the 
discovery of the bacterial origin of numerous diseases, through 
the researches of Pasteur, Koch, and others; improved methods 
and instruments of research and diagnosis by the stethoscope, 
microscope, chemical reagents, aesthesiometer, thermometer, 
sphygmograph, laryngoscope, ophthalmoscope, otoscope, endo- 
scope, electric light, and galvanic current; the advance in hygienic 
knowledge, preventive medicine, antiseptic surgery, and improve- 
ment of antiseptic and antibacterial agents, such as carbolic .and 
boracic acids, ozone, thymol, iodoform, and chloral; and last and 
best, corrosive sublimate, hydronaphthol, and potassio-mercuric- 
iodide; and not only of ordinary and effective germicides, but of 
the novel, and perhaps practical, methods of fighting fire by fire, 
of employing a colony of harmless microbes to extirpate a tribe 
of noxious ones. 
Then in surgery, we have resection, exsection, and reunion of 
bones; new operations for hernia, litholopaxy, laparatomy in its 
various modes ; section of stomach and pylorus ; cholecystotomy, 
removal of the kidneys, Battey’s operation, tracheloraphy, skin- 
grafting, mechanical treatment of spinal curvatures and of all con- 
tractions and deformities, removal of growths by electric cautery, 
and of bony tumors by the surgical engine; the antiseptic treat- 
ment of wounds before referred to; aspiration, and a multitude of 
improved methods and instruments too numerous to catalogue. 
Besides all of these have been the universal adoption of general 
anaesthesia and of local anaesthesia by the ether or rhigolene 
spray, and last and best of all, by the wonderful cocaine and 
theine. We have also improved ophthalmic, aural, nasal, pharyn- 
geal, laryngeal, and dermatological procedures, and perfected 
obstetric and gynecologic methods. 
When we come to our new therapeutic resources, one’s breath 
is fairly taken away, and mental dyspnoea produced by repeating 
or listening to the enumeration of the now accepted novelties. 
We have the various methods of securing improved nutrition and 15 
multitudes of artificial foods; forced feeding by the syphon and 
enema, the rest cure and massage, faradization, the constant cur- 
rent and static electricity; air, steam and water baths and douches, 
new methods of applying heat and cold; inhalations, sprays and 
medicated and mineral waters without number, and beyond all, 
the practice of hypodermatic medication. 
When we descend to mere drugs, we who know, do not concur 
with those rare transcendent doubters who affirm that no reme- 
dies of value, save the bromides, have been discovered of late. 
These men must long since have taken the oath “never to alter 
the established practice of physic.” 
It is reported that the great Sydenham asserted that he could 
carry the entire pharmacy of his time in the huge pouncet-box at 
the head of his cane. We can literally do better than this, and 
with our concentrated remedies, transport in a pocket-book means 
sufficient to meet most professional exigencies. But “ the fathers ” 
could not have conceived of the multitude or the potency of the 
contents of our present repertory. 
What can we, who have profited by and triumphed over their 
success, say sufficiently in laudation of the efficacy of chloral, 
croton-chloral, paraldehyde, cocaine, theine, fuchsine, caffeine, 
pilocarpine, eserine, picrotoxine, physostigma, apomorphia, hyo- 
scine, antipyrine, resorcin, salicine, salicylic acid, terpine, the 
oleates, nitro-glycerine, and amyl; of veratrum, gelsemium, vi- 
burnum, collinsonia, hamamelis, leptandra, iris, hydrastis, phyto- 
lacca, baptisia, viscum album, piscidia, convallaria, adonis, cactus, 
helonias, aletris, stigmata-maidis, grindelia, yerba-santa, and partic- 
ularly cascara; and of an army of other potent remedies, many of 
them the products of our indigenous Flora, and introduced by 
the genius and energy of our own countrymen ? 
Our therapeutic resources are now so immense as to be even a 
source of embarrassment. To meet the same indications we are 
often at a loss which one of many appropriate medicines to apply, 
and when in doubt as to the choice of one of two apt remedies in 
a given case, might sometimes well exclaim, “ how happy I could 
be with either, were t’other foul taster away.” 
There is not an atom of truth in the charges common among 
the vulgar, and offensively hinted about by the exponents of the 
several sects in medicine, that we are “ old-school physicians,” 
/audatores temporis acti, and ignorant of, or indisposed to examine 
or accept, new methods or new remedies. The charge is equally 
false with the ludicrous one which gives us, from a certain sect, 
the title of “ Allopaths,” than which none could be more absurdly 
inapplicable. Whatever some of our predecessors may have 
been, or rare exceptions among us may be now, we who rejoice 
in the title of “ Regular Practitioners ” are, as a body, cultivated, 
free, ambitious and aspiring medical seekers after the truth, with 16 
the single and conscientious desire to perfect ourselves in the 
knowledge of nature’s laws involved in our calling, and to extend 
our experience of these, for the benefit of the suffering part of our 
race. Endeavoring to free ourselves from the superstitious 
observance of time-honored precepts or conventional rules, our 
researches, our theories, our practices, are as broad as the uni- 
verse, and as all-embracing as are our sympathies with human 
sorrow. Tied down to no formula or exacting determinate modes, 
bound by no edict to practice in conformity with any prescribed 
system, or to march under the flaunting banner of any dogma, 
not alarmed by calumnious aspersions of either orthodoxy or 
heresy, we are ready to examine and test any and every theory 
and remedy, and are not too proud to adopt any contributions 
proving acceptable from our homoeopathic or eclectic brethren, 
or even from the herbarium of the sage femme or Indian doctor, 
and we are willing to admit that there is no system, however 
empirical, from which we may and do not cull something of value. 
We are exploring every field, even if we gather sometimes more 
brambles and thistles than flowers. We dig into the bowels of 
the earth, dive into ocean’s depths, soar into the air, and make 
use of all the discovered forces and substances of nature, in search 
of remedies. Our motto is, “ Prove all things; hold fast that 
which is good; ” and we are, in a word, of all others in this age 
of science and ideas, the most active exponents of search for nov- 
elty, of experiment, of analysis and observation, as well as of 
induction and cautious reasoning. We have now means and 
remedies capable of controlling all the remediable morbid condi- 
tions of the human frame, and considering the recondite nature of 
the principle of life, the transcendent and inexplicable mysteries 
of many parts of our organization, the obscurity of many diseases, 
and the diversity of constitution in and reception of remedies by 
different patients, the success of modern medicine in the hands of 
cultivated practitioners is a matter for marvel, and is nearly all 
that we can desire. 
Mainly because of improved medical methods and the sanita- 
tion introduced by our profession during the last half century, 
the mean duration of male life has been increased by two years, 
and of female, by three-and-a-half. It would seem from this, that 
the doctor, always the tender friend of woman, had been more 
careful of her interests than of those of her ruder half. 
We are yet human and far from faultless. Among us, as in 
other callings, tribal and individual peculiarities and prejudices 
assert themselves. There are still among some of our number, 
tendencies to be too conservative, to adhere to the older methods, 
to glide smoothly along in the beaten tracks. Another and a 
larger fraction of our body may be too enthusiastic and emotional 17 
and inclined to indulge in the medical crazes of the day, which 
have their rise and then their eclipse. Among the latter I would 
class the excessive use of the tracheloraphic operation, Battey’s 
operation, and other surgical novelties which have been found to 
be required less often than originally supposed, and to be capable 
of substitution by milder methods. So, in therapeutics, many 
once vaunted remedies are now in their decadence. 
But failing these, whether surgical procedures or new remedies, 
the lapse of time will always separate the wheat from the chaff. 
Progress is the order of the day, conservatism and caution only 
its brakes. “Cavendo tutus,” is sometimes a cowardly maxim. 
It is better to go forward too fast even with danger of collision or 
running off the track, than to jog and rumble slowly over the 
ruts. One impediment in the way of our therapeutic advance 
has been the conservatism of some of our leaders, who fearing 
that their sanction of new remedies might appear to confirm the 
views of specific sects, or forward the interests of certain able and 
adventurous pharmacists, have continued in spite of general 
medical sentiment, to refuse to notice or give credit to some of the 
proven most efficient remedies of the age. 
Lofty as- is our general standard of cultivated good sense, we 
are compelled to admit the existence, in our ranks as in others, 
of odd and exceptional characters with fantastic idiosyncrasies and 
perverted instincts. Some of these only see through glasses 
darkly, or are merely myopic; others are mentally color-blind, or 
are abnormally astigmatic and can only see and define certain lines 
out of many in any radiating question. When a number of these 
who have the same perversion of vision, aggregate and agree as 
occasionally happens, a harmless individual defect becomes, by 
multiplication, a mob of delusions, sometimes dangerous to the 
peace and welfare of the community. Of such origin and char- 
acter are the obstructions now attempted to be piled up in the 
path of scientific physiology and therapeutics, by the affectation 
of morbid sensibility or by the obstinate prejudice of those who 
seek to oppose extreme legislative barriers to vivisection. Tender- 
ness to our kin of all races and degrees, should be the outcome 
of advanced knowledge, but he is an enemy of his kind who 
would place impediments in the way of those carefully guarded 
and gently managed experiments, performed by and only by scien- 
tific experts, upon the short-lived lower animals, which have been 
most important factors in developing our science and in giving us 
our present power of relieving human and other animal suffering. 
The other cranks who still oppose vaccination, but who yet 
may be found in our profession in Great Britain, possibly here, 
are fortunately too insignificant in number and character to 
require notice. 18 
What little of all such retrogressive and retarding influences as 
continues to linger in and to hamper our profession is, however, 
now yielding before the general enlightenment of our members, 
and we can almost see the break of the day when there will be 
no medical sects, when peace and good-will will prevail, the strict 
interpretation of artificial and cast-iron codes be no longer 
enforced, and all our tribes be united with one common aim, each 
individual’s conscience and appreciation of esprit de corps being 
permitted to be a law unto himself. In this one respect we may, 
in time, be led to retrograde judiciously under the influence and 
after the example of the older communities of Europe, among 
whose medical associations such restrictions as prevail with us 
are unknown. 
The credulity and superstition which among the masses have 
survived from the days of vilainage, still exist in our public to so 
great a degree that the most erudite and skilful physician cannot 
yet always compete with the charlatan. The multitude love mys- 
tery and display and prefer the notority-seeking pretender to the 
cultivated physician, who modestly pursues the even tenor of his 
way. But the time is fast approaching when this uninformed 
public, compelled by its surrounding atmosphere of learning, will 
accord to the scientific doctor the appreciation he merits and now 
receives from the discerning few. In that utopian time, the law 
of the survival of the fittest will surely be asserted and then, as 
is partially the case now, only the most alert, the best equipped, 
most studious, apt, conscientious, pains-taking and practical of us 
will survive and win the goal of success. 
I learn that some of you have expected me to discourse to- 
night upon the history of our Luzerne County Medical Society. 
If I commenced this talk with any such intention, it may well be 
charged that I have forgotten my chief topic, and have rambled 
off into a general and diffuse colloquy “ de omnibus rebus et qui- 
busdem aliis” You may attribute this if you please, to the 
garrulity of age and a tendency to mental wandering. Some of 
you may, moreover, think that I have too audibly “talked right 
out in meeting.” 
It is a scandal against the fair sex that their postcripts are the 
most important parts of their letters. At the risk of being accused 
of feminine weakness, I will try to make this postcript important, 
but fortunately for your increasing weariness, will make it brief. 
Professedly and by “ a legal fiction ”—and I don’t know why the 
lawyers should monopolise all the fictions—we celebrate to-night 
by an antedating of nearly three months, the twenty-fifth year of 
the genesis of the Luzerne County Medical Society. I could, if 
I would, tell you just how this unlicked cub of a society came 
into the world. But parents do not always care to tell the family 19 
progeny all about the latter’s paternity, and there have been some 
missing links here which it would perhaps be well not to elab- 
orate upon. I fear that the committee of this body who appointed 
this feast, had their suspicions that the society was a premature 
child, and were determined to disgrace its progenitors and publish 
the fact to the world by compelling the celebration of the anni- 
versary three months before the proper time. Ungrateful children, 
shame be your portion ! We older men have more consideration 
for the reputation of our patients, and do not publish their lapses. 
However this may be, we know that our brats were viable and 
that we have taken good care of them. Have they not, some 
sixty of them, undergone evolution since their father’s time ? 
Some of us, the forefathers were hirsute, almost quadrumanous, 
and could scarcely talk. “ Circumspice.” Look around this table 
at to-day’s representation of our society and listen to their chatter. 
What better argument for evolution and development could you 
have, than from “looking on this picture and on that.” 
When I first unfurled my banner to the breezes of Wilkes- 
Barre air and exposed my resplendent shingle to its corroding 
fogs, twenty-nine years ago, the present large and populous city 
was a rustic borough of some five thousand population. It was 
then, as since, the seat of wealth, refinement, and cultivation; 
the home of the select, distinguished and brilliant men, and of 
lovely and intellectual women. But it and the beautiful valley of 
which it was the centre were sequestered spots, simple and pri- 
mitive, the majority of the inhabitants having little communication 
with the outside world, and only beginning to have their dreams 
disturbed by the sounds of hammer and pick, the railroad whistle, 
and the hum of commercial enterprise. In those early days the 
characteristics of the professional men of this region partook of 
the simplicity and lethargy of the main life around them. The 
medical atmosphere was one of Cimmerian darkness, and the 
physicians who were supreme in their influence and success had 
not yet received any of the “ divine afflatus ” which already per- 
meated the air of medical centers, or become imbued with the 
modern doctrines then in vogue. There were several younger 
men of my own age, fresh from the schools, who were all that 
could be desired and to whom these remarks do not apply. Of 
the seniors, soon to pass away from the stage of action, there was 
one brilliant original whose figure and character will never be for- 
gotten by those who knew him. Full of fire, force and eloquence, 
a poet, an orator of no mean abilities, with great personal mag- 
netism and considerable erudition in classical and general litera- 
ture, his influence was such that he ruled his patients and the 
community with a rod of iron and long was sovereign in his medi- 
cal domain. He had great natural tact and medical instinct, and 20 
if properly instructed he would have become and remained emi- 
nent in his profession. But he was a scoffer at and scorner of all 
innovations, and contended that nothing new had been accomp- 
lished in our art since the days of Brown or of John Hunter. His 
remedies were calomel, quinine, opium, camphor and alcohol, 
and I doubt if he ever used any others. Soon after my profes- 
sional entrance upon this field, I was passing his house in the 
early hours of a lovely summer morning, after having spent a 
night with a patient whose term of agony had been materially 
lessened by the use of such instrumental devices as we all occa- 
sionally employ. The old doctor, who was sitting on his step, 
fanning himself, accosted me, and observing some suspicious 
looking pieces of steel projecting from my pocket, asked me what 
these were. I exhibited and explained to him the use of the in- 
struments, which he curiously examined, apparently having never 
seen them before. After pondering for a moment, he exclaimed, 
with an expressive oath, “ young man, for God’s sake throw those 
vile things in the canal, and never more use such abominations. 
They are the invention of the devil.” The “ grand old man” died 
not many years after. I think his heart was broken by the tide 
of innovation, which he deplored and fought to the last, leaving 
him stranded high upon the shores. Then there were other pure 
and capable men who did the best they could with their lights, 
enjoyed the confidence of the community, and had large follow- 
ings. One of the most esteemed and successful of these, once, 
with modest triumph, let me into a secret of his success in 
obstetric procedure. He attributed this to a method of his own 
discovery, which he considered worthy of publication, but had 
not yet mustered courage to place in print. This was that of 
incising the foetal scalp with scissors, inserting the index between 
it and the calvarium, and thus forcibly extracting. It is needless 
to say that this really good man had never owned or seen a for- 
ceps. I do not remember having sebn his method referred to in 
print, but I have lately seen the cicatrices left by him upon the 
now bald heads of several of his victims. 
Such were some of the lights of our profession in the early days 
of this region. Animosities between medical men were rife, and 
courtesies, professional or social, rare. It became necessary to 
infuse new life into the calling, and to resublime the medical 
caput mortnum. Some few of us, who thought that we knew 
more than our elders, put our live heads together and in the ides 
of March, A. D. 1861, commenced the organization of the Lu- 
zerne County Medical Society. It will be remenbered that then 
our county had an immense area, and included in its limits that 
large territory which, under the name of Lackawanna county, 
has since seceded from us, to its great gain and our loss. So the 21 
founders, the patriots, the original signers of the declaration of 
April 17th, 1861, included in their limited number several dis- 
tinguished physicians of the now great and prosperous city of 
Scranton, and county of Lackawanna. 
The founders of our Society were Doctors Rooney, of Hazle- 
ton ; Moody, of Lehman; Throop, Ladd, Marr, and Green, of 
Scranton; Tubbs, of Kingston; Lawton, of Pittston; Cressler 
and Casselbury, of Conyngham ; and Urquhart, Dennis, C. Wag- 
ner, E. B. Miner, and myself, of Wilkes-Barre. We were “few 
and far between,” but we were, and have ever since been, increas- 
ingly becoming a power in the goodly land we occupy. We and 
our successors, whom I see around this table to-night, have been 
fortunate in bringing order out of chaos in all medical matters 
among us, in unifying the decent and honorable members of our 
guild in one harmonious whole, in dignifying its character, and 
in demanding and in securing from the public the appreciation 
and compensation which we, its members, earn and deserve. 
I am to-night filled with gladness that I, one of those who as- 
sisted in the inception of this enterprise and important organiza- 
tion, am permitted to join in its quarto-centennial celebration. I 
am still better pleased to believe that the labor originally com- 
mitted to a few, has been shared in by so many capable men, well 
fitted to carry out, elaborate, and improve upon what their prede- 
cessors have accomplished. Instead of the fifteen few who laid 
the foundation, we now have sixty constituents, most of whom 
are skilled, expert, and enthusiastic members of our society and 
workers in their profession. Our society has grown not only in 
numbers, but in strength of purpose, interest in its work, prompt 
attendance upon more numerous meetings, and value of its con- 
tributions to science in learned papers and discussions. We now 
constitute, not a little, but quite an extensive medical microcosm 
of our own, able, if our modesty would permit, to be felt as a 
power in our state and national councils, and are represented by 
as capable an average of medical men as exist anywhere. We 
have among us men skilled in diagnosis and original and success- 
full in therapeutics. We have surgeons who perform success- 
fully all the most delicate and important operations, opthalmalog- 
ists, aurists, laryngologists and gynecologists who will compare 
with the best specialists in the cities and who will do as well with 
their patients, without the exaction from them of inordinate fees. 
We are as a rule studious, apt to investigate novelties, and in the 
choice of new remedies in advance of some of the more conser- 
vative cities. Our patients often remark to us that when visiting 
New York and Philadelphia and in need of some accustomed 
remedy attainable from any pharmacist in Wilkes-Barre, they 
have explored the town from druggist to druggist, in difficult 22 
search for their need. When they do find what they want, they 
are usually cautioned by the man of drugs, that this to them long 
used and familiar remedy, is something very new and rare or 
dangerous. I only mention this as a straw showing how the 
wind sometimes blows from our direction and not towards it. 
From the superabundance of our intellectual stores we have been 
able to permit a drain upon our resources and to give our “sum of 
more to that which had too much,” our great metropolis and 
medical centre. From our ranks have gone to Philadelphia, the 
brilliant and gifted Rothrock, now an eminent professor and 
authority in botany, and still later, the discoverer of the analgesic 
virtues of theine, the acute and learned physiologist, microscopist 
and experimental therapeutist, our own genial Mays. 
I could dilate upon such topics as I have presented to-night, 
for hours. But it is long past “the very witching time of night,” 
and I have ever and anon been hearing your “ curses not loud 
but .deep” and your subdued exclamations of “Hold, enough!” 
Wishing long life, increased membership, usefulness and honor to 
our own society, I will close by proposing the health of our 
honored guests, the members of the Lackawanna County Society, 
our yet beloved daughter who years ago left her then humble 
home and went to housekeeping in a grander mansion.