ADDRESSES 
I / 
I / DELIVERED AT THE 
OE THE 
Rational rtictl Cnlltge, 
(MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY,) 
BY 
Prof. W. W. GODDING, M. D., 
AND 
W. W. L. CISSEL, M. D., 
MARCH 17, 1886. 
WASHINGTON, D. C.: 
Printed by W. H. Moore, 511 Eleventh St., N. W. 
1886. . / ADDRESSES 
DELIVERED AT THE 
OF THE 
Rational Abital ^'allege, 
(MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OP THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY) 
BY 
Prof. W. W. GODDING, M. D., 
AND 
W. W. L. CISSEL, M. D., 
MARCH 17, 1886. 
WASHINGTON, D. C.: 
Printed by W. H. Moore, 511 Eleventh St., N. W. 
1886. ^Facwllg. 
JAMES C. WELLING, LL. D., 
President. 
A. Y. P. GARNETT, M. D., 
Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine. 
NATHAN SMITH LINCOLN, M. D., 
Emeritus Professor of Surgery. 
J. FORD THOMPSON, M. D., 
Professor of Surgery. 
W. W. JOHNSTON, M. D., 
Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. 
A. F. A. KING, A. M., M. D., 
Professor of Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women and Children, and Dean 
of the Faculty. 
EDWARD T. FRISTOE, A. M„ LL. D., 
Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology. 
WILLIAM LEE, M. D., 
Professor of Physiology. 
ELLIOTT COUES, M. D„ Ph. D., 
Professor of Anatomy. 
D. WEBSTER PRENTISS, A. M., M. D., 
Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
FRANCIS B. LORING, M. D., 
Professor of Diseases of the Eye and Ear. 
G. N. ACKER, A. M., M. D., . 
Professor of Pathological Anatomy. 
W. W. GODDING, M. D., 
Professor of Mental Diseases. 
H. C. YARROW, M. D., 
Professor of Diseases of the Skin. 
ROBERT FLETCHER, M. D., M. R. C. S. Eng., 
Professor of Medical Jurisprudence. 
GEORGE BYRD HARRISON, M. D., 
Professor of Diseases of Children. 
GEORGE WOODRUFF JOHNSTON, M. D., 
Professor of Surgical Gynaecology. 
THEOBALD SMITH, M. D., . 
Professor of Bacteriology. 
J. H. BRYAN, M. D., 
Professor of Diseases of the Throat. 
W. K. BUTLER, M. D., 
Professor of Bandaging and Minor Surgery. ADDRESS 
OF 
Prof. W. W. GODDING, M. D. 
Members of the Graduating Class, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
In accordance with an immemorial custom we have come to- 
gether at the end, which, by a singular felicity of language, we 
call the commencement. Once it had a meaning, this ceremony 
of initiation into a noble guild, this laying on of Alma Mater's 
hands, this feast of roses. But the heroic age and the Olympic 
awards are gone; past are the days of chivalry, and with them the 
maiden knight passing from vigil to accolade-long past into the 
old world shadows. We have come to an iron age of positivism, 
where illusions have no place. Man is no longer "fearfully and 
wonderfully made," a being past finding out; there is nothing 
fearful about him. Science has followed his development up 
from the embryo and has seen the fashioning of his members 
"when as yet there was none of them"-only a monad, I think 
they call him. She can tell us how out of their need organs are 
evolved, and how by their disuse they are taken away. In the 
last analysis she brings him down to the crematory, weighs his 
ashes, measures his gases, and only fails to take account of the 
life, that, like the flower's perfume, has been exhaled. 
Is there-not something of this want about commencement 
exercises, that the life has departed ? When those mediaeval 
schools alone kept the lamp of knowledge burning-dimly it is 
true, but in a world where all else was night-even the Latin 
parchment given in token of an art acquired was a luminous docu- 
ment, and the waiting world received the scholar from his cloister 
and his books with a genuine sensation but faintly paralleled by 
the manner in which it now stands aghast at the announcement 
of a new arrival of doctors. 
Nevertheless we must take the age as we find it, no doubt for us 
the best age the world has ever known. Nor, on this occasion, 
banked in with these fair flowers, entranced with music and 
shadowed by bright eyes that recall " the sweet influences of 
Pleiades" in the winter nights of long ago, can you expect me to 
deny that life is worth living. No, the sunrise as it comes fresh 
every morning has not paled tn the eastern sky, and when Day 
shuts the gates of the west, still, as of yore, born out of the gath- 
ering darkness, " one star differeth from another star," only " in 
glory." From the world's youth that is immortal, nothing of 
beauty has faded. The change is in ourselves; it is out of our 
lives that the illusions have vanished. 4 
Have we not come to something better than illusion ? Here are 
young men-why do I use the invidious adjective, are we not all 
young to-night?-men who after faithfully performing their al- 
lotted official duties in the departments by day, at its close, forget- 
ting fatigue, or at least denying themselves repose and foregoing 
the innocent delights of social life, those recreations which beguile 
so many, have given their evenings, week by week, month after 
month, going on for years, to medical research and study, to make 
themselves masters of the profession-for what? Not to amass 
wealth by the practice, for the experience of the average disciple 
of jEsculapius shows this to be illusion, not merely in a possible 
eclipse of civil service reform that they might have a profession 
to live by, but mainly, as 1 believe, for the benefit to one's-self, 
which all true knowledge brings, that thenceforward life might 
be lifted to wider horizons, and so become fitted for the enjoyment 
of riches that no change of fortune can take away-the only 
treasure we need not wholly leave behind us, a wealth that eno- 
bles the soul. These men have not followed illusions; they have 
been guided by the light of the strictest common sense. 
Standing in such presence, what can I briefly say here, that 
when uttered may be found worthy of being carried away into 
your future lives? What talismanic word that shall keep you 
unharmed in that battle? 1 fear that there is none; light 
bubbles breaking on the froth of the occasion are perhaps all 
that are to be expected or desired. What then shall those 
bubbles be. for it is time we had arrived at the gist of this matter? 
Casting about for a theme, and knowing that what young medical 
practitioners are apt to be most burdened with, is money, I have 
thought it might be as well for me to give you some advice in 
regard to investments, making this a kind of medical price 
current. 
Your first step will be to purchase a corner lot for your resi- 
dence. It will be convenient for persons coming from all direc- 
tions to call the doctor. You will pay for it considerably later. 
Your next purchase will be experience. This will cost you 
dearly, but you must have it. A good thing of which you can 
hardly have too much, you will usually pick it up in odd lots at 
unexpected times and places, often at a great sacrifice on the part 
of your patient. In purchasing experience you will hardly fail to 
part with many preconceived notions, which will prove a good 
exchange. Perhaps on account of the hasty manner in which it 
is often gathered it is no uncommon thing to find experience badly 
mixed with repentance, indeed, so much is this the case that the 
one has sometimes been mistaken for the other. Considering the 
intrinsic value as well as the high market price of experience, it is 
a little singular that it is almost worthless second hand, and being 
a very perishable article is apt to moulder with its possessor. 
I should also say that it is of little value except in combination 
with common sense, and if you have not the latter you need not 5 
hope to supply the defect by purchase. While there is no good 
substitute for experience I have found that a well digested book 
knowledge and keeping the top of the head closely shaven goes a 
great way with the public in estimating your stock in trade. 
In the Babel of this Vanity Fair whither you are come there are 
many things in which you will be asked to invest that are not 
desirable; there are others you cannot afford to be without; others 
again that you should part with only with your lives. I have 
time to name but a small portion of them. 
Sitting silently in your office waiting for patients who do not 
come and longing for the well earned fame that may yet crowd 
your ante-room, you will be offered notoriety as a cheap substitute 
for solid reputation, which also affords the quickest and largest 
returns for the amount of capital invested of anything on the 
market. Beware of it, for with all its tempting gains sooner or 
later it will bankrupt the physician who deals in it. 
The gold-headed cane is no longer deemed indispensable as 
formerly, although a pompous, overbearing manner can be had 
cheap but is dear at any price, and like the bomerang is apt to 
recoil on the head of the projector. 
You will need to buy some office furniture. This should be un- 
obtrusive but neat and tasteful. Many little articles you can 
purchase later as your practice may require, and there is room 
here for the exercise of a variety of tastes, but in this matter of 
furnishing the home the one indispensible article from the start is 
a good wife; this however I do not not advise you to acquire by 
purchase. Find some one who is willing to make the sacrifice. 
In this selection too there is room for a variety of tastes-like 
Milton's first pair, 
" The world is all before you where to choose;" 
you could almost begin to-night. 
You have probably already possessed yourselves, or think you 
have, of the " tactus eruditus," or professional touch. Its im- 
portance in judging of slight changes in the character of the 
pulse, in the detection of commencing suppuration, of obscure 
crepitus, in the diagnosis of deep-seated tumors or diseases of the 
internal organs, has been sufficiently dwelt on by your teachers. 
Did they perhaps omit to call your attention to another touch, so 
important to the physician struggling to get on in the world, the 
Midas touch, which turns everything into gold ? On account of 
the extreme delicacy which this touch implies in handling the 
patient we give it another name; we call it tact. The physician 
who is the fortunate possessor of tact may have his office very 
plainly furnished; he may even be compelled to conduct his ex- 
amination without thermometer or stethoscope, but all the same 
he will be found to have discovered the disease and applied the 
remedy. While you are getting ready to administer the anesthetic 
he will have coaxed the dislocated shoulder into place. See him 
with the children; they take to him, and children know their 6 
friends. As they grow up they never grow out of a fondness for 
him. He never intrudes, for he is always welcome. There is 
health and reassurance in his footstep coming up the stairs. 
They want him at the weddings, and when the gates of life are 
opening, whether on this or a better world. Even the old maid 
aunt unbosoms all her sorrows to him. The wife consults him as 
the Bomans did their oracles constantly, and the head of the 
family feels it a privilege to pay the bill. Is not this conclusive 
of the Midas touch ? 
In a world where we say everything has its price, two things 
will prove exceptions in your case; nay, I will say three, and 
assume that your principles are not on the market. What are 
the two exceptions? The first is one that the public will give to 
you in abundance, while you will make your living by imparting 
it to them. This is advice, and it is an open question whether 
you or the public will have the best of the bargain. The second, 
though freely given to you, you cannot afford to give away. It is 
the confidence of your patient. The professional confidences which 
you receive are to be sacredly kept. Wear ever graven on»your 
hearts the Hippocratic oath, " Whatever I see or hear in the life 
of men which ought not to be spoken of, I will not divulge." But 
they say the courts hold otherwise. The confidential communica- 
tions of the prisoner to his counsel and the secrets of the confes- 
sional are respected by the law, and am I to believe the pro- 
fessional confidences of my patient, on which perchance her fair 
fame depends, are any less so ? lam sure his honor would pro- 
tect and excuse any one of us in declining to answer such question. 
But suppose he does not? Why then, remaining silent we should 
be held to be in contempt; of course his honor must protect the 
majesty of the law ; I should bow to it, going submissively to jail, 
still keeping my own honor and that of my patient, for what is 
the disgrace of prison walls and the contempt of court in com- 
parison with being in contempt of one's self? When at last I was 
released I should resume practice at* the old stand, with a pros- 
pect that the ladies would employ me whatever the judges might 
see fit to do. 
This reminds me to speak of something which it is almost in- 
dispensible that you should secure, a practice. But be careful as 
to the kind of practice and the price you pay. To establish your- 
self regularly in the practice of medicine, you will first attend to 
your license fee and join the local medical society. This is right 
and it will probably afford you the first and only use you will 
have for your diploma. You will next have your name and title, 
done in gilt on a strip of tin with a black lacquered background, dis- 
played on your office shutter. There is no real objection to this 
provided it is made subordinate to the rest of the landscape. But 
if you take my advice you will trust to an ordinary doorplate for 
the first six months, while you keep that sign in gilt and black 
exposed to the sun and weather in the back yard to take off some 7 
of its dreadful newness. Then comes the temptation to frame 
your diploma and hang it up in a conspicuous place in your 
office. Nothing improper in that? No, but they are tiresomely 
common. Do you not think it would be in better taste to select a 
really fine etching illustrating some scripture scene, say the Good 
Samaritan, or the woman who "had spent all her living upon 
physicians? " Better let tne parchment repose in a tin case until 
it is wanted in joining another society. 
How are you to get practice? When you undertake to treat a 
patient it is a good plan to know nothing but your profession. 
Study the case and strive to make yourselves masters of the 
situation. Is the disease curable? then you are there to cure it. 
For the purposes of your calling it should make no difference 
with you whether this first case is a rich or poor man; if the latter 
you are in a position to do him all the more good; indeed, now I 
think of it, the chances are very much in favor of his being poor. 
I have never seen that beautiful lesson of the Master, "The poor 
ye have always with you " more forcibly brought home to our 
daily life than in the case of the medical man at the outset of his 
career. It seems to be one of the blessed compensations of our 
social economy that the young physician with plenty of time at 
his command has no lack of charitable objects on which to bestow 
it, while the established practitioner whose time is money finds it 
necessary to devote his mainly to the wealthy classes. Such being 
the conditions, can you wonder that we welcome you to this noble 
guild ? Still "per aspera ad astra, " over rough roads lies the way 
to glory. 
Is there no easier route, no short cut to practice and success ? 
I cannot deny that there is, and you will find those standing high 
up in the profession in the eyes of the community, sometimes in 
the estimate of their fellows, whose lives, a living lie, are by their 
success constantly proclaiming to the young man " This is the 
way, walk ye in it. " Would you enter on that path? then tell 
the anxious mother who calls you in to see her darling boy who is 
complaining of his throat, fevered and tossing about with a simple 
tonsilitis, that he has the worst type of diptheria, but providen- 
tially she has called you while it is still in the incipient stage; had 
it been twelve hours later you would not be answerable for the 
result, but now, though very sick, you are confident you can pull 
him through; that you have saved thirty cases this season and 
only lost one, which had been left in the hands of a quack until it 
was too late. Three days afterwards, the boy being added to 
your list of "saved," you will leave the family grateful to the 
saviour of their boy and convinced of your remarkable skill in 
diptheria. 
Tell the poor woman who comes to consult you in regard to a 
wen on the back of her head, about which she has been secretly 
worrying for six months past, keeping the knowledge of its exis- 
tence concealed from everybody, that it is as she feared, a cancer, 8 
and must be removed. That the operation in less skillful hands 
than yours might prove a dangerous one on account of the prox- 
imity of the large vessels, but that the real danger in this, as in 
most cases of cancer, is from the roots. When you were in Vienna 
-of course you have never been there nor would you have 
learned anything if you had-you obtained the secret of a certain 
salve which, applied after the removal of the cancer, is sure to 
draw out any remaining roots. With the use of that you cau 
guarantee a complete cure. For the operation chargewher fifty or 
five hundred dollars according to her means, present her with a 
box of the salve, and send her away happy and "saved." As a 
rule charge to the full extent that they will bear. Have no 
bowels of compassion in this matter, they will so come to set all 
the higher value upon your advice. 
Procure a large plate electrical machine for your office; it will 
serve to impress if not to "shock" the public. For your instru- 
ments select those which will cause the bystanders to talk and 
stare, rather than for the use they might have in any particular 
case. If, for example, you are consulted in epilepsy, bring out 
the ophthalmoscope, adjust the lamp and peer through the lens. 
Although the methods you pursue and the habitual insincerity of 
all your ways will necessarily prevent your ever gaining any 
accurate knowledge of its use or by its aid, all the same say to 
your patient, as one who afterwards came under my care-said a 
distinguished authority in this line of practice-so high up that I 
shall not name him-told him, that you can see down to the back 
of his head and locate the exact spot of congestion that causes 
the fits. 
Do not hesitate to assure the hypochondriac that all his trouble 
comes from catarrh of the duct leading from the brain to the 
liver, and if you have a little manual dexterity and he can afford 
to pay you for so delicate an operation, you can demonstrate the 
matter to his satisfaction by inflating the eustachian tube through 
the nose. Will they believe all this? Certainly they will if you 
do your part; the human kind are wonderfully susceptible to im- 
position. Why, people who depend for their mental pabulum 
upon the newspapers will believe anything, even to the absurdity 
of believing Pasteur a humbug.* If you put on that face of 
♦Note-See that generally excellent and widely read Washington Even- 
ing Star of March 13.1886, for a special cablegram conspicuously headed. "Is 
Pasteur a Humbug?" which cablegram goes on to say that Dr. Anna Kings- 
ford (?) of England writes to the papers that "she has now carefully investi- 
gated seven of Pasteur's best known and most widely cited cases and finds 
them spurious inventions." And thisof Pasteur! who of all living men merits 
the most grateful recognition from his fellows; he, whose rigid, searching ana- 
lysis and patient, untiring research after the hidden cause in so many forms 
of disease, has triumphant ly established the truth of his germ theory, and who 
by his inquiries has so exhausted the whole subject that in publishing the 
truth to the world he has given to science at once the bane and antidote of the 
malady. As if the name of this great French chemist, who, though not a phy- 
sician, has done more for the healing art than all the academies of medicine 
could be in any mind associated with "humbug!" But the great majority of 
the Star readers, who will thus have their faith unsettled in this latest hope 
of science that a remedy for rabies has been found, know nothing of the unas- 
sailable fame of Pasteur outside of this, winch may prove his greatest dis- 
covery ; and so, newspapers are made, also history. 9 
owlish wisdom, which after a little you will know so well how to 
assume, you will have uo difficulty in finding fools enough to ac- 
cept you as the seventh son of a seventh son, and your success is 
assured. Cultivate this insincerity and bombastic pretense in 
everything, in your actions, in your dress, in riding, in walking, 
in standing, in all the common things of your daily life, and it 
will soon come to be an integral part of your being, inseparable 
as the shirt of Nessus. You will have wealth, influence, " troops 
of friends;" your life will be rich without and only poor within. 
So shall you travel through the world on the highways of success, 
and have the monumental brass of your career transferred to your 
tombstones. 
I went one day in the early autumn not very long ago to stand 
by the graves of two noted men, one a financier and one an artist, 
where they lie side by side in their lofty place of sepulchre 
among the hills at Brattleboro, Vt. The day was beautiful and 
the sunlight as it rested lovingly on the spot lit up the wealth of 
marble ostentatiously piled above the resting place of the former. 
It was most fitting to the life and career of the man it was de- 
signed to commemorate. The work was the most elaborate and 
expensive of its class. On a central medallion of marble was the 
veritable Colonel himself, beaming and important as ever; he the 
snccessslul Yankee peddlar, the Prince of Erie, the fiddling Nero 
of the Black Friday, the Admiral of the Fall River boats with 
his brass band, the proprietor of Pike's Opera House and god of 
opera boufle, as it played for his own delectation, he, the very 
quintessence of shams. And the marble female figures that clus- 
tered around him there were so like his own opera girls in ballet 
that you could not doubt the design was a spectacular presenta- 
tion of the apotheosis of quackery in the person of the late Colonel 
of the 9th Reg't. Only one thing seemed to me incongruous, the 
tall, central shaft pointing heavenward. "Of the earth, earthy," 
all his life he had been looking down; all that life hollow, a sham, 
with no soul in it, the very conditions of his being precluded any 
other existence than this; a claim of immortality for him is pre- 
posterous. Does not your modern doctrine of development and 
its inexorable law of " the survival of the fittest " teach you this ? 
And what says the highest utterance? "They that are ac- 
counted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from 
the dead"-No, not every one, only those who " are accounted 
worthy." 
And then I turned to where "all that time could wither" of 
the lamented Artist sleeps with as yet only the green sward for 
monument. Here was a life, whatever its failings, that was most 
noble and loving, and however dark the mental shadows that stole 
over it at the last, that tired brain at all times 
"Wrought in a sad sincerity. " 
This was a life in its aims separated heavenwide from all shams 
or taint of quackery, and, standing there I thought it needed no 10 
high sepulchre, needed only the mountains which girt us round, 
lifting out of shadow their sun-lit peaks to lift our thoughts and 
teach us that such a life begun here had not ended there; 
and that he whose hand had painted those magnificent horses of 
the "Morning" in the already changing frescos on the walls of 
the Capitol at Albany, faltering and failing here, might perchance 
-being deemed worthy of that resurrection-have found in the 
light of a new "morning" a realization of strength and beauty 
and immortal life which the highest vision of his passing earth 
dream had not even shadowed. 
These are the two men, each typical of his class, and you stand 
to-night at the parting of the ways; which will you choose? 
Here you must walk, there you may ride. Each one must decide 
for himself. Yet it were better, a thousand times better, that you 
enter into your professional life halt and maimed, yea, and go 
through it on crutches, than to ride in gilded chariots with such 
as these. 
Here, setting forth on that journey, I leave you. How much 
that I thought to say remains untold. As I turn its pages the 
lesson how incomplete, so like this life of ours, for ah, 
"Too soon, too soon 
The noon will be the afternoon, 
Too soon to-day be yesterday." 
It was my opportunity, but I have let it pass, and here where 
the ways divide I pause one moment for a parting word. And 
still the wish recurs that apart from all which I have said to-night 
in its nature ephemeral, designed only to do duty for the occasion 
and wither with its flowers, I might yet, speaking for the faculty, 
in the brief moments that are left me, utter some word to remain, 
a sentence to go with you on your journey, one thought that in 
all contact with the world should keep you from the evil. May 
it not be this: " Noblesse oblige." Your profession requires it. 
This does not translate it; the French words imply the nobility 
of the rank and the obligation which that confers. We must take 
it as it stands, not fully translatable by any English words- 
" Noblesse oblige." The thought of this, nay, the living in it is 
what we all need. Holding thus, it is no light vow, no holiday 
service to which you dedicate yourselves to-night. Here in the 
glamor of this festive occasion, surrounded by sympathizing and 
applauding friends it seems easy to enter and keep "The Noble 
Path." 
But remember this is your last public appearance. It will be 
for the members of other professions to stand in the electrifying 
presence of great audiences and give utterance to their highest 
thought in the forum or at the altar stairs. For you a silent 
work, a calling that will call you at all times, in night and storm, 
over country roads in bitter weather, to a responsibility in the 
presence of disease and wretchedness not to be shunned, with 
censure perhaps unmerited, that must be borne. Anxieties, vex- 11 
ations and discouragements await you. Yours the soul-narrow- 
ing, daily round and drudgery of the practice, looking ever on the 
sad side of life in the constant presence of the weakness of human 
nature, its vice and its meanness. And out of the grime of all 
this sordid contact your professional vows are to be kept inviolate, 
unstained the white pages of the record opening to-night whereon 
you write " noblesse oblige. " The temptation will come in many 
ways, but all resolvable in the last analysis into this, to part with 
personal integrity for present gain. You cannot offord it, " noblesse 
oblige. " 
There will come an hour when a doubtful comment from you, 
remaining silent, or even to "damn with faint praise" the action 
of a professional brother in some unfortunate case under his charge 
will serve to build you up and to pull him down. He has often 
tried to injure you and now it is your opportunity. '•''Noblesse 
oblige, " it is not your opportunity for it is beneath you. Speak 
rather the generous word-is he not your brother? 
Again, " hast thou faith ? have it to thyself, " but do not make 
your religion or irreligion a stepping stone to practice. Just now 
it is fashionable to know no God but potential energy, and Huxley 
and Spencer as his prophets. Do you say that as scientific men 
we must accept their conclusions and so eliminate God? 
" I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one who loves his fellowmen." 
To them our obligations remain the same. Your philosophic 
faith does not require you to say flippant things about Moses to 
gain popularity and practice with a class who hold agnostic views, 
not like you from scientific study, but from want of study and lack 
of mental development. Can you say a single word to shake the 
faith of your patient, the poor woman for whose fading life 
heaven is the only hope? "Noblesse oblige." Be honest and 
serious in your belief, or unbelief whichever it is, for it may yet 
prove that this potential energy, "whom they ignorantly wor- 
ship," is but another name for the Power, " By whom also He 
made the worlds. " 
But later the temptation will take a different form. It will be 
shown you that you stand in your own light in failing to join one 
of the dominant religious societies in your community. Dr. S. 
is a leader in the class meetings and has all the meihodist practice; 
if you would only identify yourself with the Baptists, how it would 
help your position. "Noblesse oblige," be above it. Practice 
religion as you practice medicine, visiting "the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction," but do not let them make you a 
church doctor. An honest agnosticism is infinitely better than a 
mercenary devotion : 
" First of all else to thine own self be true. " 
Through many avenues "it must needs be that offences come." 
They will even dareto ask you tohide disgrace by crime. They will 
come offering the bribes of patronage and influence with the threats 12 
of loss of business and position, saying that your success depends on 
them, and it will be whispered that wealth is all powerful and that 
the poor have no helper. What is that they ask? Sometimes it is 
a potent drug to take away a stain. Again it is only a little paper, 
a certificate that scoundrelism is insanity. Can you afford to 
give it? " Noblesse oblige." Or again some crazed brain has 
committed a revolting crime and a whole community are crying, 
"crucify him, crucify him," pronoucing a woe on the physician 
who shall ventue to call him insane. Will you risk your prac- 
tice and your reputation thus? Can you not at least keep silent 
and let him pass? Not when in your heart something whispers 
" noblesse oblige, " and a voice speaking out of the ages says, " W hat 
is that to thee? follow thou me. " 
So, in His footsteps whose mission here was to heal and to save, 
go forth into this, the noblest profession, wearing ever on your 
lives the motto 
" Noblesse oblige. " VALEDICTORY ADDRESS 
OF 
W. W. L. CISSEL, M. D. 
March I7<^, 1886. 
Ladies and Gentlemen : 
In behalf of the Class of '86 I would extend to you a most 
cordial greeting, and express to you my sincere thanks for glad- 
dening our commencement by your presence and kindly interest. 
There are, doubtless, many among you who have listened to the 
farewell addresses of men, who, with their classmates, were upon 
the " eve of launching their frail barks upon the stormy seas of 
professional life." Since these addresses are mainly similar in 
their import and always of far more interest to the speaker and 
his immediate friends than to the audience in general, I almost 
despair of interesting you from fear of monotony. While pouring 
over our books or while anticipating the happiness of this hour, 
the course to us seemed a long one, and we are glad to know that 
we have " run the race entire, have reached the students' har- 
bor," and now at a glance can scan the past so like a pleasant 
dream, yet containing many facts of stern reality. While we are 
thus entranced there may be some among you, who, partaking of 
the sympathetic, unselfish nature of Sir Sydney Smith, may 
wonder what will become of us all. Despite witty criticisms of 
young physicians and discouraging predictions of the future, we 
assume the garb of that time-honored class and bow in submission 
to what the fates may have in store for us. When we are called 
before you, as we hope to be at some near time hereafter in the 
practice of that which we have here learned and of which we this 
night have received the symbol and authority, we beg you will re- 
member that while against youth there is always prejudice, wisdom 
does not always come with gray hairs, and judge us rather by our 
acts and their results than by the words of those unfortunate or 
rather uncharitable persons who, themselves not without faults, 
are too apt to cast stones at young men in their outstart in the 
profession. During our sojourn in this city we have become ac- 
quainted with many of our dearest friends, though some of them 
we have known but a short time. To most of them our farewell 
this evening must be final, while those whom we shall meet again 
will find in the student of to-day and the doctor of to-morrow the 
same inherent qualities. 
With;, your Honor, the President of our University, we as 
medical students could have but little intercourse. While your 14 
wisdom is manifested by the growth and supremacy of the institu- 
tion under your direction, ever vivid in our memories must remain 
this occasion on which we received from your hands the laurels of 
victory. 
Gentlemen of the Faculty, at your feet we have listened in 
reverential silence, and have received that admonition and in- 
struction which enriches and ennobles life. By your manifest 
interest in our common cause and by a thorough disquisition into 
each of your subjects you have satiated the mental appetites of 
your most enthusiastic pupils. For all you have done for us, for 
all you have been to us, we have no remuneration to offer, save 
our most heartfelt thanks and the resolve by a lifelong devotion 
to our profession to endeavor to attain such prominence as will do 
justice to your earnest teachings. With due regard to the in- 
formation we have received at your hands, we still remain in your 
presence, as a class, to receive further parting counsels, dear to us 
as when, years ago, we lingered upon the threshold of our paternal 
roof, were the parting words of our devoted parents. While our 
hearts beat rapidly in exultation there is intimately mingled with 
our joy, a deep feeling of sorrow at our dissociation with so beloved 
a body, and at our dismissal from your tutelage. When time 
shall reveal to us our future, should we perchance occupy positions 
corresponding to your own, we shall ever regard you with filial 
love and still consider ourselves your inferiors. From our lips 
you need no commendation, for farther than any words of ours 
could reach, you are known, loved and honored. 
Classmates, there is nothing which binds the hearts of mert so 
closely, as unity in thought and pursuit. Three years ago we met 
as strangers within, then, strange walls, where we received our 
initial charge. Thenceforward, we have ever been associated. 
Together we have been in the lecture-room, the labratory, the 
" quiz, " the dissecting room; and together at the clinic, have 
witnessed the appalling effects of disease, and the efficacy of the 
physician's hand. While here to-night, we are again assembled 
probably for the last time. Thus in our memories, familiar faces 
are associated with all the events of student life. To-night we 
separate; some of us may remain in this city to compete with a 
multitude of able men, others may seek renown in larger cities, 
while a few may risk their fortunes in distant localities, courting 
success in some newly settled region, among a rude and rugged 
people. Wherever Fate shall lead us, or whatever our lots shall 
be, let us ever kindly feel the tie which unites us. Thus far we 
have been under the guidance of our Alma Mater. To-night, we 
bid her farewell. In the future no oracle will direct our steps, no 
observer will vouchsafe wise councils. We must rely upon our- 
selves. We should not repine at this, for when, by stimulating our 
faculties to greater exertion to unravel a case, our satisfaction will 
be greater, our knowledge far more lasting, than should we lan- 
guidly await its solution by another. Many of us, while listening to the wooings of ambition, have probably pictured the path to 
fame, by elucidating and discovering a cure for the opprobria of 
medicine-the so-called incurable diseases. Our hopes may be 
cherished and buoyed onward by youth, until too often our gray 
hairs will disclose their futility. This evening we emerge from 
college walls, amid the congratulations of our friends, on the 
morrow we may be summoned by pitiful cries, to contend with that 
dread and subtile foe to the human race-disease. In the ensu- 
ing struggle our conduct will be watched by a criticising public, 
who disclose, and often with pleasure laud the name of the victor, 
with little compassion for the vanquished. 
Undergraduates, with you, also, we must sever our relations, as 
a class. When you shall have returned to your task with re- 
newed vigor, surrounded by groups of gay friends, we would advise 
you to remain kindly inexorable to their entreaties to join in their 
pleasures, for when your goal shall have been attained, you can 
join them with happy hearts. In parting, we would commend to 
your protection the interests of our Alma Mater. Be good to 
her. Obey her teachings, and you will find her a kind and foster- 
ing mother. 
And now, with sorrow at the parting, but with joy and with 
pride in the promise of the future, I must say to friends and to 
Faculty, to classmates and to undergraduates, that last and sad- 
dest word: Farewell. 
15