ADDRESSES 
AT THE 
UNVEILING OF THE BRONZE STATUE 
OF THE LATE 
Prof. Samuel D. Gross, M.D. 
ERECTED BY THE 
AMERICAN SURGICAL ASSOCIATION 
AND THE 
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF THE JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE 
WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 5, 1897 
FROM THE 
Transactions of the American Surgical Association 
1897 THE GROSS STATUE. 
HISTORY OF THE STATUE 
At the annual meeting of the American Surgical Association in 1891 
President C. H. Mastin, in his annual address, recommended “that a 
committee from the Association be appointed to confer with the friends 
and admirers of Dr. Gross, and with the medical profession of the 
whole country, to determine the best method to be adopted to secure 
the requisite amount for the erection of a monument either of marble 
or of bronze.” 
The Committee on the President’s Address recommended that the 
President be empowered to appoint a committee to carry out his sug- 
gestions as to the erection of a suitable monument to commemorate 
the distinguished services of the founder of the Association, Prof. 
Samuel D. Gross, the Association concurring in the report. The 
President appointed a committee of twenty-six, with Dr. J. R. Weist, 
Chairman, and Dr. C. H. Mastin, Secretary. The committee imme- 
diately issued circulars addressed to the profession of the whole 
country, soliciting funds for the prosecution of the work assigned it. 
At the meeting of the Association in 1892 a partial report was 
made, and the committee continued. 
At the meeting in 1893 a Ml report of the work of the committee was 
made. In the report it was stated that a proposition had been made 
by the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College, Phila- 
delphia, to unite with the committee in raising the funds necessary to 
complete the monument. By a resolution of the Association the com- 
mittee was continued, its work already done indorsed, and authority 
given “ to prosecute the work in such a manner as it deemed best for 
the success of the enterprise.” 
Under the authority given, the proposition of the Alumni Associa- 
tion of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, was accepted, and Dr. 
W. W. Keen added to the committee to represent the Alumni Associa- 2 
tion, A sufficient sum having been collected to justify its action, the 
committee invited three artists to enter into a competition for a design 
for the monument; one of them withdrew from the competition ; from 
the other two three models were received and placed on exhibition at 
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where they were carefully in- 
spected by the President of the Academy, the Professor of Painting 
in the Academy, Mr. St. Gaudens, sculptor, of New York, Dr. Orville 
Horwitz and Mr. A. Haller Gross, representing the family, and Dr. 
W. W. Keen, representing the committee. Photographs of the models 
were also examined by the other members of the committee—Drs. J. 
R. Weist and C. H. Mastin. A model submitted by Mr. A. Sterling 
Calder met the approval of all those who examined the models, and 
a contract was entered into with him to model a heroic statue, nine 
feet high, to be cast in bronze and erected in the City of Washington, 
the statue to be completed within two years. He proceeded to Europe, 
and the statue was cast from standard United States bronze in the city 
of Paris. 
Through the strenuous exertions of the committee, and of many of 
the Jefferson Alumni and friends of Dr. Gross, and Senators Morgan 
and Quay and Representatives Adams and Clarke, a bill was passed 
by Congress and signed by the President, appropriating the sum of 
fifteen hundred dollars for the granite pedestal ten feet high. The 
statue stands in the city of Washington on a site selected by the Super- 
intendent of Public Buildings and Grounds, Col. J. M, Wilson, United 
States Army, on the driveway between the Army Medical Museum and 
the National Museum, a point where it will be seen by many thousands 
annually, and especially by medical men who will visit the Army 
Medical Museum. 
The statue was unveiled by the American Surgical Association and 
the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College on May 5, 
1897, during the Fourth Triennial Meeting of the Congress of Amer- 
ican Physicians and Surgeons. The American Surgical Association 
appointed Dr. C. H. Mastin to present the statue and Dr. W, W. Keen 
to give the address. The Secretary of War designated Gen. George 
M. Sternberg, Surgeon-General United States Army, to receive the 
statue on behalf of the Government. The following was the 3 
Order of Exercises. 
1. Prayer by Rev. B. L. Whitman, D.D., President of Columbian 
University, Washington, D.C. 
2. Presentation of the statue by Claudius H Mastin, M.D., LL.D., 
of Mobile. 
3. Unveiling of the statue by Miss Adele Horwitz, of Baltimore, a 
granddaughter of Professor Gross.1 
4. Reception of the statue on behalf of the Government by Briga- 
dier-General George M. Sternberg, M.D., LL.D., Surgeon-General 
United States Army. 
15. Address by W. W. Keen, M.D., LL.D,, of Philadelphia. 
[The accompanying illustration is from a photograph furnished by 
the courtesy of Col. D. L. Huntington, U. S. A. The building seen 
in the background is the Army Medical Museum.] 
1 On account of the rain, this part of the programme was omitted. ADDRESS ON THE UNVEILING OF THE GROSS STATUE. 
By CLAUDIUS HENRY MASTIN, M.D., A.M., LL.D., 
MOBILE, ALA. 
Sir : This is an occasion of unusual interest, and in the assembly 
here to-day convened you behold no ordinary gathering of ordinary 
men. It is the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, an 
Association which is composed of the leaders of medical and surgical 
thought in America. They have come to honor the memory of one 
of their illustrious dead, and in paying a tribute to departed greatness 
they testify to the world their appreciation of the work which he has 
done. 
As you are aware, sir, the late Prof. Samuel David Gross was a man 
of distinguished ability in the profession of medicine, and, as such 
he was Justly entitled to the highest distinction which could be con- 
ferred upon his memory by his co-laborers. 
His life and character furnish an example which is worthy the emu- 
lation of the youth of the land, and hence we desire to place a lasting 
memorial of his greatness in the capital city of our country. 
Born of German parentage in the mountains of Eastern Pennsyl- 
vania, he inherited from his ancestry those sterling qualities of head 
and heart which characterize the race from which he sprang—qualities 
so essential to great deeds and invaluable in the contest for “ the sur- 
vival of the fittest.” 
We find him in- early youth a poor boy, without the prestige of a 
name or the influence of family or fortune; of studious habits, ambi- 
tious promptings, struggling along the toilsome pathway of a young 
practitioner of medicine. 
We note how he surmounts obstacle after obstacle which impede 
his progress to the goal of his ambition. Adversity came to him, and 
adversity was thrust aside; nothing daunted, he gathered anew fresh 
energy and pressed onward in his high career. Guided by the star of 
destiny which shaped his course his own indomitable spirit brought 
to him the fixed persuasion of success! 5 
Ere he had reached the full meridian of life he had become a 
Master in Surgery. Endowed by nature with a strong intellect, which 
he carefully cultivated, he used it to the noble end of ameliorating 
human suffering, and thereby lengthening the span of human life. 
A philanthropist in the true sense of the term, he reached the high- 
est position hitherto attained by any American physician. He was 
bold of assertion, relying upon the rectitude of his purpose; he was 
fearless of opinion, but with it all, without arrogance, he was charitable. 
Enjoying a close intimacy with the wise and the learned all over 
the world, he was crowned with the highest degrees of almost every 
foreign university. 
His exact knowledge of surgical science enabled him to make im- 
portant changes in its principles, thereby enlarging the scope of its 
influence; he added to its literature by stimulating research ! 
An exhaustive collaborator, he became a painstaking compositor; 
a voluminous writer, he was the author of many books, which, translated 
in various tongues, have become standard wherever the art of surgery 
is known or Hippocratic medicine taught or practised. 
Having reached the front rank of his profession—a peer among many 
—he accepted the sceptre, and without ostentation he placed upon his 
own brow the Diadem of American surgery. 
He lived beyond the limit of man’s allotment, when full years, full 
of honor, beloved at home and revered abroad, he rounded up his 
great mission and rested from his labors on the sixth day of May, in 
the year 1884. 
Now, after life’s fitful fever, on the Western bank of the Schuylkill, 
in Woodlands’ holy precincts, repose his ashes—ashes which make it 
holier; dust, which is, even itself an immortality. 
Such in brief is the outline of a life, which, framed in the prodi- 
gality of Nature, was not intended for an age, but for all time—a life 
of which we can truly say:— 
“ Finis Coronat Opus.” 
In acknowledgment of his great deeds in the profession, a move- 
ment was inaugurated in the autumn of 1891 by the American Sur- 
gical Association, of which he was the founder and the cherished idol, 
to erect a monument commemorative of his life and character. The 
initiatory steps having been taken, the Alumni Association of the 
Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia asked permission to unite 
in the enterprise. A joint committee having been appointed, the 
requisite amount of money was speedily collected, not alone from the 6 
profession, but also from many admiring friends, both at home and 
abroad; and it is to their united efforts that we are indebted for the 
funds which have enabled us to complete the work in the short space 
of time since it was begun. 
We desire publicly to acknowledge our indebtedness to Senators 
Quay and Morgan, as well as to Representatives Adams of Pennsyl- 
vania and Clarke of Alabama, for services which they rendered in 
securing the approval of the Government of our wish to erect the 
statue in the City of Washington, and also for the liberal appropria- 
tion made for the massive pedestal upon which the statue rests. 
The question arising as to the proper place at which such a statue 
should be erected, the consensus of opinion was that the only proper 
locality would be in the National Capital, 
His name and fame having passed beyond the confines of the seas, 
and hence being both national and international, we asked permission 
of the General Government to place it amidst these classic shades, 
and to group it with the other statues of the nation’s illustrious dead— 
her heroes whose names have been graved upon the tablets of their 
country’s glory—Statesmen whose words of wisdom in the council 
have directed the affairs of State ; Warriors whose deeds of valor by 
flood and field have made impregnable the bulwarks of the nation’s 
safety; Jurists who have preserved unsullied the purity of the ermine ; 
Philosophers who have grappled the lightning’s fiery wing, and, hold- 
ing it in dumb submission to the will of man, dispatch it as a messen- 
ger of thought to the uttermost ends of the earth. 
The statue which we unveil to-day is not that of a statesman, 
neither a soldier, nor a jurist, but it is one of a Medical Philosopher— 
one whose mission was holier than either, because it was to follow in 
the steps of Him who was the Great Physician, that Divine Man 
whose whole ministry was one of mercy, and who, after “ curing all 
manner of diseases,” finished its majestic self-denials in the reconcil- 
iation of the Cross. 
By adding a physician to this group of celebrities, we show that he 
was equal to them in his country’s favor ; and in placing it here, we 
knew that pilgrims from every clime to which the broad sun turns 
its universal fires, will see, when they visit this land of liberty, what 
our appreciation is of one who has done so much for the cause of 
human suffering, and, challenging our exclusive appropriation of his 
fame, claim it in the name of all nations and of all times as the 
glorious heritage of a common humanity ! 7 
To me, sir, has been delegated the honor of presenting this statue 
to you, the authorized representative of the United States Govern- 
ment, and through you to the people thereof. In obedience to in- 
structions, I here to-day, under the protecting aegis of the Goddess 
of Liberty which surmounts the dome of yon stronghold of freedom 
in the Western Hemisphere, deliver into your keeping this figure, the 
likeness and personification of one who is sacredly embalmed in the 
hearts and memories of his professional brethren. 
It is a work of art; the handicraft of one of our own countrymen, 
Mr. Alexander Sterling Calder, a young artist of Philadelphia, who 
went abroad for the purpose, and has deftly reproduced in bronze the 
features and the form exact. It is firmly fixed upon that granite base, 
which the Government itself has had prepared for its reception, thus 
making it enduring—so enduring that when the ages which are to 
come shall roll by, and future generations of freeborn Americans rise 
up to people these fair lands, they will find, still standing where we 
leave it to day, the statue of America’s Great Surgeon 
Samuel David Gross. 
A beacon light and a landmark on the cliffs of Fame.” 
“A lofty name, ADDRESS ON RECEIVING THE STATUE. 
By GEORGE M. STERNBERG, M.D., LL.D., 
SURGEON-GENERAL U.S.A. 
Sir: The pleasant duty has been assigned to me of accepting for 
the National Government this statue of the great surgeon whose name 
for many years occupied the foremost place among the surgeons of 
the Western Continent, and whose fame will be perpetuated by this 
tribute to his memory, erected by the American Surgical Association 
and the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College of Phila- 
delphia, 
I am not here to pronounce a eulogy on Professor Gross or to review 
his achievements as a surgeon. This task has properly been assigned 
to his distinguished successor in the Chair of Surgery at the medical 
college with which he was so long associated as a teacher. But I think 
I give voice to the unanimous sentiment of the profession when I say 
that no man living or dead is better entitled to stand before future 
generations as a representative of American surgery in the nineteenth 
century. It is true that many surgeons whose reputation scarcely 
extends beyond the city in which they live are to-day performing 
with success operations which Gross would have considered unjustifi- 
able on account of the danger to life attending such attempts before 
the introduction of antiseptic and aseptic methods. But many of 
these successful surgeons received their first lessons from the great 
master whose statue is before us, and all realize that if Gross had lived 
long enough to have become familiar with the technique and results 
of these new methods, his skill and experience would have enabled 
him to accomplish surgical feats which he would not have considered 
possible when he was in the prime of life and vigor. 
It appears to me to be especially appropriate that this statue of our 
great American surgeon is placed here in close proximity to the Army 
Medical Museum and Library building, which contains a library in 
which, no doubt, can be found all of his own valuable contributions 
to surgical literature, and which is a storehouse of information for all 
those who, like him, combine with the skill and boldness of the sur- 9 
geon an ardent desire for the advancement of the profession, and 
indefatigable industry in the literary researches required of one who 
has obtained prominence as a teacher and leader in any branch of 
medicine. 
In the same building is the extensive collection of pathological 
specimens in the Army Medical Museum, a collection in which Pro- 
fessor Gross took the deepest interest. Very many of the specimens 
collected during the Civil War show the results of wound-infection, 
and serve rather to illustrate the disastrous consequences of methods 
which had the approval of surgeons of that day than as examples of 
successful surgery. 
Certainly the greatest achievements of modern surgery are those 
which relate to the saving of life and limb by conservative operations 
and the exclusion from wounds of those ubiquitous micro-organisms 
which in the past have destroyed more lives than have bullets or 
sabres. Professor Gross lived to see the dawn of the new light, and 
in imagination I see him before me, his expressive features illuminated 
by the anticipation of future triumphs to be achieved by American 
surgeons who should follow the'paths he had laid out and the methods 
he had taught with the additional advantages afforded by following 
Lister’s initiative in waging a merciless warfare upon the invisible 
germs of wound-infection. 
In accepting, as I do, for the Government this tribute of American 
surgeons to a revered master, I beg leave to congratulate the com- 
mittee which has had the matter in charge upon the successful com- 
pletion of their labor of love. No doubt they have found the task 
imposed upon them beset with many difficulties, and the success 
achieved has been at the expense of much solicitude, extensive corre- 
spondence, and persistent personal effort, especially on the part of 
the chairman of the committee. To him and his co-workers, and to 
all of the subscribers to the monument fund, the present occasion must 
be one of great satisfaction, for they cannot fail to realize that they 
have accomplised a task worthy of their efforts, and I believe that I 
am justified in conveying to them the thanks of the profession. It is 
eminently fit that this statue should have been erected here in a public 
park at the National Capital, where for centuries to come those who 
visit this spot may read the name of Gross and learn that during the 
first century of American Independence there lived a great surgeon 
of that name, whose character and achievements commanded the 
admiration of his contemporaries. ADDRESS. 
By WILLIAM W. KEEN, M.D., LL.D , 
PHILADELPHIA. 
Fellows of the American Surgical Association ; Members of 
the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College, and 
Friends: Go with me, your spokesman, to-day to the Woodlands 
Cemetery—that “ God’s Acre ” or “ Court of Peace,” as the Germans 
so poetically call it—which holds the dust of so many of the best dead 
of Philadelphia. Upon an urn there treasured you will read the 
following : 
IN MEMORIAM. 
Within this urn lie the ashes of 
SAMUEL D. GROSS, 
A Master in Surgery. 
His life, which neared the extreme limits of the Psalmist, was one unbroken process 
of laborious years. 
He filled chairs in four Medical Colleges, in as many States of the Union, and added 
lustre to them all. 
He recast Surgical Science, as taught in North America, formulated anew its princi- 
ples, enlarged its domain, added to its art, and imparted fresh impetus to its study. 
He composed many Books and among them 
Which is read in different tongues, wherever the Healing Art is practised. 
With a great intellect, carefully trained and balanced, he aimed with undivided zeal 
A SYSTEM OF SURGERY, 
at the noble end of lessening human suffering and lengthening human life, and so rose 
to the highest position yet attained in science by any of his countrymen. 
Resolute in truth, he had no fear; he was both tolerant and charitable. 
Living in enlightened fellowship with all laborers in the world of Science, he was 
greatly honored by the learned in foreign lands, and deepljr loved at home. 
Behind the Veil of This Life There is a Mystery Which He 
Penetrated on the 
SIXTH DAY OF MAY, 1884. 
HIS MEMORY 
Shall exhort and his Example shall encourage and persuade tnose who come after 
him to emulate deeds which, great in themselves, were all crowned by the milk-white 
flower of 
A STAINLESS LIFE. 11 
Samuel David Gross was born near Easton, Pennsylvania, July 8, 
1805, and died in Philadelphia May 6, 1884, having nearly completed 
his seventy-ninth year. 
Who and what was the man of whom this was said ? 
His early years, under the wise training of a good mother, to whose 
memory he rightly pays a just tribute, were spent amid the rustic labors 
and healthful pleasures of a Pennsylvania farm. This gave him a 
strong and vigorous body, without which he never could have per- 
formed a tithe of the labor which pre-eminently distinguished his long 
life. Before he was six years old he determined to be a surgeon, and early 
in his professional studies to be a teacher. Yet when he was fifteen 
he knew scarcely any English. Brought up among the sturdy, honest, 
laborious Pennsylvania Dutch, he could speak that curious English- 
German. But his English, of which he became so fluent a master, 
and even pure German, which he began to study at the same time, 
were learned almost as foreign tongues and as a result of his apprecia- 
tion at that early age of his need for a better and wider education. 
Even a still more striking evidence of the early development of the 
innate strength of his character and indomitable will is a story told 
in his autobiography. While a boy he became expert in playing 
cards ; but finding he was becoming so much fascinated by them that 
he replayed his games in his dreams, he resolved—fancy this in a boy 
not yet fourteen !—to abstain from the game for twenty years—a vow 
he religiously fulfilled. 
At seventeen he began the study of medicine as the private pupil of 
a country practitioner, but after learning some osteology with the aid 
of that tuppenny little compend, Fyfe’s Anatomy, and a skeleton, he 
gave up in despair, for again he found his intellectual tools unequal 
to his work. The little Latin he had was insufficient, and to under- 
stand the technicalities of medicine, Greek was a sine qua non. “ This,” 
he says, “was the turning-point of my life. . . . I had made a 
great discovery—a knowledge of my ignorance, and with it came a 
solemn determination to remedy it.” Accordingly he stopped at 
once in his medical career and went to an academy at Wilkes-Barre. 
He studied especially Latin and Greek, the latter by the use of 
Schrevelius’s lexicon, in which all the definitions were in Latin, and 
Ross’s grammar, constructed on the same principle. But to a master 
will like his such obstacles were not insuperable. To Greek and 
Latin, English and German, later years added also a knowledge of 
French and Italian. 12 
At nineteen he began the study of medicine again—a study in which 
for sixty years his labors never for a moment ceased or even relaxed. 
In 1828, at the age of twenty-three, he took his degree in the third 
class which was graduated from the Jefferson Medical College. He 
opened an office first in Philadelphia, but soon removed to Easton. 
Nothing is more characteristic of the man than that, while waiting for 
practice, he spent hours daily in dissecting in a building he erected 
at the back of his garden, and provided himself with a subject by 
driving in a buggy all the way from Easton to Philadelphia and back 
with a gruesome companion; wrote a work on descriptive anatomy, 
which, however, he never published, and in eighteen months after 
graduation had translated and published Bayle and Hollard’s General 
Anatomy ; Hatin’s Obstetrics; Hildebrand on Typhus, and Tavernier’s 
Operative Surgery—works aggregating over eleven hundred pages. 
His motto was indeed “ Nulla dies sine linea.” His “stimulus” he 
himself says, “was his ambition and his poverty.” 
In 1833, years after his graduation, he entered upon his career 
as a teacher—a career which continued for forty-nine years, until within 
two years of his death. This took him first to Cincinnati as Demon- 
strator of Anatomy in the Medical College of Ohio, Those of my 
audience who left Cincinnati yesterday will be amused to learn that 
by stage, canal, and primitive steamboat, it took him thirteen days to 
reach the Queen City; and all of you will admire the pluck and 
courage of the young man when I add that his total worldly goods on 
reaching there were one hundred dollars in his purse, a wife and two 
children in his family, but also in his breast a heart ready to grapple 
with any difficulties and a determination to conquer them all. 
In 1835 he became Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the Cin- 
cinnati Medical College, where he was a colleague of Daniel Drake, 
Willard Parker, and James B. Rogers, one of the famous four brothers, 
with a second of whom—Robert E.—he was later a colleague in the 
Jefferson. 
His book on the Bones and Joints had appeared in 1830, and next, 
as a result of four years’ study and teaching, his Elements of Patho- 
logical Anatomy was published in 1839. It is strange to think that in 
a then small Western town in America a young teacher in a new medi- 
cal school should have published the first book in the English language 
on Pathological Anatomy. No wonder, then, that it brought him fame 
and practice; that its second edition made him a member of the 
Imperial-Royal Society in Vienna ; and that, thirty years afterward, 13 
Virchow, at a dinner he gave to its then distinguished author, should 
show it as one of the prizes of his library. 
In 1840 he went to the University of Louisville as Professor of Sur- 
gery, and, excepting one year when he was Professor of Surgery in the 
University of the City of New York, he remained there for sixteen 
years, happy in his family, his students, his flowers, and his generous 
hospitality. He and his colleagues—Drake and Austin Flint—soon 
made it the most important medical centre in the West, and he was in 
surgery the reigning sovereign. While there he published, in 1851, 
his work on the Urinary Organs, and in 1854 another pioneer work, 
that on Foreign Bodies in the Air-Passages. His fame had become so 
great that he was invited to the University of Virginia, the University 
of Louisiana, the University of Pennsylvania, and other schools. But 
he was steadfast to Louisville until his beloved Alma Mater called him 
to the chair just vacated by Mutter. From 1856, when in his Intro- 
ductory he said, “ whatever of life and of health and of strength re- 
main to me, I hereby, in the presence of Almighty God and of this 
large assemblage dedicate to the cause of my Alma Mater, to the interest 
of medical science, and to the good of my fellow creatures,” until he 
resigned his chair in 1882—nay, until his death in 1884—this was ab- 
solutely true. Even when the shadows of death were thickening he 
corrected the proof-sheets of two papers on “Wounds of the Intes- 
tines” and “Lacerations Consequent upon Parturition,” his last labors 
in the service of science and humanity. 
Three years after he entered upon his duties at the Jefferson he pub- 
lished his splendid System of Surgery—a work which, though in many 
respects its pathology and its practice are now obsolete, is a mine of 
information, a monument of untiring labor, a text-book worthy of its 
author, and which has been the companion and guide of many genera- 
tions of students. It was translated into several foreign tongues and 
passed through six editions, the last appearing only seventeen months 
before his death. That even when verging toward fourscore he should 
have been willing to throw aside all his strong prejudices and accept 
the then struggling principles and practice of Listerism shows the 
progressive character of his mind and his remarkable willingness to 
welcome new truths. 
From his removal to Philadelphia until his death, twenty-eight years 
later, his life can be summed up in a few sentences ; daily labor in his 
profession, editorial labor without cessation for some years in managing 
the North American Medico- Chirurgical Review, the successor of the 14 
Louisville Medical Review, of which he had also been the editor; 
article after article in journals; address after address; twenty-six 
annual courses of lectures on surgery to thousands of students; labors 
without ceasing until he wrapped the drapery of his couch around him 
and calmly passed away. 
In reviewing his life we may fittingly consider it from the standpoint 
of the surgeon, the author, the teacher, and the man. 
As a surgeon he was painstaking, thorough and careful in his inves- 
tigation of a case, skilful as an operator, and, having so vast an expe- 
rience and equally extensive acquaintance with the wide literature of 
his profession, he was scarcely ever perplexed by the most difficult case 
and rarely at a loss as to the proper course to pursue in the most unex- 
pected emergencies. 
He was a practitioner of the old school, who always mingled medicine 
with surgery, and attributed much of his success in the latter to his 
experience in the former. In theory he sometimes clung to beliefs, 
which, in practice, he abandoned. In one of his later papers, “A 
Lost Art,” and in his lectures, he still advocated blood-letting; but 
in the nearly twenty years in which as a student, an assistant in his 
clinic, and a quiz-master I saw much of his practice, I only remember 
two cases in which he actually bled his patients. 
His influence on the profession was marked and wholesome. For 
many years he was almost always at the annual meetings of the Ameri- 
can Medical Association and the American Surgical Association, was 
looked up to in both as the Nestor of the profession, and his papers 
and his wise words of counsel moulded both the thought and the action 
of his brethren to a notable degree. He founded two medical 
journals, was the founder of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia 
and of the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, the founder and first 
president of the American Surgical Association, and the first president 
of the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College. It is 
peculiarly fitting, therefore, that these last two associations should unite 
to-day in erecting and unveiling the bronze statue of one who did so 
much for them and whom they rightly delight to honor. All who knew 
his tall, manly figure and his fine face will agree that it is a,speaking 
likeness, both in pose and feature. Could I only get a glimpse of 
the right hand which holds his familiar scalpel I would recognize the 
man. Ex pede Herculem / Ex manu Gross / 
As an author, his chief characteristics were untiring industry, com- 
prehensiveness, methodical treatment of his subject, and a singular 15 
felicity of style, especially for one who acquired English so late and 
with difficulty. In fact, through life his speech, by a slight, though 
not unpleasant accent, always betrayed his German descent. 
He “ blazed ” more than one new “ trail ” in the forests of surgical 
ignorance. In the early part, and even in the middle of this century, 
it was rare for Americans to write medical books. The most they 
did was either to translate a French or a German work or to annotate 
an English one. He was one of the earliest to create an American 
medical literature of importance, and his works on the Urinary Organs, 
on Foreign Bodies in the Air-Passages, and his text-book on Surgery 
gave a position to American surgery abroad which we can now hardly 
appreciate; while, as already related, his Pathological Anatomy was 
the very first work in the English language on that most important 
branch of medicine. 
His experiments and monograph on Wounds of the Intestines laid 
the foundation for the later studies of Parkes, Senn, and other Ameri- 
can surgeons, and have led to the modern rational and successful 
treatment of these then so uniformly fatal injuries. He first advocated 
abdominal section in rupture of the bladder, the use of adhesive 
plaster in fractures of the legs, amputation in senile gangrene, and the 
immediate uniting of tendon to tendon when they were divided in an 
incised wound. Had he lived but a year or two longer bacteriology 
would have shown him that scrofula was of tubercular origin, and not, 
as he so firmly believed and vigorously taught, a manifestation of 
hereditary syphilis. 
That his eminence as an author should have met with recognition 
from scientific organizations and institutions of learning is no cause of 
surprise. It made him the president of the International Medical 
Congress of 1876, a member of many of the scientific societies of 
Europe as well as of America, and won for him the LL.D. of the 
University of Pennsylvania, and I believe the unique honor in America 
of having had conferred upon him the highest degree of all three of 
the leading universities of Great Britain—Oxford, Cambridge, and 
Edinburgh. Indeed, it is both significant and pathetic to note that he 
laid down his pen just after recording in his autobiography the an- 
nouncement of the honor which the University of Edinburgh intended 
to bestow upon him at its tercentenary celebration. 
As a teacher, I can speak both with personal knowledge and enthu- 
siasm. I can see his tall, stately form, his handsome face, his flowing 
features, his impressive gestures. He was earnestness itself. Filled to 16 
overflowing with his subject, his one desire was to impart to us as much 
of the knowledge he possessed as our young heads could hold. Repeti- 
tion did not blunt the novelty nor time lessen the attraction of his 
theme. It always seemed as if he were telling us for the first time the 
new story of the beneficent work that surgery could do for the injured 
and the suffering. His whole heart was in his work. Especially did 
he inculcate the principles of surgery, for he was convinced, and 
rightly, that one who was thoroughly imbued with these could not go 
far wrong in his practice. 
His own statement of one of the qualifications of a teacher is so 
true yet so often forgotten that, in spite of its mixed metaphor, I will 
quote it: “A teacher should be bold and decided in his opinions ; not 
too positive, but sufficiently so to be authoritative. The student cannot 
judge for himself. The knowledge that is placed before him must be, 
so to speak, well digested for him ; otherwise it will stagger and bewil- 
der, not instruct him.” His sense of the heavy responsibility of the 
teacher is well shown by the following from his autobiography: 
“Nothing was more offensive to me than applause as I entered the 
amphitheatre, and I never permitted it after the first lecture. I always 
said, ‘ Gentlemen, such a noise is more befitting a theatre or a circus 
than a temple dedicated not to but to Almighty God, for 
the study of disease and accident, and your preparation for the great 
duties of your profession. There is something awfully solemn in a 
profession which deals with life and death, and I desire, at the very 
threshold of this course of lectures, to impress upon your minds its 
sacred and responsible character, that you may be induced to make the 
best possible use of your time, and conduct yourselves in a manner 
worthy of the dignity of Christian gentlemen.’ ” 
The value of recitations in a medical course I fully appreciate and 
indorse. They will occupy in the future a much larger place in our 
medical schools than they now do. But I am equally convinced that 
such a voice, such a presence, such an impressive, earnest lecturer will 
never lose their powerful influence nor their place in instruction. 
As a man, he was beautiful in his relations with his family, who were 
devoted to him with an affection that was unusually strong; upright 
in all his dealings, and despising cant and pretense and anything un- 
worthy a true gentleman. Few men were more widely known in and 
out of the profession, and few ever had the good fortune to know inti- 
mately so many distinguished people of both continents. Wherever he 
was known he was respected, and by those who knew him intimately 
he was beloved. 17 
Such, then, was the man whom we are gathered to-day to honor. 
The American Surgical Association, the Alumni Association of the 
Jefferson Medical College, and a few friends who have gladly united 
with us in this service of affectionate remembrance, have presented his 
statue to the people of the United States, to stand forever in our beau- 
tiful capital city as a mute yet eloquent evidence of our esteem for his 
personal worth and his professional attainments. 
It is strange that the human race has failed so grievously to recognize 
publicly its great medical benefactors. Mr. Lecky, in his last remark- 
able book, in speaking of the rewards of genius in Great Britain, after 
enumerating the chief of the extraordinary and beneficent achievements 
of medical men in the present century, says, “England may justly 
claim a foremost place in this noble work, and many of her finest in- 
tellects have been enlisted in its service. In no single instance has 
this kind of eminence been recognized by a peerage. It is clearly 
understood that another and a lower dignity is the stamp of honor 
which the State accords to the very highest eminence in medicine and 
surgery—as if to show in the clearest light how inferior in its eyes are 
the professions which do most to mitigate the great sum of human 
agony to the professions which talk and quarrel and kill.” (.Democracy 
and Liberty, i. 429.) And yet Jenner almost saved England from ex- 
tinction, and Simpson and Lister have done far more to mitigate the 
terrors of surgery and the pangs of maternity, to save life, and to 
bring health and happiness to the human race than Marlborough and 
Wellington and Nelson have done to destroy life and bring sorrow and 
pain and rapine and misery. 
It is pleasant to record that England has atoned, with the opening 
of this year, for such long-continued neglect. In making Sir Joseph 
Lister the first medical peer she has conferred less honor upon Lord 
Lister than upon herself. 
The statue of Marion Sims, not long since erected in New York, and 
this one of Samuel D. Gross, let us hope, are the beginning of a simi- 
lar recognition of beneficent genius in our own land. Go through the 
broad streets of this beautiful city, and in its circles and parks and 
squares you will find, with singular exceptions, only the statues of states- 
men and warriors—men who deserve, we all agree, their well-won 
honors and immortality. But, truly, “ Peace hath her victories no less 
renowned than those of war.” Though its heroes are not, it may be, 
portrayed in marble or bronze, they are enshrined in the grateful 
hearts of mankind, immortal in literature, even the humblest of such 18 
toilers as the Gideon Grays and the Weellum Maclures that cheer and 
brighten the world. 
And were the soldiers, whose statues one may see everywhere around 
us, the sole possessors of bravery? In 1832, that most dreaded of all 
scourges, Asiatic cholera, for the first time broke out all over this coun- 
try with the greatest virulence. Easton was only eighty miles from 
New York, and the citizens, in terror lest the dread disease would reach 
their own town, appointed a young, intrepid surgeon to visit New York 
and learn what he could for their benefit. When others were fleeing 
in frightened thousands from the pestilence Gross bravely went directly 
into the very midst of it, reaching New York when the epidemic was at 
its very height. In that then small and half-depopulated town 385 per- 
sons died on the very day of his arrival—and he stayed there a week in 
a hot July, visiting only its hospitals and its charnel-houses. What 
call you that but the highest type of bravery ?—a bravery which Nor- 
folk and Mobile and Memphis have since seen repeated by scores of 
courageous physicians ready to sacrifice their lives for their fellowmen 
with no blare of trumpets, no roar of cannon, no cheer of troops, no 
plaudits of the press ! No battlefield ever saw greater heroes; no 
country braver men ! 
Yonder statue of Joseph Henry has stood alone for too many years. 
We have to-day unveiled its worthy companion. Both of them are 
memorials of men great in science, whose lives were devoted to the 
good of their fellow creatures, to saving life, adding to human comfort, 
lessening pain, promoting knowledge, cheering the sick, and assuag- 
ing even the very pangs of the dying. We do well thus to honor in 
imperishable bronze the men who have won these victories of peace ! 
To no one can the words of the blessed Master apply with greater force 
than to the kind surgeon whose time and thought and talents are given 
to humanity, and, above all, to the poor, with no payment but the 
grateful look of returning health and rescued life and that inward satis- 
faction which far surpasses all the wealth of the Orient—“Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ray brethren, ye have 
done it unto Me.”