qCEED/^ 
<r• oF a Ss> 
Gomplinjentei Dinner 
GIVEN TO 
Dr. Joseph Parrish 
°F " ) 
1 PROCEEDINGS 
OK A 
Complimentary Dinner 
GIVEN TO 
DR. JOSEPH PARRISH 
Of Burlington, N. J., 
BY THE 
Ls 
American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, 
with a Sketch of his Life by Col. Shipman, etc., etc. 
Reprint from Journal of Inebriety. 
HARTFORD, CONN.: 
Press ok The Case, Lockwood & Brainakd Company. 
1890. NOTE. 
The complimentary dinner given to Dr. Joseph Parrish, in honor of 
the seventy-first anniversary of his birthday, by the American Associa- 
tion for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, has attracted so much inquiry 
as to demand a separate issue of the proceedings. To this is added an 
appreciative sketch of Dr. Parrish by Col. Shipman, late editor of the 
Louisville Courier. As a chapter in the early history of the develop- 
ment and literature of inebriety we are confident it will occupy a most 
important place in the future. T. D. C. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
5 
NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY 
AND CURE OF INEBRIETY — COMPLIMEN- 
TARY DINNER TO THE PRESIDENT — 
SPEECHES, ETC. 
The Association is indebted to the Executive Committee 
for making this occasion most memorable in its history. In 
connection with the annual meeting a complimentary dinner 
was given the president, Dr. Parrish, at his home, Burlington, 
New Jersey, November u, 1889. 
The hearty responses and warm congratulatory letters 
received in reply to the many invitations sent to the leading 
medical men of the country were very complimentary to Dr. 
Parrish, and also to our Association. It clearly indicated 
that our society and its work were regarded with great inter- 
est and sympathy by the leaders of the profession. 
The president, Dr. Parrish, occupied the chair, and wel- 
comed the Association in most touching words of sympathy. 
He referred to those who had been with us so long, now 
gone forever, and their influence and work, and the change 
of public sentiment regarding the disease of inebriety, and 
the need of more concentrated, earnest effort to rouse up 
public interest in the scientific study of the inebriate and his 
malady; and, in closing, said: “I am reminded that I can 
not hope to meet with you many more times, but it will ever 
be a source of the greatest pleasure and satisfaction to feel 
that this work will go on with renewed vigor and interest in 
your hands.” 
The present officers of the Association were re-elected 
for the ensuing year. Dr. Bradner, chairman of Committee 
“on Nostrums, Proprietary Medicines, and New Drugs,” 
read a report, which was accepted, and the committee con- 
tinued for another year. 
Several papers were presented and read by title, after 6 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
which the society adjourned to attend the complimentary 
dinner. 
A large concourse of people assembled in the parlors of 
Dr. Parrish’s house, and Dr. Day, vice-president, was called to 
preside. After prayer by Rev. Dr. Porter, Dr. Day spoke as 
follows: 
Dr. Parrish : A few of your many friends have called on you 
to offer their congratulations on this your seventy-first birth- 
day. You have passed the usual allotment of man’s span of life, 
but we greet you with the hope that your life may be length- 
ened through many more years of usefulness to bless man- 
kind. Quite a generation ago, when I was struggling almost 
alone with the problem how to establish and conduct an insti- 
tution for the alleviation and treatment of a class the most 
unfortunate of our race, I well remember the words of 
encouragement you gave me, and I also found you imbued 
with the same ideas as myself, that something should be done 
for the inebriate in the way of institutional treatment. 
Heretofore the intemperate for ages, yes, extending back 
into the prehistoric period, were considered persons possessed 
of demons, and the soul was consigned to chains and dark- 
ness forever. But there were those, and you, my dear Doc- 
tor, amongst the first, who touched the wand of science, and 
the sun of a newer and purer idea sprung forth, the light of 
which has shone around the world, and now there are estab- 
lished institutions for the humane and scientific treatment 
of inebriety in almost every enlightened nation of the earth. 
The Antipodes respond to the new and glorious idea, and 
the sunlight, in its course around the world, doesn’t grow 
dim over any civilized people who do not recognize the truth 
you less than a generation ago promulgated. 
No one has done more than yourself to elucidate by 
scientific treatise on alcoholism the fact that most cases of 
inebriety are a sequence of diseased organism rather than 
moral depravity. Now, the best thinkers in Europe and in 
our own country (more particularly the medical profession) 
are almost unanimous in response to your suggestions, and Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
7 
are now dealing with these cases in a practical way. We 
now have professional men, co-workers with us, such as Drs. 
Kerr, Carpenter, and a multitude of others in the old world, 
while in the new we have Drs. Crothers, Mason, and a host 
of true-hearted men devoted to this cause. Our co-workers, 
Dr. Willard Parker of New York, and Dr. T. L. Mason of 
Brooklyn, and other great and good men, have gone to their 
reward, who were at first with us in this noble and humane 
work. 
And now, my dear friend, we must ourselves own that we 
are nearing the end. I am three years only behind yourself. 
I feel that what little I have done for the cause during the 
last thirty-three years is only laid up for the future to improve 
upon. What little has been written by me is not entirely 
for this generation, but for the future. What you have writ- 
ten will be for the centuries as well as for the near future; 
your reward will not come in this world, but we trust for the 
future. A hope is all we can now entertain. May your 
future years be full of peace and satisfaction, with the thought 
that you have labored for and “ loved your fellow-man,” and, 
no doubt, when the Angel of Peace comes, surrounded by a 
halo of light, with the names of “ those whom love of God 
had blessed,” your name will lead all the rest. 
“ Count not thy life by calendars ; for 
Years shall pass thee by, unheeded, whilst an hour — 
Some little fleeting hour, too quickly past — 
May stamp itself so deeply on thy brain, 
Thy latest years shall live upon its joy. 
Ilis life is longest, not whose boneless gums, . 
Sunk eyes, wan cheeks, and snow-white hairs bespeak 
Life’s limits; no ! but he whose memory 
Is thickest set with those delicious scenes 
’Tis sweet to ponder o’er when even falls.” 
Dr. L. D. Mason, the second vice-president, was intro- 
duced, who spoke as follows : 
It is our special privilege to speak of the relation of Dr. 
Joseph Parrish to that cause in which we all have a common 
interest, and in which he has been so prominent and useful 8 
Nvieteenth Annual Meeting. 
— and incidentally of the cause itself. My first acquaintance 
with Dr. Parrish was at a meeting held to organize “ The 
American Association for the Cure of Inebriates',' at the rooms 
of “The Young Men’s Christian Association” in New York 
City, Nov. 29, 1870. He then acted as secretary of that 
meeting, and was the most energetic member of the organiza- 
tion and the originator of the whole movement; he has since 
then been elected to nearly all the offices in the gift of the 
association, and has proved himself a most valuable member 
in all those relations, and now fills, as he has for some time 
past, the office of president. 
Not only his early identification with the movement, but 
his sincerity and fidelity to his convictions, are worthy of re- 
mark. He believed the assertion of Dr. Benjamin Rush, 
made one hundred years before, that “ inebriety was a disease 
and required special hospitals for its treatment,” and he also 
believed what Dr. Valentine Mott said, “ that you might as 
well try to treat a broken leg by preaching to the patient as 
to cure an inebriate by moral persuasion alone.” 
Drs. Rush and Mott had strongly marked individuality and 
followed independent lines of thought, based on common sense. 
They were what we call “ original thinkers ”; would there 
were more men to-day like them brave enough to assert their 
convictions and “knowing dare to maintain them.” For- 
tunately for our cause Dr. Parrish possessed this character- 
istic— he had the “courage of his convictions”; these were 
the result of his careful, conscientious, and scientific con- 
sideration of the facts before him. They were the results of 
conclusions deliberately formed, hence his constancy. Others 
came from curiosity or some superficial motive, looked in 
upon us and departed. “ They are not with us, because they 
were not of us. ” The seed was good, but it fell on stony 
ground, and having no root, perished. 
What has Dr. Parrish seen, and what does he now behold ? 
He saw a cause apparently insignificant, the subject of marked 
indifference, willful ignorance, and even ridicule, now firmly 
established as a scientific fact. He now sees special hospitals Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
9 
throughout the land for the treatment of alcoholism as a 
Disease. In England, where in company with a fellow 
member of our society he testified in 1872 before a “select 
committee of the House of Commons” and gave his testi- 
mony before an almost skeptical audience, a few years later, 
in 1885, returning, he finds on English soil reputable institu- 
tions under the best of medical care, and he is dined and 
feted, and his labors duly recognized ; later still he rejoices to 
know there is being held in London, July 1887, a “congress” of 
all nations — England and her colonies, Germany, Austria, 
America, Russia, France, and the lesser nationalities — it 
is called an “International Congress of Inebriety,” and the 
whole scientific world with “ bated breath ” listen to what 
American experts have to say on the subject of inebriety. 
There is no indifference now, the scientific mind is anxious 
and thoroughly aroused ; at last it has struck the trail of truth, 
and henceforth it will follow where that path leads. Other 
“ congresses ” succeeded this one, and an “ International 
Congress on Alcoholism” was held in Paris, July 29, 
1889. At the latter a special committee, Drs. Motet, Du- 
verger, and Petithan advocated the establishment of special 
asylums for the treatment of chronic alcoholics, thus rati- 
fying and endorsing the action of the “ Congress of Brussels ”, 
when similar resolutions were passed, in 1881. This congress 
was for the consideration of “Nervous and Mental Maladies”, 
alcoholism being incidentally considered. The literature of 
inebriety has not failed to keep pace with the advancement 
of general knowledge on this all-important subject. Dr. 
Parrish has added many papers of value to it, and the results 
of his investigation appeared in a work on inebriety published 
in 1883. He has seen a Journal published in the interests 
of inebriety, as an organ of this association under the editor- 
ship of one of our most prominent members, attain and main- 
tain a marked position in the fields of journalism, as well as 
much matter also of interest issued from the “American 
press ” on this subject. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
10 
The medical literature of other countries includes the 
names of Richardson,Carpenter, Kerr,Peddie,Brodie,Cameron 
of England and Scotland, and last but not least the English 
pioneers Dr. Donald Dalrymple and Dr. Stephen Alford, 
Magnan, Beaumetz, and others of France, Baer and Binz of 
Prussia, Magnus Huss of Sweden, Petithan of Switzerland, 
Lentz of Belgium, Kowalevsky of Russia, as well as many 
others of more or less note, who have added greatly to the 
clinical history, “Therapeutics,” “ Pathology,” and “ Medical 
Jurisprudence” of Inebriety. Dr. Norman Kerr and Prof. 
Kowalevsky have written valuable and exhaustive treatises 
on the subject of inebriety. Special societies have been 
formed for “ The Study and Cure of Inebriety ” and other so- 
cieties not especially formed for the consideration of the 
subject are willing and anxious to admit it as a matter to be 
discussed before their members. Medico-legal societies have 
evinced a special interest, and the medico-legal society of New 
York not long since gave an evening or more to the consider- 
ation of this topic, soliciting experts in this branch to testify 
and give their views and experience. 
“The Pathological Society of London,” over whose delib- 
erations Sir James Paget presided, devoted an entire week 
of its sessions last winter to the consideration of the “ Patho- 
logical Effects of Alcohol.” Foreign societies have recog- 
nized and have extended their honors to American specialists 
in this branch of medicine. Dr. Parrish nozv sees medical 
journals, who a comparatively few years ago ignored the sub- 
ject of inebriety, gladly welcome it to their columns. Also 
physicians who refused to acknowledge the causative relation 
of inebriety to disease how recognize it as an important factor, 
not only in the etiology of many diseases, either as a direct 
cause or as a complication, but also itself originating from 
certain diseased conditions, which precede its special mani- 
festations. 
The public mind now appreciates the fact, at least in 
some measure, that “inebriety” is a term which covers a host 
of diseases resulting from alcohol, especially its action on the Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
11 
nervous system as in chronic alcoholism, acute alcoholic de- 
lirium, alcoholic dementia, alcoholic neuritis, alcoholic par- 
alysis and dipsomania, including oftentimes with these the 
especial deteriorating effects of alcohol on the glandular, 
circulatory, and respiratory system. 
Inebriety, it is seen, also not unfrequently results from 
involuntary causes as preceding disease or injury, and more 
especially from an inherited tendency that may be truly called 
an “ inebriate diathesis,” and that the inebriate under these 
conditions is not a voluntary sufferer, volition under these 
circumstances being excluded, his inebriety being but the 
active manifestation of a certain diseased condition which 
lies at the root of and is the cause of his inebriety. 
The fact is appreciated that inebriety and its consequences 
are but the eruption of the volcano, and like the subter- 
ranean causes of the volcanic disturbance, the inebriety has 
its causes concealed and behind it. Prometheus chained to 
the rock was not more impotent than the inebriate chained 
to his habit. The fact is being appreciated that intelligent 
medical aid can alone break these fetters, strengthen the 
impaired will power, and restore the inebriate to his friends 
and to his social position. 
Twenty years ago legislation was practically indifferent 
to the inebriate except as a criminal, but now, in proportion 
as a legislator is intelligent, just in that degree does he accept 
the “disease doctrine ” of inebriety and recognize the inebriate 
as a diseased person. Within a few days I have communi- 
cated with a member of the legislature of Louisiana, who is 
preparing a bill for the cure, not the punishment, of inebriates. 
A few days later a prominent member of the South Carolina 
legislature wrote me stating that he was drafting a bill for a 
similar purpose. Canada, the British provinces, Continental 
Europe, every scientific center is moved with the question : 
“ What shall we do with the inebriate ? ” How shall we solve 
this great social problem ? 
Three classes of society bitterly oppose the solution of 
the question on the disease basis : the moralists on the one Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
12 
hand, who claim that we are endeavoring to substitute disease 
for sin and immorality ; the lawyers, who assert that the 
inebriate is responsible for his acts, which are voluntary, and 
last, but not least, the liquor-dealers, who are opposed to such 
doctrine, because it may involve a direct tax upon them. 
Thus fanaticism and ignorance, pedantry and avarice, have 
endeavored to stay the progress of reform. But moral meas- 
ures and punitive laws have failed to cure the inebriate; intelli- 
gent persons see that these measures have no therapeutic 
value. From all sides the disease doctrine is meeting with 
acceptance. For twenty years or longer it has been before 
the community; its application has resulted in the cure of 
from 30 to 40 per cent, of the inebriates submitted to it, and 
that under the most disadvantageous circumstances it is now an 
accepted scientific fact that “ inebriety is a disease. ” With 
this view of the question let us “call things by their right 
names”. The inebriate is a sick man, and the place where 
he is to be healed is not a home or a retreat. 
These names lead to confusion and misinterprets the 
object which these institutions have in view. Let us use 
plain English and call these institutions “Hospitals for the 
cure of inebriety or chronic alcoholism,” if the latter term is 
preferred. 
Those who have control'of these institutions should be 
regularly educated physicians, especially qualified for the 
work. The time has passed when clergymen without a 
parish, or general practitioners without a practice, can as a 
last resort attempt to make a living by endeavoring to cure 
the inebriate. We also include “ reformed inebriates”. We 
do not believe that “ reformed inebriates ” have any special 
qualifications that should place them at the head of inebriate 
asylums ; indeed, we believe they are especially disqualified 
for such a position, which is one that would severely tax a 
person who possessed a healthy, vigorous, normal consti- 
tution, in addition to special qualifications for the work. 
You who minister in “ holy things,” think not we are 
come to amend, misinterpret, or destroy the moral law, nor to Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
13 
frame an excuse for immorality, nor to shield a willful sinner 
from divine justice; we have no such mission. 
But the days of demonism and of witchcraft, the days of 
Chrysostom, Tertullian, and of Cotton Mather have passed 
away. Every lunatic, hysterical person, or epileptic is not 
now “ possessed of a devil,” nor is every feeble-minded and 
silly old woman “a witch.” Before you “ cast the first stone” 
we ask you not to condemn the inebriate as a sinner because 
an inebriate, but lead your unfortunate brother to an institu- 
tion, where his diseased body and enfeebled intellect can be 
restored; where, clothed and in his right mind he can receive 
intelligently your spiritual instruction and encouragement. 
And you, who make, amend, and enforce the law, protectors 
of our persons, our property, our liberty, and our privileges, 
do not think that because we may plead at times the “ irre- 
sponsibility of the inebriate,” that we therefore would set 
aside all human law. Nay, we appeal to the higher, yet un- 
written law, the law of simple justice; for is it right to sentence 
and punish an irresponsible person, who is feeble minded, or 
a lunatic ? — and that the inebriate is not unfrequently one or 
the other, and that his career often ends in the lunatic asylum 
is a fact abundantly shown and proven beyond dispute. We 
simply ask you in all such cases to listen to the evidence, 
consider the previous life and manner of the accused, not 
alone under the light of medical testimony, but from investi- 
gation of the evidence before you based on common sense, 
and then deal with the inebriate as practically an insane 
person if the testimony sustains the plea of “ non compos 
mentis. ” And what shall we say to you, my brother phy- 
sicians ? American physicians originated, the thought that 
inebriety was a disease, and that finally was materialized 
into the asylums and homes for inebriates that now are found 
in almost every scientific center. Shall American physicians 
fail to sustain and endorse those who were the pioneers in 
this movement ? Are you ashamed to follow in the footsteps 
of Benjamin Rush, Valentine Mott, John W. Francis, and a 
host of medical men who in more modern times included in 14 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
their number the best and noblest names of the day ? To all 
political economists, to all statesmen, we would say, behold 
the only practical and satisfactory solution of the great ques- 
tion, How shall we control the inebriate ? Not by punitive 
laws, but by proper legislation. Put the brand of mental 
and physical disease and consequent irresponsibility upon 
the inebriate and enact laws for the control of inebriates and 
provide proper institutions, where they can be treated, just as 
you now do for the insane, with such modifications as the cir- 
cumstances may demand. This is your especial duty. 
Whatever beneficial effect restrictive legislation may have 
on a community, it cannot cure the inebriate. Special laws 
are required for his control and treatment. New York State 
and Connecticut have such laws, based on the fact that the 
inebriate is a diseased person, not a criminal. England and 
her colonies have within a few years enacted similar laws in 
behalf of the inebriate, and we believe the time is not far 
distant when every civilized community will have its special 
laws for the control and treatment of the “ Inebriate as a dis- 
eased person.” 
Physicians, sanitarians, scientists, bacteriologists, you 
who meet to consider causes that are detrimental to the pub- 
lic health and destructive to human life, do not, we implore 
you, eliminate from your learned councils the consideration 
of a destructive agency so potent for evil as alcohol; but 
while you diligently search the slums and sinks of great 
cities, polluted water supplies, and the excretions of the 
living or the tissues and fluids of the dead for disease germs, 
do not forget that while cholera and the eruptive and con- 
tinued fevers have slain their thousands, alcohol has slain its 
tens of thousands; while these appear as epidemics, alcohol 
is constant in its destructive effects. 
It does not often fall to the lot of a reformer or one who 
endeavors to establish a principle or fact, to live to see that 
principle or fact accepted and established beyond a per- 
adventure or a doubt. Dr. Parrish can do this. At the 
latter part of a long and useful career he can take a retro- Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
15 
spective glance over the “ battlefield of life ” and say : “I 
have waged a warfare, and established a principle. And 
when I have been ‘ gathered to my fathers ’ my name and 
the name of my confreres will be handed down for genera- 
tions to come as the pioneers of a reform conferred upon 
society, a practical and safe solution of the great question 
that has agitated the minds of physicians, legislators, and all 
social economists from time immemorial: ‘Mow shall we 
deal with the inebriate ? ’ ” 
And now, Dr. Parrish, accept the sincere congratulations 
of your associates, over whom you have presided so many 
years. Your life has been a busy one in many departments 
of knowledge and duty. Hut in none have you attained or 
will you atlain more eminent success, than in the part you 
have taken in establishing the fact, laid down in the creed of 
our association : “ Inebriety is a disease; it is curable in the 
same sense as other diseases are curable.” 
But as we write, memories crowd upon us, and the 
shadowy past is full of familiar faces—Turner, Mason, Dodge, 
Barker, Willetts — all names associated with our early work. 
There is on the part of the younger members of this 
association a desire to cling to these names, as we could not 
easily forget them if we would, nor willingly let their memory 
die. We especially recall that earnest pioneer of our prin- 
ciples, the late Dr. J. Edward Turner, who, as he stated, de- 
voted fifty years of his life, practically his whole life, demon 
strating that inebriety was a disease, and founding, Sept. 24, 
1 cS5 S, as a means for its cure, the first inebriate asylum estab- 
lished not only in this country but in the world. He was en- 
gaged, at the time of his death, in endeavoring to wrest from 
illegitimate seizure the asylum to whose interest he had de- 
voted his wholelife, and also in founding a “Woman’s National 
Hospital” for the treatment of alcoholism and the opium 
habit, writing in his unbounded faith over its yet unerected 
portals — 
“ Neither are our hopes buried in the dust, 
Nor our faith darkened into night.” 16 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Dr. Turner was the St. Paul of our gospel. We use the 
word in no sacrilegious sense, for is it not “good news” to 
the chronic inebriate that his disease may be cured ? and was 
not our Dr.Turner similar to the great apostle in his “ journey- 
ings oft,” his trials, rebuffs, disappointments, and in his final 
success ? for he saw the principle he advocated at last firmly 
established before he was called away from this field of duty. 
He has labored, and we have literally entered into his labors. 
There is an inspiration in the life of such a man. F'ellow 
associates, as death lessens our numbers, let us stand shoulder 
to shoulder, rallying around the standard of our principles. 
Let us be faithful to the trust that these pioneers in the work 
have bequeathed to us, saying with the soldiers of the first 
empire: “The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders!” and 
let the presence to-day of one who embodies in his life work 
so illustriously the principles on which this association is 
founded, animate us to further and greater efforts in a field 
so important to the commonwealth, so full of great results; 
and may we, directed and strengthened by the memory of 
those faithful exemplars that have gone before — 
So live that when our summons conies to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
We go not, like the quarry-slave, at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach our grave 
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. ” 
Dr. Crothers, secretary of the association, remarked as 
follows: On the 29th of November, 1870, in the parlors of 
the Young Men’s Christian Association at New York City, 
a small company of gentlemen formed themselves into an 
association. The following preamble and declaration of prin- 
ciples were adopted as explaining their object and work. 
Whereas the American Association for the study and cure of inebriety, hav- 
ing met and considered important essays on the various relations of ine- 
briety to individuals, to society, and to the law, and having seriously de- 
termined to use their influence in all suitable ways to create a public senti- Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
17 
ment and jurisprudence, which shall co-operate with true methods for the 
recovery of inebriates, do make the following declaration of their prin- 
ciples. 
1. Intemperance is a disease. 
2. Tt is curable as other diseases are. 
3. Its primary cause is a constitutional susceptibility to the alcoholic 
impression. 
4. This constitutional tendency may be inherited or acquired. 
5. Alcohol has its true place in the arts and science. It is valuable as a 
remedy, and like other remedies may be abused. In excessive quantity, it is a 
poison and always acts as such when it produces inebriety. 
6. All methods hitherto employed, having proved insufficient for the cure of 
inebriates, the establishment of asylums for such a purpose is the great demand 
of the age. 
7. livery large city should have its local and temporary home for inebriates, 
and every State one or more asylums for the treatment and cure of such 
persons. 
8. The law should recognize intemperance as a disease, and provide other 
means for its management than fines, station houses, and jails. 
This was published, arid would have passed all unnoticed 
in the current march of events, had it not been for the her- 
esy hunters of the religious press. They discovered danger 
signals in these declarations, and opened fire with the result 
of giving them permanency and rapid growth among the 
great truths of the world. It was the old, old story of oppo- 
sition and denial which greets every advance of science and 
truth. Dr. Parrish was the target of this first battle. He 
was credited with being the first to offer such an explanation, 
and for a long time the impression prevailed, that to silence 
him was to end this theory forever. 
This group of earnest men on that November morning 
nearly a quarter of a century ago, who made this record of 
their principles, were all unconsciously building another step 
on the great altar stairs leading up to a higher plane of human 
activity. We are just beginning to see faint outlines, as 
through a glass darkly, of this great new realm of scientific 
research ; we are just beginning to realize that this really 
wonderful statement of truths so far beyond that day and 
generation, like a burst of inspiration, or a rift in the clouds 
through which the blue vault beyond appears, was one of 
those rare events of the century. Our honored guest was 18 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
the author of these statements, and, as the noted Dr. Rush 
seventy years before affirmed that inebriety was a disease 
and should be treated in special hospitals, these declara- 
tions of Dr. Parrish represented the slow advance of seventy 
years. Simply another statement of the new continent that 
had come into the horizon of science. For over two thou- 
sand years, pioneer explorers had seen this continent, but 
Dr. Rush was the first to land on its shores for a brief mo- 
ment. Then a long interval of silence, and finally Dr. Par- 
rish landed, and the first work of exploration began. This 
declaration of principles is an outlined statement of the 
geographical features of the country. The enthusiastic Dr. 
Turner who organized the asylum at Binghamton, and our 
honored Dr. Day, Drs. T. L. and L. D. Mason, Rev. John 
Willetts, and a few others, were all cotemporary workers who 
landed on the same shores, and following the lines laid down 
by these principles have gone far inland, leaving imperish- 
able records of their work. 
Many grand and heroic men have gone far into the mys- 
tery and desolation of the polar regions in the effort to reach 
the pole. The drink problem of to-day is more of a mys- 
tery than the geography of the poles. Five hundred thou- 
sand men dying every year, sorrow., loss, and misery that 
can not be computed by figures or expressed in words. 
Every remedy proposed by church or state fails. All the 
theories of what it is and how it exists fail when seen in the 
light of science. Sound and noble men in church and 
state have thrown away their lives in efforts to solve this 
mystery, and now a political party like the old. crusaders are 
gathering their forces and pressing on to the rescue. As 
in the march towards the pole, the most exact use of and 
recognition of means and physical forces are absolutely essen- 
tial to secure the slightest measure of success. So this mys- 
tery must be solved by a study of the forces and laws which 
govern and enter into the progress and development of 
every human life. From a recognition of these forces, and 
the application of this knowledge, we shall find the means Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
19 
and remedies for this evil. To-day a little band of explorers 
represented in nearly every country of the world* with our 
honored guest at the head, have crossed the frontiers into 
the realms of heredity. Here we are confronted with the 
facts of transmitted tendencies, of physical and psychical 
forces that came on down from the generations back. The 
sum total of the tides of passions, of the waves of evil, the 
ignorance, the neglect, the sorrows and wrongs that have 
passed long ago but left their mark on the ages to come. 
Here we are to read the geological revolutions and evolutions 
of the human brain, and trace its effects in the abnormali- 
ties of the inebriate. 
We have come to the great realm of environment—of 
the forces of education, of ignorance, of food, of climate, of 
soil, of sunlight, of labor, of social influences, and many other 
forces which surround us on all sides, whose influences are 
likewise traceable all along the death march of the inebriate. 
We have passed into another realm of inquiry — the na- 
ture and effects of alcohol. As we press on up this road of 
research, we are startled to realize that we have no accurate 
knowledge of alcohol, and no clear conception of its effects 
on the delicate nerve cells and tissue of the brain. Alcohol 
is a composite and a name for an almost infinite variety of 
chemical combinations, whose effects may vary like the col- 
ors of the clouds. The most minute chemical research, the 
most exact pathological scrutiny, only reveal wider realms of 
truth inviting further study, until even the imagination pales 
and grows weary in the attempt to grasp the facts. 
We ascend a little and are confronted by the higher forces 
that are vaguely expressed by the term psychical; forces 
that hold nations, societies, and human conduct in the aggre- 
gate within bands and limits which it cannot pass ; forces 
that control communities and regulate the march of humanity; 
forces of evolution and dissolution, that are as silent and 
powerful as the motion of the stars ; forces that throw out 
great armies of inebriates to be wrecked on the shores, and 
forces that send other armies on to the haven of successful 
life. 20 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
o 
Another realm comes up nearer us — the field of practical 
asylum care. From our knowledge, limited as it is, we can 
see wide ranges of possibilities that are scarcely conceived 
of yet. 
There are over one hundred asylums in operation in the 
world to-day, working at this problem from all sides. Every 
one of them are conscious that their best efforts are as noth- 
ing compared with the practical attainments of the next cen- 
tury. Like the old Northman, we who are engaged in prac- 
tical asylum work have just landed on the shores of this new 
continent. We have just seen the rich lands and mountain 
ranges, full of wealth and possibilities for the prevention and 
cure of inebriety. 
These are some of the great outlying continents that loom 
up before us, shrouded in the most fascinating mysteries — 
mysteries that are to be solved and made clear in the future ; 
realms for exploration, awaiting and inviting the discoverer ; 
realms for the grandest triumphs that are possible for human 
effort to attain. The marvelous power of electricity, and the 
most fascinating efforts to harness it down to the service of 
man, are insignificant compared with a knowledge of brain 
growth and evolution, and the laws which control its highest 
development, and the laws of dissolution,, which control its 
destruction with equal certainty. The world is a vast store- 
house of unused forces, and it is the divinity of humanity to 
discover and apply them to the grand march of life. 
Inebriety is a dissolution that is governed by laws and 
forces that move with the same certainty and exactness of 
the motions of the planets. Our work is to discover these 
laws and forces, and get possession of the means of cure and 
prevention and apply them to check the inebriate’s down- 
ward march. Our work is to change the current back at the 
fountain head, to stay the pollution of the springs of life, to 
halt this great army of inebriates that are marching on to 
death. 
A quarter of a century ago, when Dr. Parrish wrote this 
declaration of principles we have mentioned, not a dozen Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
21 
men in the world were willing to defend them. To-day five 
large medical societies —four in Europe and our own society— 
have made them the corner stone of their work. Some of 
the great medical and scientific men in the world support and 
endorse them enthusiastically. 
This is triumph enough for one lifetime. The song of 
the poet may die away in the progress of the centuries ; the 
work and memory of the inventor will be forgotten, as science 
marches on beyond. Hut he who lays down great principles 
that are fixed and eternal, has won an imperishable place 
among the world’s benefactors that cannot be forgotten. 
Our meeting to-day is to grasp hands once more with our 
honored president, and not by extravagant laudations or high- 
sounding words bow down before him. But with the warmest 
greetings and our personal presence assure him that we are 
still pressing along the lines he marked out a quarter of a 
century ago. The little we have attained compared with the 
boundless wealth of truth awaiting development, creates 
humility rather than pride. The highest pleasure of the 
scientist is in the triumph and endorsement of the truth he 
has advocated. The keenest pleasure we can share with our 
honored president to-day comes from the fact that the truths 
he urged against bitter opposition have at last been recog- 
nized, and are fast becoming the great principles of science. 
Our work has been light, and although yet doubted, denied, 
and sneered at, is fast becoming recognized. We thank God 
and take courage, “ that where our vanguard rests to-day the 
rear shall rest to-morrow.” 
For years we have met our honored president, in the 
storms and sunshine. Over and over again we have met the 
stings and arrows of contradiction and opposition from with- 
out, and our impatient spirits urged for battle, but his counsel 
was ever for more faith and patience in the final triumph of 
the truth. He was right. 
The tide of truth comes up always 
Though we may stand in sorrow, 
And our lone barque aground to-day 
Shall float again to-morrow. 22 
NineteentJi Annual Meeting. 
As secretary of our association, whose members are scat- 
tered in nearly every State of the Union, and whose honor- 
ary members abroad comprise some of the great scientists of 
the world, and also to in some measure express the feeling of 
our members in China, India, and Australia, I offer the fol- 
lowing preamble and resolution : 
Whereas, In the Providence of God we are permitted to meet our honored 
President, Dr. Joseph Parrish, on the occasion of the seventy first anniver- 
sary of his birth, and mingle our personal congratulations with those of his 
numerous friends; therefore be it 
Resolved, That in the name of our Association, whose members are scat- 
tered in almost every clime of the world, we extend our warmest greetings and 
most sincere hopes that many more anniversaries of his life may follow, that we 
shall have the benefit of his counsel and the cheer of his presence far down into 
the future. 
Resolved, That as a pioneer in this great “dark continent” of humanitarian 
effort we recognize his work and its imperishable value, and we send him our 
most hearty thanks and assurances that he has built a monument that will 
serve as a guide for us and others long after we have all passed away. 
Resolved, That his personal efforts on behalf of our Association, and writings 
on the subject of inebriety, have given an impetus to the work which will be felt 
in the long centuries. And we most earnestly desire to make this public 
record of our indebtedness to him and the obligations of science, for his most 
earnest and persistent labors to secure the full recognition of the fact of the 
disease of inebriety and its curability in asylums. 
Resolved, That a copy of this be published in the Journal of Inebriety and 
be placed in the minutes of our Association as a permanent record of united 
sentiment and feelings of deep personal regard. 
The resolutions were adopted unanimously. 
Dr. C. H. Shepard of Brooklyn, N. Y., was called upon, 
and remarked : 
It is well for us to meet to-day in honor of one who has 
devoted the best years of his life to an earnest endeavor to 
ameliorate the condition of his fellow men and save what he 
could from the wrecks of inebriate humanity. 
To one who lives in the brighter light of to-day the 
dark vail that shaded this subject forty years ago seems 
almost incomprehensible. At that time but few minds ap- 
preciated the true position of the inebriate, and even now, in 
the thought of most of the laity, this disease is looked upon Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
23 
and treated as a vice ; consequently, there are administered 
large doses of good moral counsel, which in the great majority 
of cases has but little or no effect. It was given to the trained 
mind of the medical expert, however, to discern the true 
situation and recognize the symptoms of disease as such cases 
presented themselves. 
Among the few who did so recognize these truths, the 
name of Dr. Joseph Parrish is eminent, as has been well 
attested by his life work and also by the result of his sum- 
mons for examination before the committee of the English 
Parliament in the year [872. 
The inebriate asylum of to-day is the foremost step in the 
right direction. Here the invalid is treated according to the 
best experience and in the light of our present knowledge. 
Those who are conducting these institutions are to be com- 
mended as most worthy, for they necessarily work under 
many disadvantages. One of these is the want of a crystal- 
ized public opinion to encourage and sustain them in what 
they have already accomplished, as well as the more radical 
measures they would gladly adopt. With the progress of 
knowledge on this subject the advance will surely be more 
satisfactory. 
The treatment of the insane and the criminal, which the 
eminent philanthropists Howard and Pinel did so much to 
elevate, has wonderfully improved since their time, and even 
though there is much yet to be desired, progress is constantly 
being recorded, while at the same time the sympathies of 
society are warmly interested therein, and the growth of 
hospitals for the sick and the insane is such, that in a few 
years every large city will be well supplied, all of which is 
very creditable to the better feeling of humanity. 
Now, the inebriate is equally deserving, and much more 
amenable to treatment, for in the one case we can entirely 
abstract the cause of the disease, and unless treatment has 
been too long delayed, recovery is certain, whereas in the 
other, the physician is frequently entirely in the dark as to 
its initiation, and recovery is very uncertain. Society calls 24 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
aloud for protection from the consequences of inebriety, and 
most assuredly should such invalids be protected from them- 
selves. 
The model institution is yet to be built — where the 
patient is isolated from all temptation, and will be retained 
till cured and strong enough to cope with outside influences 
— where narcotics shall be entirely banished — where all 
the appliances of hygienic treatment shall be in perfection — 
where skill and kindness shall be allied—where ingenuity 
shall bring all the best of modern appliances to work in sub- 
serviency to the one grand end of restorative action. 
The nearest approach to such an institution as I have 
indicated was the New York State Inebriate Asylum, whose 
unfortunate termination was due to the differences of opinion 
regarding the question of isolation and reasonable restraint. 
For such an ideal we may work, and in the meantime 
make use of the best appliances we have at hand. 
War has its victories and its great generals, but peace 
has far greater. The great exemplar went about doing good 
— healing the sick and restoring the blind. Is not the 
inebriate both sick and blind ? and he who labors in that 
field does the Master’s work. If perchance but one out of 
many is saved, more than one broken heart is bound up 
thereby and a step is taken in progress toward the healing 
of the nation. All honor then to Dr. Joseph Parrish, who 
has earned right royally the title of a great general in the 
world’s list of heroes in her army of Peace. 
Dr. Bradner of Philadelphia remarked : 
“ A graceful form, a noble mind, 
A pleasant countenance and fair, 
A tender heart, sincere and kind, 
How sweet, but, oh, how rare !” 
It is fitting that a Philadelphia physician should make 
some remarks on this interesting and memorable oc- 
casion, and while it is to be regretted that the pleasant lot 
had not fallen upon one more worthy and better able, I am Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
25 
nevertheless proud of the honor, and glad of the opportunity 
to pay a passing tribute to one long rested from earthly 
labors, and to bear testimony that his good works have fol- 
lowed him and been kept good, by his son ; “one who is, 
when he is not, to tell that he has been.” For nearly a 
hundred years the medical profession of Philadelphia has 
been ornamented by the name of Dr. Parrish. If we search 
the medical history of that great city, we can find no more 
illustrious name than that of the father of him whom we to- 
day delight to honor. The strength of his professional powers, 
the integrity of his personal character, and the kindness of 
his heart, made him a conspicuous and shining example in life, 
and will cause his memory to be fondly cherished for ages 
yet to come. The sons of great men too seldom become or 
even remain great, themselves, but happily aye. and 
for future generations, there are exceptions to that rule; and 
to-day we are witnesses of a most notable exception. “ Like 
father, like son.” The greatness and goodness of the historic 
Dr. Parrish descended to his son, who has kept the grand 
inheritance not only untarnished, but added new luster to 
its brightness; and it is our happy privilege to live cotem- 
porary and in close fellowship with this worthy scion of that 
noble stem. Of such parentage is Dr. Joseph Parrish, pres- 
ident and founder of the American Association for the Study 
and Cure of Inebriety, the pioneer in the humane and scien- 
tific treatment of kindred diseases, formerly regarded wholly 
vicious; the warm-hearted friend of the inebriate, the insane, 
the idiot, the lame, the halt, and the blind. Where in all our 
broad land has not his influence reached ? Nay, the mighty 
billows of old ocean could not environ it-—Britain even 
called for his counseling wisdom, and the parliament of that 
great nation so profited by his advice that thousands of 
such sufferers have been provided for and their miserable 
condition ameliorated. 
Truly may it now be said, that the sun never sets on 
those who have been benefited by the life and love labor of 
our Dr. Parrish. And now, as we refer to the numberless 26 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
pages of his writings — the records of his professional career 
— and contemplate the number of self-despised unfortunates, 
whose unhappy minds have been alleviated by the kind words 
and acts, prompted by the big. warm heart of this good man, 
we are not surprised that he has already passed the period 
allotted to man. We rejoice, however, in the fact, that he is 
still with us, and are happy in the hope and reasonable 
expectation that the powers of his noble mind and the 
strength of his mighty pen, not yet abated by length of 
years, may be spared and vouchsafed to us for many years 
yet to come. It is true that the festivities of this day remind 
us of the flight of time, and that threescore years and ten 
and one are already gone since the birth of the American 
physician whose name is dear to each one of us, and which 
must stand first among those whose lives have been devoted 
to our specialty, forever! 
Vivis et vivis, non ad deponendam, sed ad confirmandam 
opum magnum bonum vitae. * 
Francis B. Lee, the well-known newspaper correspond- 
ent, read the following poem : 
TO DR. JOSEPH PARRISH. 
As when a stately pine in Arctic plains, 
Sprung from the thankful glebe of northern clime; 
Proud in the sturdy strength of earlier prime, 
Full of rare vigor in its hardy veins, 
Ne’er breaking with the weight of icy chains, 
Bears its snow-covered head to heights sublime,— 
Faithful to honored sires of ancient time 
At last in eventide when Phoebus wanes, 
Is bathed in liquid light, in flowing gold, 
God’s own reward to it by his behest, 
I would, oh Master, that thy God enfold 
Thee, thou fair pine, with a light thrice blessed 
Of hope and faith and glories manifold; 
Then give for aye His perfect peace and rest. 
* You live ! and you live not for the laying aside of the great good work of 
your life, but that it may be firmly established. Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
27 
REMARKS I5Y DR. PRICE. 
Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 
I rejoice to meet you here to-day as friends of our esteemed 
and honored friend, Dr. Parrish. 
My acquaintanceship with Dr. Parrish has been of long 
standing, and my association with him in ihe membership of 
the medical society of Burlington County, and in other rela- 
tions, has endeared him to me. Our friendship has always 
been agreeable and profitable to me. 
I am glad to meet so many gentlemen who are engaged in 
the laudable work which has engaged so much of the time 
and thought of our venerable friend. 
But I was surprised to hear that this work was inaugura- 
ted in this country in 1870. 
[Dr. Parrish interrupting, “ The organization was effected 
in that year.”] 
Dr. Price. I accept the correction, having misunder- 
stood the statement; but I know that Dr. Parrish’s mind and 
thoughts had been occupied with the subject before that time. 
In 1869 I had the honor (perhaps you might place an in- 
terrogation point after that word) to represent a part of Bur- 
lington County in the legislature of New Jersey. 
In that year I introduced in the legislature a bill for Dr. 
Parrish, and prepared by him, to incorporate an association 
for the establishment of an inebriate asylum at Burlington, 
or wherever a favorable site could be found in New Jersey 
for the building. 
In the bill we asked the State to appropriate the small 
sum of $5,000 towards aiding in the establishment of the 
institution. The gentleman who a few days ago was elected 
Governor of this Slate, was at that time speaker of the house 
of assembly ; and when the bill came up for action he left 
the speaker’s chair and came down upon the floor of the 
house, and opposed, in a speech, the passage of the bill. 
It was lost. I endeavored to advocate its passage with 
such ability as I had ; and among other remarks which I made 28 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
<_> 
at the time in its advocacy, I reminded the gentlemen of the 
house that the legislature passed laws to license saloons and 
hotels for the purpose of selling intoxicating drinks ; that the 
proprietors of these saloons fitted them up in the most attract- 
ive manner to allure young men into them, to make drunk- 
ards of them ; and that if any of the men thus ruined should 
afterwards desire to reform and overcome the drink habit, I 
thought it would be only just and right to give them an op- 
portunity to do so, by providing just such a place as was 
contemplated in the bill. ■ 
I am glad, gentlemen and friends, to meet you, and with 
you to congratulate our esteemed friend, Dr. Parrish, upon 
having reached so goodly an age, so full of usefulness and 
honor. 
REV. DR. GIFFORD. 
Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: 
I did not expect to be called on for any remarks to-day, 
but it gives me pleasure, after the good old Metlrodistic cus- 
tom, to add my hearty amen to the sentiments that have been 
uttered by the previous speakers. 
My acquaintance with Dr. Parrish began over two years 
ago, when I was appointed by the New Jersey Conference 
pastor of the church of which he is an honored member. 
I very soon made his acquaintance, and during my entire 
pastorate received such kindly consideration from him as 
could come only from a large, warm heart. 
Through all the coming years, go where I may, I shall 
remember with gratitude his friendship. 
It wqs surely nothing in me that inspired these actions, 
therefore I must attribute them to his large-hearted, gentle- 
manly, and Christian spirit. 
It gives me pleasure, also, to learn that the medical pro- 
fession in this and other lands is giving so much attention to 
the effect of alcohol on the human system. 
To suppress an enemy so great, so destructive, and so far- Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
29 
reaching in its results will require the combined effort of all 
the agencies that can be brought to bear upon it. 
Moral suasion, legal prohibition, medical treatment, all 
combined, may move grandly onward to the desired result. 
Sound the note along the line that alcoholism is a dis- 
ease, a disease that results largely from the use of alcohol, 
that this disease may be cured, and while we are trying to 
dry up the fountain that sends forth such bitter waters, or, 
to use a figure that has been employed here to-day. “ Kill 
the serpent that has bitten its multiplied thousands,” may 
you go on with increasing success in your work of healing 
those who have been bitten and diseased by its poison, until 
a perfect cure is wrought. 
Then, when the final victory is won, we may all rejoice 
together that we have had some part in its accomplishment. 
ADDRESS BY REV. E. B. HODGE. 
Mr. Chairman: 
I always feel great pleasure in finding myself in the so- 
ciety of men of the medical profession ; for, although not my- 
self a physician, I am the son of a physician, and may almost 
say that I have spent all my life in a physician’s house. The 
remarks of Dr. Corson upon the subject of the treatment for 
cholera patients during the epidemic in Philadelphia, by Dr. 
Samuel Jackson and others, reminds me of my father’s ex- 
perience in that same period. He told me on one occasion 
of his method of treatment during his extensive experience. 
He did not use the hot water treatment nor the cold water 
treatment, described by Dr. Corson, and which, he intimates, 
had little to boast of in the way of satisfactory results ; but 
he adopted a third method, little in vogue in these days of 
improved science. He bled his patients ; and, strange as the 
statement may appear, he never lost a case from whom he 
got blood ; and he always bled unless the condition of the 
patient was too feeble to permit it. My father would, pro- 
bably, in deference to modern notions, have modified his 30 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
method if he had to deal with cholera again. One can- 
not help thinking, however, that possibly there is danger that 
modern practice may turn too far away from ideas which pre- 
vailed of old. Now I have listened with the greatest interest 
to the able papers which have been read on the subject of the 
prevention and cure of inebriety, and feel a very large meas- 
ure of sympathy with the view which they set forth with so 
much confidence that inebriety is a disease, and that its sub- 
ject should be dealt with in the hospital as a patient rather 
than as a criminal in the prison-house. My experience as a 
minister has produced a very strong impression on my mind 
that there is much truth in this view of the case. 
And yet I cannot lose sight of the fact that there are 
various stages and degrees of inebriety, and great differences 
in the amount of inability and responsibility of the inebriate. 
Moreover, as long as the Word of God declares emphatically 
that drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God (i Cor. 
vi, io), it is plain to me that drunkenness is not disease only, 
but also immorality. There is to my mind no inconsistency 
between the two positions, and I rejoice, therefore, most 
heartily that our medical men, under the lead of such able 
and renowned men as our own Dr. Parrish, are pursuing this 
subject with scientific zeal, and with a degree of success 
which, I acknowledge, is a great surprise to me. I had no 
idea that they could report so large a percentage of cures 
under their method of treatment. I rejoice in such reports. 
We are living in a time marked by a very high degree of 
prosperity, but in which we see signs of imminent peril. 
Three of these may, perhaps, be emphasized above the rest. 
One is the prevalence of inebriety ; another is political cor- 
ruption ; and the third is the alarming tendency to forget 
God, as though power and authority came up from the people 
rather than down from heaven. It seems to me that it is to 
professional men, to the physicians, the lawyers, and the min- 
isters of Christ, that we must look for the careful study of 
the social problems of the age, and from their labors we may 
confidently trust to find, by the blessing of God, a happy Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
31 
solution of difficulties which now look threatening and 
ominous. 
REV. A. E. BALLARD 
spoke as follows : “In accepting the honor of speaking a few 
words of recognition of the seventy-first birth-day of Dr. 
Joseph Parrish, I am moved by a more than common feeling 
of appreciation. It is not within my province to discuss 
these problems of inebriety from the standpoints of science. 
That I leave to the men who have made this their study, and 
who have so ably presented it here. I speak only of my 
knowledge of the man and of his work. I first met him thirty- 
five years ago in this city upon the occasion of my assuming 
the pastorate of one of its churches. It was about this time 
that he abandoned a lucrative practice in medicine for the 
purpose of developing his belief that inebriety was a misfortune 
more largely than a crime ; something to be treated as a dis- 
ease rather than a wickedness ; something more easily cured 
by medicine than fetters, by asylums than prisons. 
His conceptions were so lofty as to inspire admiration, 
so tender as to command love. To my association with him 
I owe many of the gentler and truer conceptions of how to 
deal with the malady of inebriety. 
As related to temperance work, in which for all my life I 
have felt an interest, and to which for the last ten years its 
entire service has been devoted, Dr. Parrish has contributed 
to such usefulness as public speaking and writing in this cause 
has enabled me to accomplish. While there has been an 
intensified detestation of the traffic in intoxicants, there has 
been a warmer sympathy with its victims, which has enabled 
me to plead my cause among the people with a more controlling 
pathos and impressive logic. Almost every family has suf- 
fered some from the evil, and it is a large relief to know that 
its shame is written more in the language of weakness than 
of crime. To the clear purity of the man, and the unmixed 
philanthropy of his motives, as well as the grand success of 
his life, I account it a privilege to bear my testimony this 
day. 32 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Dr. Hiram Corson being called, responded as follows : 
I am embarrassed and know not what to say. During the first 
part of my life I thought myself too young to make addresses, 
and now I feel, in these latter years, that I am too old. 
Many papers have been read, many brief speeches been 
made, all of them, doubtless, deeply interesting and sugges- 
tive of proper words for this occasion, but, owing to my par- 
tial deafness, all lost to me. But I may, indeed I ought, to 
say how gratefully I appreciated your invitation to be present 
with you to-day. The name of Parrish has long been a dearly 
loved one to me. It is now more than sixty years since I was 
turned loose on society a young graduate in medicine, await- 
ing calls to confront and battle with disease. And oh, how 
incompetent! I soon found the need to have aid of a wiser 
head and greater experience. It was then that I instinctively 
turned, not to those who had been my teachers in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, but to Dr. Joseph Parrish, the father 
of him in whose home we have met, and whom we delight to 
honor. The fame of this genial, experienced man, this 
friend of the poor, had spread throughout the homes of Penn- 
sylvania and New Jersey, and was everywhere recognized, 
both in and out of the profession, as the good physician. 
His readiness to serve me, his desire to aid me whenever I 
should need his counsel in behalf of the suffering poor, with- 
out fee or reward, bound me to him “ with cords stronger 
than hoops of steel.” When a few years later he withdrew 
from professional labor, I sought, as my adviser, his son, Dr. 
Isaac Parrish, then in the prime of a vigorous young man- 
hood, and skilled in practice under the eye of his eminent 
father. My first acquaintance with the younger Parrish was 
in the hot-bed of a fearful pestilence. During the two years 
prior to this event our great American Medical Journal had 
heralded to its readers the steady advance of the Asiatic 
cholera, which swept on from India, through the cities of 
Europe, leaving desolation in its track, until on June 8, 
1832, it declared itself in Quebec, where it spread with great 
rapidity, and was fatal to two-thirds of all attacked. Two Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
33 
days later it had reached Montreal. The profession in Phila- 
delphia promptly despatched a delegation to the cities of Can- 
ada to make observations in relation to the nature of the 
disease and the best modes of treatment. On the return of 
this commission, Dr. Joseph Parrish and Prof. Samuel Jack- 
son each improvised a hospital for the reception and treat- 
ment of the sick poor. My proximity to Philadelphia, and the 
fact that the Schuylkill River was then the great highway to 
the interior of Pennsylvania, and that the manufacturing 
towns on its banks would be specially liable to the invasion 
of the disease, impelled me to visit Philadelphia, to receive 
from good Dr. Parrish counsel in relation to my course, 
should the disease reach my people. It was there in that 
hastily prepared hospital, where the benevolence of his father 
had gathered the homeless, friendless victims of the pesti- 
lence, that I first met the courageous young Dr. Isaac Par- 
rish. The memory of that visit has ever remained with me. 
They were treating their patients on the cooling plan, while 
Dr. Jackson was trying the very opposite plan of heat and 
stimulation. During several days every man in both hos- 
pitals died, but later, when they brought their experience 
and common sense to the work, they were eminently suc- 
cessful. 
My friends had urged me not to make this perilous visit, 
and when I found myself in that small, crowded room, where, 
on every table lay a naked man, voiceless, pulseless, and dying, 
with the whole surface of the body cold and clammy as the 
skin of the dead, yet with a mind unclouded to the very last 
moment of life, I confess that the small stock of courage 
which Nature had given me seemed to be leaving me, until 
the fact that the younger Parrish, who was standing by my 
side, and who by night and by day had bravely inhaled the 
pestilence, was there “ to do or to die,” shamed me into the 
resolve to follow the voice of duty wherever it should lead. 
I'or nearly twenty years after that eventful day he labored 
earnestly and successfully in our profession. In 1853 (?) it 
became my privilege to call the attention of the Medical 34 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Society of the State of Pennsylvania to the too early death 
of this excellent man. On the same occasion there was 
need to refer to the life and character of his eminent father, 
the “ elder Parrish,” of whom I said, “ His name is but 
another expression for all that is skillful in the surgeon, wise, 
graceful, and benevolent in the physician ; a name that still 
awakens, in the homes of the poor, memories of sufferings 
relieved, of kindness and comforts and blessings received in 
hours of deep distress, and who in his beautiful and peace; 
ful life realized ‘ that around every kind act done to the poor, 
there is wound an invisible thread that connects the doer with 
the very throne of God and leads him steadily and certainly 
to an efficient reward.’ ” 
It was not until after the decease of those of whom I have 
spoken, that I made the acquaintance of him who is now 
here with us. It has been an acquaintance fondly cherished 
by me ; and now when I recall his conscientiousness, his 
keen sense of right and justice, his unwearied, unbroken 
efforts for the welfare of the poor during half a century, all 
combined with the spirit which ever animated his life work, 
I am free to say that what has been said in relation to the 
eminent father is applicable, in all its fullness, to the life of 
the distinguished son. 
Doctor Ulrich, being called upon, responded as follows : 
Mr. President: 
I am awed by this distinguished presence. To be called 
upon to speak after listening to the very able papers which 
have just been read, truly embarrasses me, and yet, I feel as 
though I ought to contribute a share to the honoring of our 
distinguished friend. I will do the best I can. 
It has been my great privilege to enjoy a close intimacy 
with Doctor Parrish for many years, and sometimes I have 
thought myself selfish in our friendship, my profit has been 
so great morally and intellectually, I feel that I am a better 
and broader man. I can think higher up and deeper down 
and further around, than I could before this companionship 
and association. I never left him without a feeling of Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
35 
pleasure and profit. And yet, for all of this and with all my 
admiration for the man, I think he is accorded more credit 
than he is justly entitled to. I have often said to my wife, 
“ You deserve no credit for being good ; God made you good 
and you can’t help it.” Now Doctor Parrish is like Mrs. 
Ulrich,—he can’t help it. The temptations of the world are 
not as alluring to Doctor Parrish as to many of us. I really 
think that if he were constituted like myself, he would deserve 
more credit for being respectable, than he now deserves for 
being good. Why, friends ! he don’t know how to be bad. 
Why should he have credit for being good ? There is more 
in that than may appear to you at first. 
There is, however, a credit due to his broad and liberal 
intellect — his affectionate and sympathetic nature. His 
effort in behalf of the drunkard is only one of his successes. 
It was he with his co-laborers who made it possible to better 
the condition of those poor unfortunates, resulting, too fre- 
quently, from the effects of alcoholism ; and the Institute for 
P'eeble Minded Children, which he organized at Elwyn, 
Pennsylvania, stands a monument to his energy. Then, too, 
upon the broad principles of equity, he was active in open- 
ing the doors of education to women, again making it possi- 
ble for a woman doctor to take charge of insane hundreds of 
her own sex in one of the largest and best conducted insane 
asylums of this State. 
I am delighted to be here to-day. I visited Doctor Par- 
rish a few months ago, and I left Burlington feeling very sad. 
I feared that I would never see him again, he was so feeble; 
but he is better, and looks like his old-time self again. And 
now, my dear old friend, it is possible that I may cross the 
dark river before you. Whether I do or do not, I only hope 
that I may be as well prepared as I believe you to be. God 
bless you. 
Mr. Milliken said as follows : 
It gives me great pleasure to be present here to-day 
among the friends of Dr. Parrish, who are assembled to con- 
gratulate him on this anniversary of his birthday. 36 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Many years ago it was my good fortune to be honored by 
an introduction to the doctor. He was then actively engaged 
in his life work of practical philanthropy and social reform. 
His heart was in his work, and I can remember distinctly his 
expressions of pity and kindly sympathy for the poor victims 
of inebriety, who, driven by a morbid craving and ungovern- 
able appetite for intoxicating drink, lacked the moral force 
and will to rise above the temptation. 
For my own part, although I cannot indulge in any feel- 
ing of self-complacency regarding any good service or worth 
that my own life has been to others, yet I can and do feel 
thankful that I have been the recipient of good. I can recall 
the names of many who have helped me, and among those to 
whom I am indebted for the brightening and betterment of 
my life, none stands higher than my honored friend, Dr. 
Parrish. 
Although I feel somewhat embarrassed standing up among 
so many distinguished professional gentlemen who are here 
to render the tribute of respect and friendship, yet in one 
respect I can claim that I am the peer of any of them. None 
here present can feel a more genuine or a warmer love for 
Dr. Parrish than I do, and I pray God to bless him, and yet 
grant to him many years of usefulness in the land of the 
living. 
Prof. W. D. T. Travis of Burlington, N. J., then read a 
poem, called the 
“WORM OF THE STILL, AND THE HEEL WHICH 
BRUISES IT.” 
Earth, bated be thy breath ! stalks death abroad; 
Hark! woe, O drunken world! look up to God 
And tremble thou, for o’er thee hangs the pall 
Of doom, by vengeance sworn to fall 
And hide thee, buried in eternal gloom, 
Where darkness holds her court of death and doom, 
Therein, O earth, condemned thou art to crawl 
’Mongst loathsome things, thyself most loathed of all. 
Go down, condemned by curse of law outraged ; 
Go down to death in combat foul engaged ; Nineteenth A)mual Meeting. 
37 
O earth, go down, behold thy foe, thy fiend, 
That crawls, and gnaws, and stings, erst long thy friend. 
There’s worm that crawls through earth and hell to sting ; 
There’s fiend that spreads o’er worm its damning wing; 
There’s chill that stills from wing of fiend outspread ; 
There’s death from sting of worm, uncounted dead. 
There’s clammy sweat of death on worm that crawls. 
And O ! the slimy trail o’er earth it sprawls. 
Aye ! men of earth, grow sick to feel it squirm; 
And cry out, soul to soul, O kill the worm ! 
But, fiend to fiend, wild echoes back reply, — 
The w'orm that lives to hurt shall never die. 
Ah, then, must death at last decide the fate ? 
Can naught for drunkenness then palliate ? 
A thousand sober voices cry out, Nay! 
Away with him, death’s curse on him doth weigh. 
Cold death, O death ! art thou our friend or foe? 
So long with us, yet thee we never know. 
The drunkard on thy breast lies down to rest ; 
There friend and foe, the vilest and the best; 
There, side by side, nor pride, nor pomp, nor gild ; 
For rich and poor the same dread maw hath filled 
Through every age : though still and chill the bed,— 
Yet sleep there all the uncomplaining dead. 
Ah, man of woman born, were death alone 
Thy fate, to gently come o’er thee without a groan 
From thee, or those who love thee so, to lay 
His dread due-bill on thee, which all must pay, 
Then quick to sleep we all might haste nor wait 
To say good night, nor shudder at our state. 
But death, that death, we so much dread, 
Is death that dieth not ; ’tis death not dead 
We mortals fear ; ’tis that which in it lives 
Which to our souls this frightful horror gives. 
But hear again that dismal wail that thrills 
And fills the soul with awe, ’til heart-beat stills. 
Deep darkness into blackness sinks, and lends 
The fullness of his pall, whilst cyclone winds 
Join horror’s cry of woe : the world’s in gloom; 
’Thwart night’s black face, ’tis writ in blood, earth's doom. 38 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Then is there no relief? response cries, No ! 
Thy past, O earth ! is but the wail of woe. 
Thy race, O man ! the highest, brightest kind, 
With soul endowed in splendor of the mind, 
Art charnel house become of loathsomeness, 
Diseased by passions filled with foul excess. 
In image of thy God wast made to stand, 
The arbiter by him ordained, with hand 
That held the wand of majesty o’er all; 
But thou, alas, O man ! as beast didst fall. 
Since then thy mind inventive plans hath wrought, 
’Til deadly schemes ’gainst every good hast brought. 
And thou, the highest, brightest genius still, 
A fouler grave than any beast must fill. 
Since father Adam on that fatal day 
Had not the strength to say it bravely, “Nay,” 
Since Noah, Lot, and hosts in ancient times, 
Wrought shame befitting not our modern rhymes, 
The time’s been long, and long would be the tale, 
If told, of all wherein frail man doth fail. 
Of all wherein? O man, bow down and groan. 
Of all wherein ? Oh, say, canst thou atone ? 
Aye, though all named and men unnamed who drank 
To drunkenness in Bible times thus sank, 
Suffice it now, as drunken men, they fell. 
But had no man since then been drunk ’twere well, 
For earth has made a record o’er their shame, 
As loudly all our drunken brawls proclaim. 
And, ah, the world since then ! its crimes do cry 
From putrid blood, and shame that will not die. 
O rank and file of myriads drunken men, 
Hath death been multiplied by ten times ten ? 
To charge in drunken phalanx front and flank, 
’Til sweat of death makes noonday sunbeams dank, 
Uprousing ghosts from every horror’s den, 
To mock, and taunt, and hiss at dying men! 
But stay, my muse, no more this awful theme, 
There is a hope, there is relief — a gleam — 
A ray of light now breaks o’er death’s dark pall, 
As into line and rank begin to fall, 
Brave men and strong, of minds enlarged, with skill, 
The monster worm, God helping them, they’ll kill. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
39 
Here stand ye ’round your chief, with feelings warm, 
This pioneer who led for sound reform ; 
To do him fitting honor we would call 
The honor roll, his name call first of all 
’Mongst those who stand to truth for God and man. 
Not he in ranting style, fanatic’s plan, 
Who slaughter ten good men to save one sot, 
Who spill the broth, then, angry, curse the pot. 
Nor yet does he, with show of courage brave, 
The drunkard kill, then dance upon his grave. 
But with the drunkard’s name will live the name 
Of Joseph Parrish, honored, ne’er in shame — 
The drunkard’s friend, poor man diseased, who’d sink, 
Didst not some doctor rule, control his drink. 
For this, a score of years gone by. a few 
Good doctors, cool of brain, together drew, 
At his wise call ; a formulated plan 
He penned, to study cure for drunken man. 
Their hearts, their hands, cool men, they joined thereto— 
The drunkard’s friend, to look him through and through. 
Prognosis of his case a child may stake; 
But diagnosis sure, without mistake, 
Of all that tends to inebriety, 
Is thing for doctors schooled therein to see. 
To him and his, the drunkard’s kith and kin, 
Of who he is, what he may be, has been, 
Though rich or poor, though high or low — he’s man ; 
So ye. good doctors, save him, if you can. 
And doctors brave, who fight for life ’gainst death, 
Who daring breathe contagion's deadly breath, 
You’ve entered now a charnel-field where slime— 
Your hands must touch, in lowest haunts of crime. 
But you are brave, may God sustain your cause ; 
Let statesmen learn from you to frame new laws. 
Long live you all ! and honors great your due, 
Still thicker grow in fame for all of you. 
In heart and soul, to your warm themes add mine, 
And, in our hearts, our chieftain’s name enshrine. 
Note. — The elaborate dinner prepared by caterer John Dubell of Burling- 
ton, elicited many very pleasant compliments. 40 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
ADDRESS OF DR. JOSEPH PARRISH. 
Mr. Chairman, Associates, and Friends: 
It is my purpose to take a brief survey of the work of the 
years that we have left behind us, and to suggest from our 
present outlook what lines of service seem to be open for us 
in the future. 
I must, however, turn aside for a moment from such a 
survey, to thankfully acknowledge the cordial anniversary 
greetings to which we have justlistened with so much pleasure. 
To reply as I should wish to, is beyond my power. I know 
that I am not capable of giving expression to the feelings 
which well-nigh choke utterance at this moment, but yet I 
am sure that I possess a grateful appreciation of the proceed- 
ings of the hour, and that every sense and sentiment of my 
nature is quickened with a fresh glow of assurance, — that 
the friendship of the years that are past, still abides. To say 
that I thank,you is commonplace, and yet it is all I can say, 
unless indeed, I may borrow from another the following not 
inappropriate verse : 
“Twenty years our friendship has lasted, 
Royally, steadfast, loving, and true, 
Years bring changes, —but we change not,— 
You loyal to me — and I to you.” 
In the spirit of such friendship, we meet each other to- 
day; and having called a few friends and neighbors to be 
with us, let us briefly look at what has been done, and what 
there is to do. 
First Meeting— Organization. 
It was on the 29th of November, 1870, at 12 o’clock, noon, 
that sixteen men met together in the parlor of the Young 
Men’s Christian Association of New York City. They had 
but one object in view, the study of the causes and career of 
inebriety, with reference to its prevention and cure. We 
were, with one or two exceptions, strangers to each other, and Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
41 
had met face to face for the first time. The late Dr. Willard 
Parker of New York acted as chairman, who, in calling the 
meeting to order, made a brief statement which served as the 
key-note of all future effort. What was the sound thereof ? 
He said at the outset, we are met with the inquiry, “what is 
alcohol ? The answer is, a poison. Its action upon the 
living system, like opium, arsenic, and prussic acid, etc., in 
small doses, is as a mild stimulant and tonic. In larger 
doses, it becomes a powerful irritant, producing madness, or 
a narcotic, producing coma and death.” 
“ It being settled that disease is the outcome of its im- 
proper use, the question comes, Can it be cured ? The 
answer is affirmative.' Inebriety can be cured, etc.” 
I quote thus freely the language of Dr. Parker, as the very 
first utterance of the association, and ask you to remember it, 
especially for reasons that shall presently appear. One more 
quotation : “ Penally, it must be the steady aim of this body to 
impart scientific truth, and thus enlighten the public mind, 
inducing it to move in its power, and demand protection 
against a disease infinitely more destructive than cholera, 
yellow fever, small-pox, or typhus, which are now so carefully 
quarantined.” 
I doubt if there is in existence a more plain, concise, and 
easily comprehended definition of alcohol and its effects upon 
the human system than this. 
It is a remarkable fact, that without any previous confer- 
ence or inquiry as to the course of procedure to be had at 
the meeting, it was soon manifest that there were eight 
papers reposing quietly in the pockets of their authors, ready 
to be offered as the spontaneous deliverances of those who 
held them. The range of these essays is as remarkable as 
their spontaneous offering. 
The pathological influence of alcohol, and the nature of in- 
ebriation, The Philosophy of Intemperance, The Disabilities 
of Inebriates (being a paper written and forwarded by the 
inebriate inmates of a sanitarium), The History of the Wash- 
ington Home of Boston, Restraint as a Remedy for Inebriety, 42 
Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
The Relation of the Church to Inebriates, Asylums in their 
relations to Social and Political Economy, and The Moral and 
Social Treatment of Inebriates. 
I might continue with extracts from these valuable papers 
to the point of weariness, but I have said enough to show the 
scope of the discussion, and the breadth of the foundation on 
which the association was constructed. 
The principles which were agreed upon with entire una- 
nimity, were arranged in the form of a Declaration, and given 
to the press and the community. 
In addition to this method. 5,000 copies of the proceedings 
were published in a pamphlet of eighty-four pages, and gratuit- 
ously circulated. Public libraries, and authors and public men 
were liberally supplied, and the same course pursued year 
after year till the advent of Dr. Crothers, whose energy and 
devotion to the cause gave a fresh impulse to the whole by 
undertaking “ The Journal of Inebriety,” which is reliable as 
an exponent of the principles and methods of the association, 
and is conducted with an ability so decided as to command a 
generous support. 
We have now reached a period in our history of unus- 
ual interest. Dr. Donald Dalrymple, M. P., England, visits 
America’s institution. 
Our mother country had been aroused to a fresh considera- 
tion of the alarming increase of intemperance, and an effort 
to secure proper legislation on the subject was made by the 
appointment of a committee of the House of Commons “to 
consider the best plan for the control and management of 
habitual drunkards.” Dr. Donald Dalrymple, M. P., was 
chairman of the committee, and in order to inform himself 
thoroughly as to the effect of legislation, and the working of 
asylums and homes for inebriates in the United States, he 
came to this country and visited several of our institutions ; 
but before his mission was entirely fulfilled he was called 
home on account of illness in his family, but left a communi- 
cation addressed to our association asking certain questions 
as to discipline and results of treatment. He also added the Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
43 
following: “ Lastly, I have this request to make, which I 
desire to urge with my utmost power, viz. : that a delegation 
of at least two of the most competent and best informed of 
those who are conversant with these institutions should come 
to England and give their evidence before the committee of 
the House of Commons that will meet early in the session 
of next year.” 
Summons from House of Commons Committee and appoint- 
mejit of Delegates. 
In addition to this request of the chairman of the com- 
mittee, the following official communication from the commit- 
tee was also delivered. 
“ House of Commons, London, 
March 2, 1872. 
“Sir, — I am directed by the select committee of the 
House of Commons appointed ‘ to consider the best plan for the 
control and management of habitual drunkards,’ and of which 
committee Dr. Dalrymple is chairman, to request your atten- 
dance before them for the purpose of giving evidence. The 
committee would be glad if you could make it convenient to 
attend upon them during the week commencing the 15th of 
April. Should this be inconvenient, on as early a date after 
as convenient to yourself. The days of meeting of the com- 
mittee are Tuesdays and Fridays. 
(Signed) “ Arthur F. Kingscote, 
“ Committee Clerk'' 
I am particular to these in full, because it has been 
said that the delegates were unauthorized, and that their pres- 
ence was intrusive, and an interference with British legisla- 
tion. 
In compliance with this double invitation or request, the 
association appointed the late Dr. Dodge and myself to repre- 
sent them before the Committee. The visit was made, and 
a complete stenographic report of our testimony was published, 44 
NineteetitJi Annual Meeting. 
which was embodied in the committee’s report to the House 
of Commons, and is now a part of their official record. 
Letter from Dr. Norman Kerr, London. 
I now call your attention to a communication received by 
me within a few days from Dr. Norman Kerr, an eminent 
physician in London, and the acknowledged leader of British 
thought and practice in this department of professional work. 
It shows the effect of the testimony upon the public mind 
and the legislation of Great Britain. 
Dr. Kerr had lectured thirty-seven years ago in Scotland, 
and later in Portland, Maine, on temperance. “ But (he says) 
though thus engaged in the study, cure, and prevention of 
inebriety at so early a date, having, after a brief trial of moral 
means only, being driven to treat inebriates as subjects of 
disease, I was quietly working by myself. You and your 
association had been actively working for six years before I 
took any part in this country in associated effort at legisla- 
tion for the therapeutic care of the inebriate. Indeed it was 
entirely owing to your association’s persistent and splendid 
campaign on behalf of the inebriate that I was attracted to 
this special agitation. So that the American society for the 
study and cure of inebriety should be credited with whatever 
little I have been privileged to do in this important and press- 
ing work. ... So much in acknowledgment of my own 
deep obligations to you and your society. Let me recall, now, 
a few of the obligations, which tht general movement in Eng- 
land owes to your American propaganda. Though legislation 
for the treatment of the inebriate was broached in 1857, in the 
report of the Scottish Lunacy Commission, the credit of initi- 
ating a demand for this special department of legislative 
enactment, and of treating inebriety as a disease, in the same 
manner as other allied ailments, must be awarded to the great 
Republic of the West. . . . 
“ In 1872, in the second year of your association’s exist- 
ence, in response to a request from a select committee of Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
45 
the House of Commons, you and the late Dr. Dodge gave 
evidence before that committee of so valuable a character 
that the committee presented a report which, if it had been 
embodied in legislation, would have brought England along- 
side of the United States in this matter. Beyond all ques- 
tion, the American testimony had a powerful effect in the 
drafting of the committee’s report, and has ever since wielded 
a potent influence on the public mind of Britain.” . . . 
“ We have at different times had the honor of extraordinary 
gatherings for the reception of various members and friends 
of your society, notably of yourself, Dr. Crothers, Dr. T. L. 
Wright, Mr. Schermerhorn, Dr. Simon Fitch, and Mr. Clark 
Bell, who has done so much lately to bring our question to 
the front.” 
“ Members of the Houses of Lords and Commons, with 
eminent representatives of the learned professions, have been 
among the auditory at our meetings. These ‘ proceedings ’ 
have also been circulated, and had influence in legal circles.” 
“ Your early ‘proceedings,’ were read with interest on 
this side of the Atlantic, but a still more marked and deeper 
interest was evoked among us by the advent, in 1887, of the 
‘ Quarterly Journal of Inebriety,’ your society’s organ.” . . . 
Dalrymple Home Opened. 
In 1873 the “ Dalrymple Home” at Rickmansworth was 
opened, under an act entitled the “ Habitual Drunkards 
Bill,” introduced by Dr. Cameron, M.P., which was finally 
enacted in 1879. Dr. Kerr in alluding to this subject says : 
“ Under Dr. Cameron’s act, among other licensed retreats 
the Dalrymple Home was opened by a disinterested associa 
tion as an experiment conducted in the light of public criti- 
cism on such conditions as were believed to be most favor- 
able to cure, among these conditions being ample grounds 
for exercise, and a paid medical officer who could devote his 
whole time and attention to the treatment of the patients, 
uninfluenced by considerations of pecuniary profit or loss. 
The experiment has been more successful than the most san- 46 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
guine of its promoters hoped for, almost one-half of the 152 
patients discharged having remained firm.” 
Under this head it is sufficient to say that the government 
Inspector, whose duty it is to visit all such retreats, reports 
favorably of their conduct and progress, and recommends 
further and more favorable legislation. 
Dr. Parrish visits Dalrymple Home. 
While on a recent visit to England, it was my privilege to 
spend a week at the Dalrymple Home, and by the courtesy 
of its medical head, Dr. Branthwaite, I had unrestricted lib- 
erty to examine at all times all parts of the premises, and to 
converse freely with the inmates ; and if my testimony may 
be of any service, I am free to say, after a week’s residence, 
with such privileges as I have mentioned, I left the institu- 
tion with a firm belief that it was a model of its kind, and 
that I knew no place in any country where the unfortunate 
victims of alcoholism had better treatment, or were more 
likely to recover than at the Dalrymple Home of Rickmans- 
worth, England. 
You will be pleased to know that in the line of jurispru- 
dence we have not been idle. 
Dr. Crothers and I have on several occasions addressed 
medico-legal and jurisprudence societies on the questions of 
criminality and responsibility of inebriates, which have been 
occasions for able discussions by eminent jurists and physi- 
cians. Our papers have not only been published with the 
official transactions of these several societies, but copies of 
reprints have been furnished for gratuitous distribution. For 
this special departure we are indebted to the wisdom and 
tireless energy of Clark Bell, Esq., of New York city. lie 
is continuing the discussion of these questions, so vital to the 
good name of American jurisprudence, in the Medico-Legal 
Journal of which he is the accomplished editor. 
Jurisprudence. Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
47 
Lord Young's Judical Decision. 
A like interest has been awakened in Great Britain, and 
by the kindness of Dr. Kerr, from whose almost exhaustless 
resources in this realm of thought we are continually being 
enriched, I am able to furnish a most remarkable judicial 
opinion, which seems to be beyond the line of safety, and for 
which we in this country at least are not yet ready. Had 
Lord Young committed the transgressor to a hospital for 
treatment or to a custodial asylum we could say, Amen. 
“ Lord Young of Glasgow, last August, on a charge 
against a mother, of child murder, by neglect and starvation, 
owing to her intoxication culminating in delirium tremens, 
would not allow the case to go to the jury, declaring that that 
court could not hold excessive drinking to be a crime, and 
delirium tremens was insanity involving no responsibility.” 
International Congress and Convention. 
In 1887 an era was inaugurated by the Society for the 
Study of Inebriety in Great Britain, which will be referred lo 
in the future as the beginning of a successful campaign, tbe 
extent of which can only be measured by the boundaries of 
the earth, when the nations thereof shall lift up their stand- 
ards, and march towards a victory which in the name of 
science and philanthropy shall accomplish all that human 
agency can claim to do for the tormented by appetite, and tbe 
enslaved by passion. 
I refer to the assembling of an International Congress in 
1887, in alluding to which important event Dr. Kerr says : 
“ In 1887 the International Congress,-organized by the So- 
ciety for the Study of Inebriety, was held in London, and 
was attended by delegates from nearly every country. The 
American delegation from your society, with several papers 
from your members, occupied a conspicuous place and greatly 
contributed to the eclat and influence of the Congress. 
For most of these encouraging signs of prospective improxe- 
ment of our existing imperlect legislation and our criminal 48 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
law administration, we have mainly to thank the American 
agitation as the original propelling force.” So much for 
Great Britain. 
The little pebble that was cast into the stagnant sea of 
public sentiment in 1870, has been widening the circle of its 
ripples, till not only as far as Britain’s coast have they 
reached, but the impulse has been felt on almost every shore. 
Conventions and congresses have been held in France and 
Switzerland and other nations. Italy and Russia send words 
of greeting, and ask for information and encouragement. A 
letter from Prof. Paul Kawalewsky (Professor of Psychietry 
and Nervous Diseases in the Fniversity of CharkofT, Russland) 
addressed to me, expresses great interest, and solicits our 
writings on the subject. He is an author and sends copies 
of his work, in which he quotes liberally from the Association 
and the writings of its members. 
It is said of Australia, that she sits majestically in an in- 
visible cradle and is held in situ by its strong rocky ribs. 
Whether this be so, yea or nay, Australia’s voice is lifted up, 
and crosses the main to our peerless land, bringing the good 
tidings that years ago Dr. McArther, of Melbourne, had in- 
augurated a movement based on the same declaration of 
principles, and that since then, in 1886, a Rev. W. L. Morton, 
of Basearat, had started a home which he calls “ Hope 
Lodge,” and commencing with two rooms, he has now twenty- 
five, filled with the unfortunate victims of excess. His report 
refers to discouragements and disappointments, but says also 
“ that there have been many delightful cases of rescued lives.” 
So the work goes on, even in the islands of the seas. 
Temperance Congress in Africa. 
An item of news of some interest, although not spe 
cially and directly identified with the scientific aspect of this 
subject, may be stated thus : 
An African Congress assembled October ist, at Cradock, 
in South Africa. Thirty-six delegates were present, who 
were presided over by Chief Kama of Middledrift, who made Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
49 
a speech, in which he expressed great pleasure in being called 
upon to preside over a meeting, the object of which was to 
benefit the native people. The meeting was well attended 
by a number of the public, and was also addressed by a native 
councillor named Job Suisco, who deplored the fact that 
many of his tribe were being injured by self-indulgence, and 
thought that the government should be applied to for aid. 
The Chief and people looked upon the government as their 
father, and the government should treat them as children 
and take care of them. 
In some remote regions, where ignorance prevails, and 
the natives are not yet prepared to adopt scientific views, 
I regard the agitation of the subject which leads to inquiry 
as a token of good which should be encouraged. Such agi- 
tation is the A B C of our complete alphabet. 
I am now at a point which I should prefer to pass with- 
out notice, but history demands truth, that her record may 
be complete. 
All along during the past years the temperance cause had 
been considered and discussed chiefly from the standpoint of 
religion and morality. The people were accustomed to look- 
ing at it in this way. Its leaders and public advocates 
seemed to think that they alone occupied the field and were 
masters of the situation, but the time had now come for a 
new element to be introduced among them. The announce- 
ment of our Declaration of Principles came upon them sud- 
denly. It was a surprise ; nay, more, it startled the whole 
temperance community, and awakened an opposition char- 
acterized by an unfairness and even bitterness that was quite 
inconsistent with the spirit of so good a cause 
Had they paused long enough to analyze the principles 
which they were so ready to oppose, had they been really 
anxious for the truth in the case, they would have found an 
ally in what was to them a new theory, and not, as they im- 
agined, an enemy. Indeed, they knew already that disease 
Opposition to Declaration of Principles. 50 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
and sin, or immorality, could and did exist jointly in the 
same person, but they became alarmed that the fact of dis- 
ease was published, fearing that it might in some way palli- 
ate the offense of drunkenness and diminish the sense of 
responsibility for sin, etc., etc. 
Again, it was assumed without the slightest warrant that 
the medical treatment of diseased conditions meant pills and 
potions, with an entire neglect of moral or religious influ- 
ences. Had they desired to know the truth in the case, they 
would have discovered that such a statement was erroneous. 
They would have found that private homes or institutions 
where inebriety is treated as a disease, employ moral and re- 
ligious means as faithfully as medical means are used. Every 
wise physician who deals with the inebriate recognizes the 
necessity, first, of total abstinence from all intoxicants, and 
he then endeavors to strengthen the entire moral constitu- 
tion, to re-kindle a love for things that are pure and make for 
peace, to put under foot all habits and desires the tendency 
of which is to depress and demoralize, and to cultivate every 
virtue, and thus develop and restore the manhood that has 
been bruised and broken 
For any structural or functional disorder of the'body, 
therapeutic remedies are in place. 
Dr. L. D. Masons Resolution on Medicines. 
As to the use of medicines I shall quote the remarks of 
Vice-President Dr. L. D. Mason, made at the second meeting 
of our association in 1871. 
He said : “ He had no disposition to criticise any well 
meant efforts to do good to the inebriate by any method, but 
he held in his hand the report for the last year of the insti- 
tution where medical treatment was not considered necessary, 
and he found that the average number of patients in that in- 
stitution was less than one-half the average number treated 
in the Kings County Home, where there are two physicians, 
and the bill for medicines in the former was nearly double 
the amount paid in the latter institution.” Nineteenth Annua/ Meeting. 
51 
At the same meeting the following resolution was care- 
fully considered and unanimously adopted : 
“Resolved. That the effect of poison on the blood and 
nervous system, and the reflex action of this morbific agent 
upon the whole physical structure is the same in the virtuous 
as in the vicious, and that antecedent or subsequent moral 
conditions are incidental to the main fact of disease.” 
Delegates to England Misrepresented. 
When the delegates were appointed to visit England, in 
compliance with an official request from the Committee of 
the House of Commons, the opposition assumed a new and 
more formidable appearance than the newspaper missiles 
that were cast by individuals. As I stood in the lobby of 
the Parliament House, in company with Dr. Dalrymple, the 
chairman of the Commons Committee, my attention was di- 
rected to a person who skipped about from one member of 
Parliament to another with the alacrity of a “ busy bee,” com- 
municating in a secret and confidential manner information 
which he had just received from America; which was that 
Dr. Dodge and I were to be discredited, being unreliable 
witnesses, whose testimony when it shall be given was not to 
be received as true, etc., etc. 
The Commons Committee, however, were unmoved by 
these slanderous reports, having confidence in the report of 
their chairman, at whose instance delegates were sent to 
England, and having confidence also in the association by 
whom we were appointed. 
The testimony we gave was gratefully received by the 
committee, whose reception and treatment was marked by 
distinguished urbanity and kindness. 
The Temperance Vindicator. 
Returning to America I was soon informed that a tem- 
perance paper called the Vindicator, published in Philadelphia, 
had announced our return with the statement that both our 
reception and our “ mission were failures,” with other re- Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
o 
52 
marks distinguished alike for their impertinence and suppres- 
sion of truth. This seemed like a door of entrance to the 
secret home of the false information that had anticipated our 
arrival in England, and which the “busy bee” in the lobby 
was “ button holing ” the members of Parliament to accept 
as true. I procured a copy of the Vindicator without delay, 
and in company of two friends, one of whom I see in this 
audience, waited upon the editor. Sickness in his family 
and the oppressive heat of the weather had so benumbed his 
memory, that when asked if he had written the article refer- 
red to, he did not remember, though but a few hours had 
passed since it was placed in the hands of the printer. I 
took from my pocket a copy of the Vindicator and requested 
him to read his article aloud, at which moment his memory 
began to revive, and the fact that he was the author of the 
article was admitted. This was a moment of intense agita- 
tion. A reaction was approaching. Truths that were latent 
were beginning to tremble for expression, and when the 
expression came, facts, the nature of which we had no con- 
ception of, were disclosed, such for example as the following: 
When the secret order of which the Vindicator was sup- 
posed to be the organ was informed that the appointment of 
delegates had been accomplished, a letter was straightway 
sent to England, (by whom and to whom was not told,) giving 
notice of our appointment and of our incompetency. The 
good people of England of the same order were warned 
against us and told not to believe our testimony. My worthy 
friend and colleague, the late Dr. Dodge, having a residence 
in the extreme north boundary of New York State, escaped 
personal mention as to the slanderous expressions that 
accompanied my name. 
A Monstrous Statement. 
Not only was the communication sent to England, but 
that the brethren of the order at home might be fortified with 
information to justify such an extraordinary proceeding, we 
were told that my name was passed along the line from Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
53 
lodge to lodge, in Eastern Pennsylvania, as an unreliable 
witness ; that I was not only an anti-temperance man, but 
that I favored the saloons in order that the number of drunk- 
ards might increase, and that the Sanitarium at Media might 
be kept full of patients. Friends, pause for a moment over 
this monstrous assertion. Your ears have for the first time 
heard that it was possible for sober human nature to bend so 
low as to clothe itself with a hypocrite’s garb with which to 
make drunkards, distressing their families with all the hard- 
ships and sufferings which belong to a drunkard’s career, 
and all for the purpose of money-getting. 
A Portrait. 
If I had the genius and the pencil of an artist, I should 
like to paint a picture for every lodge room of that secret 
order and hang it under their motto, which I am told is 
“ Faith, Hope, and Charity.” It would be a plain picture, 
illustrative only of the three sacred figures embracing each 
other. “ Faith,” robed in azure, gazing steadily into the be- 
yond with unmoved and confident gaze ; “ Hope,” with the 
shepherd’s spear in hand, looking with anxious expectation 
for the foe of the flock, as he hides in the cloudy haze which 
bcglooms the air ; “ Charity,” clothed with flowers, scattering 
the beauty and perfume of her life to every passer-by. 
The reverse side would show the same figures, but 
changed : “ Faith ” weeping ; “ Hope,” having cast her 
spear under her feet, lets the enemy in; “ Charity’s ” 
flowers have faded, and bloody tears rain upon her feet. 
Under this side of the picture, in golden letters, would be 
inscribed “ Faith, Hope, and Charity.” 
Wounded in the Home of their Friends. 
No public notice was taken of these disgraceful proceed- 
ings at the time of their occurrence, because the attention of 
the community might have been turned towards what had 
the appearance of a personal controversy, while our chief 
purpose was to fasten the principles that had been declared 54 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
upon the minds and memory of the generation in which they 
took definite form. Now that the record is made and ac- 
cepted as .a formulated fact of the current generation, and 
thus fulfilling the demands of history, it is also well to caution 
those who follow us to avoid contact with things unclean. 
Visit of Dr. Stephen Alford, London. 
It will be pertinent now to note the fact of gentlemen 
from England visiting this country for the purpose of obtain- 
ing information concerning the establishment and conduct of 
inebriate asylums. The first to notice was Dr. Stephen 
Alford, of London, a writer on Dipsomania, and the promoter, 
I believe, of the “ Society for promoting legislation for the 
control and cure of habitual drunkards.” He visited sev- 
eral of our institutions, and returned to England satisfied 
that, considering the obstacles with which we had to contend, 
the work in America was a triumphant success. 
At home he was interested in establishing “ coffee stalls ” 
in some of the streets of London, so that the working people, 
in going to and from their work, might be induced to patron- 
ize a more healthy beverage than that furnished by the beer 
shops and whisky bars. Dr. Alford met with a serious ac- 
cident which cost him his life. It was my pleasure to receive 
him as my guest during his stay in this vicinity, and his 
gentle spirit, positive convictions, and persistent advocacy of 
the right, convinced me that he was an able ally, whose loss 
to the cause in England must be deplored by his associates. 
Visit of Dr. J. C. Bucknill, London. 
Another visitor was John Charles Bucknill, M. D., F. R. 
S., late Lord Chancellor and Visitor of Lunatics. His visit, 
I think, was an unfortunate one. It was made in 1875. His 
relation to the subject of insanity at home naturally induced 
him to seek the companionship of distinguished alienists in this 
country. As he came avowedly to inform himself concerning 
inebriate asylums, he could not have found in America a class Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
55 
of professional men whose information on inebriety would be 
more misleading than the superintendents of hospitals and 
asylums for the insane. Without disparaging the integrity 
and fairness of these gentlemen, their public avowal of op- 
position to inebriate asylums and homes then in existence, 
and in some cases, perhaps, their personal relations to the 
medical men in charge of such institutions, may have con- 
tributed to unfit them for deliberating candidly and deciding 
justly. Indeed, at a meeting of these superintendents, held 
at Auburn, New York, in 1875, Dr. Bucknill being present 
and participating in the discussion, it was 
Resolved, That any system of treatment of inebriates on 
the voluntary principle “ must, in most cases, prove entirely 
futile, if not worse than useless.” 
For the first time in my reading I have discovered this 
ijew system of mental philosophy which teaches that it is 
better to force men to do right, than to have them change 
from bad to good of their own volition. 
They also resolved that every State and Province should 
make provision to “ secure a careful inquisition into the ques- 
tion of drunkenness, and fitness for restraint,” and “ length 
of restraint, as will render total abstinence from alcoholic or 
other hurtful stimulants during such treatment absolutely 
certain,” and provided that such institutions are organized 
and supported the same as institutions for the insane are. If 
they must be “ organized and supported ” like institutions 
for the insane, what will be the distinguishing feature by 
which the difference can be recognized ? 
Dr. BuckniU's Book. 
After Dr. Bucknill’s return to England he published a 
little book which is interesting in some respects, but as it is 
mainly controversial, I am not disposed to notice it here, 
further than to correct one statement which refers especially 
to myself. He reports the Sanitarium at Media as a State 
institution, and having failed in the purpose for which it was 
established. 56 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
The great commonwealth of Pennsylvania does not inau- 
gurate institutions of that kind, or any other, and allow them 
to fail. The one at Media was not a State institution, and 
never had any State patronage (as I was repeatedly informed 
by members of the legislature), because of the large de- 
mands of the insane asylums which, being in existence, must 
be sustained. 
The institution at Media was temporarily closed, but the 
same work under the same management is going on at Bur- 
lington, New Jersey, with continued and even increasing 
success. 
Dr. Cameron s Speech in Parliament. 
So much for Dr. Bucknill, except what is said of him 
by Dr. Cameron, Member of Parliament in England, in a 
parliamentary speech favoring legislation. He says, “ That 
gentleman” (Dr. Bucknill) “visited America in 1875, and 
when he came back he wrote several papers, the object of 
which was to deprecate any special legislation for the 
habitual drunkards. Luckily the style of his writings 
showed that he was intensely prejudiced upon the subject. 
In an article on the subject in the Contemporary Review 
for February, 1877, for example, he expresses himself 
as out of patience with the maudlin sentiment which has 
been written about the habitual drunkard. I do not think 
that I can be accused of indulging in any maudlin sentiment 
on his behalf. Well, Dr. Bucknill goes on to say that the 
best thing that can happen to the habitual drunkard is that 
he should ruin himself, so that his property should pass into 
worthier hands, and that he should kill himself, and cease to be 
a nuisance to the world. Jde expressed his regret that alcohol 
was not the deadly poison that the honorable baronet, the 
Member for Carlisle (Sir W. Lawson) represents it to be, be- 
cause if it were it would sooner enable the world to be free 
of that pest. He congratulates P'rance upon the invention 
of absinthe, and America upon the vileness of its whisky, 
which enables them to get rid of their drunkards so much the 
quicker than our milder English drinks.” Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
57 
Will Dr. Bucknill come again ? 
I know that I may say, in the name and on behalf of this 
association, that if Dr. Bucknill will favor this country with 
a visit again we shall be glad to have him do so. I shall take 
care of him while in this vicinity, and pass him on to Dr. 
Blanchard of P'ort Hamilton, and Dr. Mason of Brooklyn; 
from there to Dr. Crothers of Hartford, and Day of Boston. 
From there he can start on a tour of the West, and he will 
see Hughes of St. Louis, and Wright of Bellefontaine, Ohio. 
If he will do this, after his return to England he may 
write another little book in which he will strongly advocate 
what he opposed in the one first mentioned. 
The Medical Profession Vindicated. 
I desire now to call attention to an error which we con- 
stantly hear repeated, and if possible to correct it. It is that 
medical men are accountable for much of the drunkenness 
existing among us, and that they create the desire by adminis- 
tering alcoholics to the sick. The charge is gravely made 
that as a class they are opposed to the temperance movement. 
I have before me a little pamphlet from which I shall read. 
It is a “Catechism on Alcohol with responsive exercises on 
temperance, by Julia Coleman.” This primer is published in 
New York, by the “ National Temperance Society and Pub- 
lication House.” 
It is intended to be taught to children, that when they 
grow up they may be firm temperance men and women. 
What does it teach ? The teacher had been giving a lesson 
that drunkards were at first fascinated by alcoholic potations, 
and in answer to the question, By what other means are the 
people persuaded that a little is good, the reply tells them, 
“ The doctors say that a little is good, and they order it for 
medicine.” She then proceeds to state that bv this means 
the terrible appetite is formed, and drunkards are made, and 
the doctors have taught the common use of distilled spirits, 
and that the people did not drink till the doctors taught them; 58 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
that the doctors call them good, and order them so much 
that the people learn to take them themselves ; and that the 
doctors in this way are probably the greatest of all hindrances 
to the temperance cause ; that so long as the doctors say a 
little is good, and the people do not study into the matter for 
themselves, they will believe that it is good, and drink and 
make drunkards as they have done in the past. 
The little primer then proceeds to teach the children that 
the doctors must find some other way of treating their pa- 
tients, and to bring this about is for the children to refuse to 
take alcoholic medicines. 
A Scientific Experiment that is not Scientific. 
But there is still an equally absurd presentation of what 
is assumed to be a scientific experiment The question is 
asked, What happens when food is put into a bottle with alco- 
hol ? The answer is that “ the alcohol prevents decay ; ” 
and when taken in the stomach indigestion is engendered, 
food is hindered from being appropriated, and “it creates 
sores there,” etc. For a moment let us contrast a bottle 
with the human stomach. The latter has a temperature 
of its own ; it has a wonderful vital chemistry of its 
own ; it has juices and secretions peculiar to itself. How 
absurd to teach that food taken into the stomach and food 
put into a bottle undergo a similar process ! To make the 
analogy complete the bottle should have sores. 
Again, the children are taught in Miss Coleman’s little 
catechism that “ more than half the insane people in this 
country are made so through drink.” 
It is difficult to comprehend how such discreet and hon- 
orable men as are found in the official board of the National 
Temperance Society can allow such utterances to appear 
under their names and with their sanction. It is to be hoped 
that future publications of this influential society will be more 
in accordance with truth and the dignity of the subject. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
59 
Facts that are Truths. 
But let us look at the facts as they are. It is not difficult 
to get an opinion of the medical profession upon any subject 
on which an expression is desired, because of the complete- 
ness and cooperation of their organization. Each county in 
most of the States has a medical society which is annually 
represented in a State society, as well as in a national assem- 
blage known as the American Medical Association, to which 
every county society in every State may send delegates. 
After this comes the International Medical Congress, meeting 
alternately in the capitals or other cities of different nations. 
It may be seen how readily, by this continuous chain of 
communication, an expression of opinion upon any subject 
may be had. 
National Medical Congress, 1876. 
In the year 1876 there was held in Philadelphia one of 
these International Medical Congresses, which was composed 
of about six hundred delegates of different nationalities. 
“The National Temperance Society,” “The Women’s 
Christian Temperance Union,” and “ The New York Friends 
Temperance Union,” each addressed a memorial to that dis- 
tinguished body, requesting it to make a public declaration 
of its opinions as to the status of alcohol as an alleged food 
or medicine, etc. 
The memorials were referred by the congress to the sec- 
tion on medicine, before which a valuable paper was read by 
Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, now secretary of the Board of Health of 
New Jersey, covering the question proposed by the memorial- 
ists. After a full and free discussion that was remarkable 
for ability and earnestness, the conclusions which the author 
of the paper presented were unanimously adopted as the 
sentiments of the section on medicine. As such they were 
reported for acceptance to the general congress, and by it 
ordered to be transmitted to the memorialists in reply to 
their question. 60 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
o 
To condense these answers, in the opinion of medical 
men the world over, the question of the food value of alcohol 
is yet unsettled. As a medicine it is useful in some condi- 
tions. but its administration should be confined to the medical 
profession. Physicians are not accountable for its use by the 
laity, nor for the evils resulting from such use. Alcoholic 
liquors are not as pure as medicines should be. 
There is no doubt that some physicians are prepared to 
go farther than this, but as an average opinion concurred in 
by physicians from nearly all nations, it is a sufficient rebuke 
to the careless and unqualified assumption of the catechism, 
that doctors have taught people to become drunkards, and by 
their advice the evil is continued. 
Let me refer to the opinion of an eminent total absti- 
nence physician on this doctor question, Dr. F. S. Davis of 
Chicago, the originator of the American Medical Association, 
and the choice of his countrymen for the presidency of the 
late International Medical Congress, held at Washington in 
1887. He is quoted as saying that there are thousands of 
physicians who abstain from the use of intoxicants as a bev- 
erage, and he reports that in Illinois the State Medical So- 
ciety, of several hundred members, convenes annually, clos- 
ing their professional labors with a banquet, from which all 
intoxicants are excluded. I have no doubt that the same 
may be said of other State and county societies. 
British Medical Temperance Society. 
In Great Britain there is a Temperance Society, composed 
exclusively of medical men, which was organized, I believe, 
in 1876, with its headquarters in London ; there is an Irish 
branch with headquarters in Dublin, another in Scotland, 
another for the north of Ireland, with its headquarters at Bel- 
fast, and another in Wales, numbering, with a few medical 
students as associates, over five hundred members. 
I had the honor of breakfasting with about three hundred 
tee-total doctors at a meeting held in Dublin in 1887. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
61 
Nothing was served as a beverage stronger than English 
breakfast tea, which was poured from the well-known black 
china teapots stationed in rows about six feet apart along tfie 
middle of the tables. 
If beer is the drink of many, and the stronger alcoholics 
of some, the drink of the sober Briton is tea ; also of tee-total 
doctors, who might if they would, or could, sing the old 
Scotch song: 
To the Praise of Tea. 
Great cordial! sure thou stand’st confessed, 
The glorious substitute and best, 
In places of our dram-drinking pest, 
Come, crown my lay, 
As choice of true tee-totalers taste — 
Prime cup o’ tea. 
In Temperance’s name, then, my advice is, 
Let all for tea cups ’change their glasses ; 
Nor longer, like to Cadger’s asses, 
In dram-shop bray, 
When such pure, real, domestic bliss is 
In cup o’ tea. 
No Pledge for Doctors. 
Physicians are not required to sign a pledge on entering 
the society. It assumes that no gentleman would offer to 
join whose principles and practice are not in accord with 
those of the society. 
This brings me to remark upon the difference between the 
people there and here in the matter of the pledge. In this 
country a person is not considered sound on the temperance 
question who has not taken the pledge, and joined some one 
of the many societies or orders that require pledge-taking as 
a token of membership. In England there are many friends 
of the cause and advocates of it who are not pledged,— 
Church and government dignitaries, men who stand high in 
social life, titled men, whose names and positions command 
influence, are found in the field and are doing good, — they 62 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
are total abstainers, but not pledged as such, but the fact of 
their total abstinence principles and conduct entitles them to 
recognition. Not so with us. We seem to have forgotten 
that among true, real, and practical temperance men there 
are many more outside of temperance societies than inside. 
At least that is my observation. And you may ask, why are 
they outside ? The answer is, because they have scruples 
about signing a pledge, and you will not allow them to enter 
without one. The cause suffers great loss, so I believe, by 
such a policy. 
American Conscience. 
The American conscience is right upon the subject. It 
approves of sobriety and good order. It looks upon temper- 
ate living, and in all that temperate living includes and in- 
culcates, with approval. The moral sense of the American 
people rejoices over every effort to promote right living and 
establish justice. 
In obedience to these claims upon personal and individual 
character, there are thousands of good, honest, working men 
outside of societies, clubs, leagues, or orders of any kind, who 
are doing a silent unrecognized service, the only record of 
which is in the book that angels keep. 
Dr. Mason s Reward of One Hundred Dollars. 
I notice now what is being done by one of our vice-presi- 
dents, the worthy son of a father of whom I cannot think 
without a feeling akin to reverence. Our vice-president, Dr. 
L. D. Mason, has given an example of the zeal and enter- 
prise of the younger members of our association, by issuing 
a circular through the Journal and other medical periodicals, 
addressed To Medical Microscopists offering one hundred 
dollars for the best essay on “ The Pathological Lesions of 
Chronic Alcoholism, capable of Microscopic Demonstra- 
tion.” Distinguished microscopists of New York and 
Brooklyn will act as a committee to decide upon the award. 
This opens another avenue for research. The reach of Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
63 
the Microscopic world is far beyond the ken of the human 
eye. It is indeed outside the realm of human thought, unless 
aided by the magnifying lens to discover, and interpreted by 
the science of life itself to understand. All praise to Dr. 
Mason for this new departure leading to new discoveries. 
In the open field before us there are a few duties, that are 
plain to see and not difficult to perform. In the name of the 
Association, the Congress of the United States should be re- 
minded of the solemn fact that no suitable provision is made 
for the inebriate class of the army and navy. Asylums for the 
insane are declared to be improper resorts for such by the 
superintendents of said institutions, and the moral sense of 
the people declares against commitment to prison cells. 
The Bureau of Education at Washington, the State 
superintendents of public schools, and the presidents of col- 
leges should be addressed in the same behoof, and the gov- 
ernors of each State and Territory requested to consider the 
propriety of calling the attention of the legislatures of the 
respective States and Territories to the consideration of the 
subject. We cannot tell how much of such seed-sowing 
may take root, and bring forth fruit, but remembering the 
rapid, almost phenomenal, growth during the past twenty 
years of the disease dogma, we need not stop to inquire 
“What will the harvest be?” Our work is sowing; the 
reapers come after us. 
Before bringing this address to a close let us pause a 
moment, and try and listen for certain voices we have been 
accustomed to hear at the annual roll-call, but which no 
longer respond. Yes ! we may hear them as we have heard 
our own voices when we have sailed on the bosom of a lake 
and called to the mountains that are around it, and they 
have answered back. We remember how the words we 
uttered were thrown against the mountain sides, and then 
how they would leap to their summits, and sweep along and 
through the valleys, rising and falling with ever varying ca- 
What Remains to be Done. 64 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
dency, till in the faintest murmurs, they are wafted into*the 
distance, and we hear them no more. We call this Silence; 
but, think ye, are they not going on still ? Do not words of 
truth live ? Is not truth itself immortal ? Tennyson says : 
“ Our echoes roll, from soul to soul, 
And grow forever and forever.” 
Is this true ! If so, the words of Parker, of the Elder 
Mason, of Dodge, of Willet, and others are still on their 
mission. The words we utter, if they are true and wise, 
have started on their errand, and will drop fatness, to 
nourish those who come after. 
Letter from the distinguished Dr. Alexander Peddie of Edinburgh, Scot- 
land, who urged the recognition of inebriety as a disease over thirty years ago, 
and who is one of the few great pioneer leaders in this field : 
15 Rutland Street, Edinburgh, 
1st November, 1889. 
My Dear Dr. Crothers, — I have just received your kind letter of the 21st 
ult., inviting my presence on the occasion of the honor to be done to my old 
friend, Dr. Parrish, president of the Association for the Study and Cure of In- 
ebriety. I am sure, however, not merely on account of the shorcness of the 
invitation, the geographical distance, and the season of the year,— but the fact 
that I am rather more than eight years advanced in life than Dr. Parrish — you 
will admit that there is good reason for taking care of myself at home. How- 
ever, I am truly glad that you are about to pay such a tribute of respect to one 
who has for so many years devoted his best energies to the general cause of 
temperance and social welfare, and who has done so much by personal sacrifice, 
his pen, and in your excellent association to expound the pathology of those 
cases of inebriety which should be regarded as a form of insanity, and to pro- 
mote their better care, and, if possible, their cure. In this country — although 
I wrote my first paper on the above subject thirty years ago — it is only of late 
years that there has been any practical action in regard to it; but now appar- 
ently, helped on doubtless by a strong breath across the Atlantic, and by 
spasmodic efforts among ourselves — the profession, I think, is about unanimous 
in our belief, and the public, to a large extent, seem awakened to the importance 
of the questions involved in them. 
The Medico-Chirurgical society of this city had a discussion in February last 
on a proposed Bill for Parliament called the Restorative Home Bill for Scotland, 
by Charles Morton, Esq., late crown agent for Scotland, and came to a unan- 
imous resolution to petition in favor of it. Perhaps you may have seen the 
speeches on this occasion as fully reported in the May, June, and Julv numbers 
of the Edinburgh Medical Journal, and also now fully published in the eighth 
volume of the Medico Chirurgical Transactions. This discussion is also, I think, 
about to be published in a separate form for the public, and when it is I shall 
hdve much pleasure in sending you a copy. 
Begging you on the 12th inst. to convey, first to dear Dr. Parrish my best 
birth day wishes for his health and happiness and continued usefulness ; second, 
to your Association for the increased success of its labors, 
I am, yours very trulv, 
A. Peddie. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
65 
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOSEPH PARRISH. 
Paul R. Shipman. 
The subject of this sketch, and the object of the honors 
bestowed in the dinner whose proceedings are recorded else- 
where in these pages, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., Novem- 
ber it, 1818. Of Welsh-English descent (English in the 
paternal line, Welsh in the maternal), he is the fifth son, as 
well as namesake, of Joseph Parrish of Philadelphia, the 
famous Quaker physician, whose noble professional career 
and unspotted life closed together just half a century ago. 
His mother was Susannah Cox, only daughter of John Cox, 
a prominent minister of the Society of Friends, and founder 
of the Oxmead homestead, a beautiful estate in the vicinity 
of Burlington, N. J., which became the patrimony of the 
Parrish family through the marriage of the elder Parrish with 
the daughter of the house. Having mentioned his parent- 
age, it is almost unnecessary to say that he was born a phi- 
lanthropist, and quite unnecessary to add, in view of his 
achievements, that he has fulfilled the “ promise and potency” 
of his birth. 
Joseph Parrish, the younger,1 received his academical 
training in the schools of the Friends in his native city, sup- 
plemented by a classical course under the direction of private 
tutors ; so that when he made choice of a profession he was 
well equipped for the study of it, which he pursued in the 
medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, from 
which he graduated with honor in 1844. Meanwhile, in 
February, 1840, entering the temple of Hymen before that 
of Esqulapius, he married Lydia Gaskill, the amiable and 
accomplished daughter of an honored citizen of Burlington, 
N. J., and subsequently during the same interval made a 
slight trial of agriculture, which, however, proved uncon- 
genial and generally disappointing. Receiving his diploma, 
he established himself in Burlington, the native city of his 
wife, where he soon acquired a large practice, including that 66 
Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
of physician to the Burlington College and St. Mary’s Hall, 
the latter a female seminary that rose to celebrity under the 
supervision of Bishop Doane, then in the zenith of his fame. 
The clientelle of the young practitioner, already large, was 
steadily enlarging. He now had the professional ball at his 
feet. 
At the beginning of his practice he fell in with a case that 
brought out in an amusing way his strong point as a man and 
physician. An individual from Tuckerton, N. J., evidently 
under some hallucination, called at the office one day, and 
proceeded with a very lugubrious face to describe his case, 
which he seemed to regard as well-nigh hopeless. “ I think 
I know what ails me,” he said splenetically, “but I can’t find 
a doctor to agree with me, or tell me what to take. I have 
heard of you, Dr. Parrish, and I come to see if you can’t do 
something for me.” “ Well,” said the doctor, taking in the 
situation at a glance, “ what ails you ? ” “ Why,” he answered, 
“ I think I’ve got a spine in my back!' “ You are right,” de- 
clared the future master of nervous pathology, “ that is 
exactly what ails you, and I will give you something that 
will cure you; ” which he forthwith did, in the shape of that 
magical nervine known in the unofficial dispensatory as bread 
pill, and, it is needless to say, with the happiest results, the 
patient retiring elated, profuse in his praise of the doctor’s 
superior sense, and never afterwards suffering a relapse that 
did not promptly yield to the same remedial agent. “ An 
ounce of mother-wit,” says the German proverb, “is worth a 
pound of school-wit/” 
Dr. Parrish is a great and enlightened physician, but from 
the first the spirit of the healer has had to divide possession 
of him with the spirit of the teacher, in obedience to which 
he set on foot in 1847 The New Jersey Medical Reporter, 
which he conducted with such judgment and ability that it 
was hailed at once as a power in the literature of the profes- 
sion, and became ere long the official organ of the Medical 
Society of the State. In the course of a few years, however, 
owing to failing health and the pressure of more imperative Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
67 
engagements, he associated with himself in the conduct of 
The Reporter Dr. S. W. Butler, to whom eventually he trans- 
ferred it, and who in i860 removed with it to Philadelphia, 
where, having dropped its geographical addition, it now 
flourishes as The Medical and Surgical Reporter. A period- 
ical that was started nearly fifty years ago and is going yet 
must have started under a pretty vigorous impulse. 
In 1854 Dr. Parrish, at the urgent request of the Phila- 
delphia College of Medicine, backed by the solicitation of his 
Philadelphia friends, accepted reluctantly the Chair of 
Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children in that 
institution, and removed with his family to Philadelphia. 
Unhappily his feeble health and drooping energies presently 
justified the strong misgivings with which he had accepted 
the chair, constraining him to resign it after occupying it one 
term, and resort, accompanied by his family, to the softer 
airs of the South, where he spent the coming winter. Deriv- 
ing no benefit from this change of climate, and suffering from 
a pulmonary complaint that threatened the worst, he returned 
home at the opening of spring, and in May sailed with his 
wife for Europe. 
His time abroad he passed mostly in England, France, 
Switzerland, Italy, and Scotland, visiting these countries in 
the order in which they are here named. Devoting the 
summer to England and France, he in the course of the fall 
went to Switzerland, whose dry and rarefied air proved so 
nearly fatal to his pulmonary complaint that it easily re- 
ceived the coup degrace from the next stage of his itinerary, 
which was no less than the passage of the Alps amid the 
wholesome rigors and stimulating glories of the Alpine win- 
ter; so that when he descended into the plains of Italy he 
was himself again. And this was particularly fortunate for 
him, because when he got to Rome, what with inspecting 
hospitals and asylums, expostulating with the authorities in 
charge, calling on the Prefect of Charities, interviewing 
Cardinal Antonelli, and memorializing the Pope, his ruling 
spirit gave his body so little rest that if it had not recuper- 68 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
ated in Switzerland it might not have recuperated at all, 
although, as the outcome of this reformatory zeal, it should 
be said, the Cardinal was impressed, the Pope acknowledged 
himself “ graciously indebted to the young American for his 
kindly and judicious interest ” (conveying the acknowledg- 
ment through Ex-President Fillmore, then in Rome), and, 
most significant of all, the abuses which had aroused the 
young American’s “ interest” were, upon formal examination 
and due inquiry, thoroughly reformed. If Switzerland had 
done him good, he in turn did good to Italy ; and the ac- 
count current between him and the Old World, when he left 
its shores for his home in the New, was balanced. 
On returning to his native city in the spring of 1856, with 
health renewed and aspirations intensified, Dr. Parrish, not 
unnaturally, was eager to resume the practice of his profes- 
sion, as he might have done under the most favorable aus- 
pices ; but his friends, recognizing that he was larger than 
his profession, recognizing, in other words, his preeminent 
fitness for organizing and administering as well as moulding 
and inspiring institutions, pressed him to reserve his abilities 
for that great but comparatively uncultivated field; and to 
their persuasion he with some hesitation yielded, narrowly 
escaping the fault (matching that imputed by Goldsmith to 
Burke) of giving up to profession “what was meant for man- 
kind.” 
A gateway to this new field, as it happened, stood open 
close at hand. Certain humane Philadelphians, with the late 
Bishop Potter of Pennsylvania at the head of them, had re- 
cently secured a charter authorizing the establishment of a 
Training School for Idiots, which they had duly organized, 
and which, complete in body, lacked nothing but an informing 
spirit to make it a living thing. In these circumstances the 
directors turned to Dr. Parrish, voluntarily tendering him 
the office of superintendent, which, after much consideration 
and a personal inspection of the premises, he accepted, and 
breathed into the lifeless institution the breath of life, to such 
good purpose that its excellence was speedily recognized, not Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
69 
only by the State of Pennsylvania, but by New Jersey and 
Delaware, all of which, as also the City Councils of Philadel- 
phia. made liberal appropriations for its support. He had 
passed through the open gateway, and stood triumphant in 
his proper field. 
The prospect was fitted to thrill him with manly pride. 
What he felt may be inferred from a passage in an educa- 
tional address which he delivered at this period. “ Within 
the last quarter of a century,” he said, personifying educa- 
tion, “ she has sought for mind in the idiot, and her search 
has not been vain. With the light of Christianity to guide 
her, and the genial influence of philanthropy to cheer her, 
she has gone down into the lowest depths of human existence, 
seeking for the feeblest sign of intelligent life. When her 
hand touched it, it grew warm. When she spoke, it stirred 
in its solitude. When she said, ‘Awake’! it trembled. 
When she breathed upon it, it nestled towards her. When 
she took it to her bosom, it whispered faint desires. When 
she lifted it up to the light, it smiled. When she led it 
forth, it praised her ; and into all civilized lands the word has 
gone out that education can reach not only the dumb, that 
he may speak, and the blind, that he may see, hut the idiot, 
that he may stand up and say, ‘I am a man.’” Who can 
wonder that the author of this exquisite passage came off 
successful in the province to which it refers? He found the 
gateway to his field open, but it mattered not ; if it had been 
shut and triple-locked, he bore the key that would have 
opened it — the charmed key of insight penetrated by sym- 
pathy. 
In 1863, the school having long before cleared all break- 
ers, and its course being smooth, Dr. Parrish, against the 
protest of the directors, resigned the office of superintendent, 
and entered the United States Sanitary Commission, rightly 
deeming that, as between children of the same land, patriot- 
ism is the highest philanthropy, and, without qualification, 
service of one’s country the first of civil duties. The school, 
however, it is a pleasure to state, exists to-day in unabated 
prosperity. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
70 
As a member of the Sanitary Commission, Dr. Parrish’s 
services, it will be readily imagined, were of surpassing value. 
“ He first acted,” says a memoir of him published in 1874 
in “ Representative Men North and South,” from which, by 
the way, the facts of this sketch are partly drawn, “ as an in- 
spector of the camps and hospitals in the vicinity of Wash- 
ington ; and here he labored zealously to make himself 
acquainted with the actual wants of the soldiers. When 
the government required more help in the procuring of 
supplies, Dr. Parrish was delegated to travel through the 
principal towns of Pennsylvania, and of some other States, 
holding public meetings, and organizing aid societies. About 
this time he also edited the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, in 
connection with his other services, and so successful was he 
in organizing societies for the manufacture of garments, and 
the collection of supplies, that he was requested by the Sani- 
tary Commission Board to visit the governors and legislators 
of the loyal States, and endeavor to unify and concentrate 
the work of this important auxiliary to the government, 
which he did, with very gratifying results. To complete his 
good work, the doctor made an extended tour to numerous 
camps and hospitals within the Union lines in the West and 
South, under a full commission from the President of the 
United States. He was always to be found wherever and 
whenever there was suffering humanity to be attended. He vis- 
ited Nashville, Lookout Mountain, Chicamauga, New Berne, 
and other intermediate places, looking after the sick and 
wounded, and distributing the supplies of the people through 
the authorities of the government. For some months he also 
took charge of the supply stations at White House and City 
Point, where he received from the Commission whole cargoes 
of clothing, ice, and hospital stores, for gratuitous distribu- 
tion. Mrs. Parrish accompanied her husband in several of 
his expeditions nearer home, besides which she was herself 
in charge of the stores at Annapolis, Maryland, where she 
contributed not a little by her own personal attentions to 
alleviate the sufferings of both Northern and Southern Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
71 
sick and wounded. She also prepared a very large edition 
of a little volume called the Soldiers Friend, containing di- 
rections how to find the Rests and Lodges of the Commission, 
as also a choice collection of hymns for gratuitous distribu- 
tion among the soldiers. Fifty thousand of these were 
printed by the Commission and distributed gratuitously in 
the army and navy,” 
These invaluable services, it may be said with truth, were 
rendered not so much to a cause as to humanity, embracing 
both parties to the conflict, so far as possible, even while it 
lasted, and, when it ended, extending at once to the soldiers 
of the South and North alike, and generally to the necessitous 
of both sections without distinction, not omitting by any 
means the innocent occasion of the strife, who in the hurry 
of the moment realized only that he had lost one master 
without finding another or becoming his own, and in reality 
was a much fitter object of compassion than either of his 
white rivals in distress. The day following General Lee’s 
surrender, Dr. Parrish, accompanied by his younger brother 
Edward, entered Richmond, Va., where he established a 
station of the Sanitary Commission, and supplied it with 
hospital stores for the benefit of the two armies, charity and 
peace in his person installing themselves in the headquarters 
so lately occupied by enmity and war, and sending forth, in- 
stead of the messengers of carnage, the ministers of sympathy 
and of hope. 
This public office discharged, and no other claiming his 
attention, he yielded to the impulse of private attachment, 
and with his brother hastened to PYedericksburg, in the 
neighborhood of which lived, at the outbreak of hostilities, 
a friend of his, a large slaveholder, at whose house he had 
frequently been a guest, and with whom at the beginning of 
the struggle he had exchanged letters, and at length, agree- 
ment being impossible, parted not in anger but in sorrow. 
The incidents of this visit are so interesting and impressive, 
and reflect so much honor on all concerned, and indeed form 
so characteristic and memorable a scene of the new born 72 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
peace, that no apology is made for pausing to record them 
even in a running sketch like the present. 
Arriving at Fredericksburg, Dr. Parrish drove out with his 
brother to the home of his friend, some five miles from the 
city, reaching there late in the afternoon. Desolation and 
sadness were written all over the entrance and its surround- 
ings, and, the house being tightly closed, it became a question 
with the visitors whether or not any one occupied the prem- 
ises. On the doctor’s knocking, however, the familiar face 
of the old black Aunty met his gaze as she opened the 
big door very cautiously, apparently fearing intruders. He 
having been, as already mentioned, a visitor there in years 
gone by, she knew him, and, calling his name, hurried to 
announce his presence. Enemy though he had been accord- 
ing to the laws of war, no one could have been more warmly 
welcomed by the good mistress of the house, who lost no 
time in summoning her husband and family. It was a joyful 
meeting all round. Edward Parrish, gentle, sympathetic, 
loving and loveable, took the children to himself, and, in 
concert with the hostess, filled up a few hours of the evening 
with laughter and merriment, such as they had not known for 
some time. The doctor and his host spent most of the night 
in getting hold of the situation of the latter s affairs, and 
especially of his relation to his slaves. They finally reached 
a conclusion, and it was agreed between them that the 
doctor, next morning, should communicate it to the negroes 
called together on the lawn to hear it. 
At an early hour in the morning, accordingly, the horn 
sounded, and the negroes gathered on the lawn, about fifty 
in number, old men and old women, young men and young 
women, single and married, but not many children. Most of 
them were field hands. With the house servants only was 
the doctor acquainted. The business was opened by his 
friend, who in a few words gave his people to understand that 
Dr. Parrish had something to tell them, which he knew they 
would be interested to hear. He then took his seat on a log, 
and seemed immersed in thought. It was a crisis in his life: Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
73 
impoverished by the war, so far as ready money was con- 
cerned, yet with plenty of land — with only one mule left, 
and but few implements — his laboring force free and at their 
own disposal, and what they would do or say a matter of 
doubt even to themselves. Some of the negroes sat upon 
the grass, some leaned against the trees, some, and especially 
the young men, stood upright, with folded arms and an air 
of independence that betokened a conception, more or less 
clear, of their new relation to their former master and the 
world they had never seen beyond the bounds of their home. 
Dr. Parrish was impressed (as who could have helped being?) 
by their behavior. It was quiet, respectful, polite, but in- 
dicative of something stirring within them to which they had 
been strangers till now, and which made them doubt and 
hesitate. They were “ in a strait betwixt two,” not knowing 
which way to go. He, also, was in a strait, hardly knowing 
how to begin or what to say, besides the bare proposal he 
was authorized, on behalf of his friend, to lay before them. 
But the duty was upon him and must be done. 
“Myfriends,” he said, “ many of you know me,and where I 
come from, and I feel sure that you will listen carefully to what 
I say. And when I am done speaking, I want you to speak, 
and tell me what you think of my friend’s offer to you, which 
I shall tell you about in a few minutes. You all know that 
we have had a dreadful war between the North country and 
your country here in the South. The soldiers on both sides 
fought well. They were all brave men. The women and 
children were brave, too — brave in giving up comforts they 
had been accustomed to, and submitting to hardships they 
never knew before. Thousands of soldiers were killed on 
both sides, and scarcely a family lives that has not wept for 
lost ones. As to the colored people, I want you to know 
that you are much better off than many of your color. They 
have been scattered in different places, and taken away by 
the soldiers, and pressed into the army, to cook, and drive, 
and serve in various ways You have been kept together — 
thanks to your master and mistress for that. Your cabins, 74 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
and your little stock of whatever you had, have not been dis- 
turbed, and I find you here around the old home yet. Now, 
I want to read you what the President of the United States 
has sent all over the country to be read by all the people. 
[Here he read the Proclamation of Emancipation.] Hy this 
paper, under the rules of war, you are free. My good friend 
there does not own you any longer, as he did before. You 
can go out to the great, big, strange world, and shift for your- 
selves. And if you like you can stay where you are, if you 
will accept of what he offers you. Now listen, and listen 
carefully. My friend says that he has no money to pay you 
wages at present. He is poor like yourselves, but he has 
land — he still holds this beautiful plantation, with all its 
dwellings, and barns, and tobacco-houses, and all. There is 
some bacon in the smoke-house, and a few hams. You may 
keep your cabins, your pigs, and chickens, and you shall have 
a share of the corn and bacon, but no wages, now. If you 
will stay on as you have been doing, put in the crops, and 
harvest them, you shall have wages when the crops,are sold, 
and wages for the time between now and then. Now what 
do you say to this ? I want you to speak, and say just what 
you think, and my friend will hear and understand you.” 
A long pause ensued, perhaps five minutes, when an old 
white-headed man stepped forward, and, addressing his master, 
said : “ Marse Jeems, I lib wid you’ fadder and modder, when 
you was baby. I done karr’d you in my arms. I lub you, and 
keered foryou. When you growed bigger, I tuk you ter decorn- 
field on de ole mule, and you was nebber hurted. You and me 
has nebber parted from dat day to dis. And now dat sorrer 
has kum’d ter you and de misses, now dat de crops don’t grow, 
and de ole place look bad, is I gwine ter lebe you ? No, no, 
Marse Jeems, I is not!” Then turning to Dr. Parrish: 
“And you, doctor, dat kum here ter tell us we am free, and 
dat we kin go, if we wants to, I say, tank ’ee ! you am 
good to say dis ; but Marse Jeems, and de missus, and de 
chillun, am here yit — dey sort o ’long to me and us ole fel- 
lers— and we is gwine ter stay.” And so said they all; Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
75 
and stay they did, for the remainder of the life of the doctor’s 
friend, who to them was always “ Marse Jeems.” 
Returning from this mission of friendship, Dr. Parrish 
wound up at last his humane and patriotic labors by visiting, 
in company with his wife, the principal cities of the South, 
for the purpose of inspecting the schools established there 
under the direction of the FYeedmen’s Commission, and re- 
porting the facts concerning them; which purpose, it need 
not be said, he accomplished with fidelity and thorough- 
ness. The terrible crisis was over. He had discharged his 
whole duty to his country; and, with an approving conscience 
and invigorated constitution as his ample reward for the 
priceless service, he was free to turn once more to his chosen 
field. He had answered generously the trumpet-call of patriot- 
ism, and now, the republic saved and liberty secure, he might 
hearken again to the proper voice of humanity. 
His ear, as the reader will anticipate, quickly caught the 
well-known accents ; and his heart, linked as of yore with his 
head, straightway made the old response. Before the echoes 
and reverberations of the shock of battle had died away, 
.Dr. Parrish originated the movement developing into “The 
Citizens Association of Pennsylvania,” which in June, 1866, 
was incorporated by the legislature of that State, for the pur- 
pose, as declared in the charter, of “ establishing a society 
for the reformation of inebriates, and for the moral and social 
elevation of the ignorant and neglected classes.” Of this 
association, composed of leading Philadelphians, Dr. Parrish 
was the president, as he had been the originator, and hence- 
forward became the organ as well as executive, obliged indeed 
to embody in himself, whether he would or not, the active 
forces of the organization. 
His first official act on behalf of the association was an 
address to the people, defining the end immediately in view 
as “ the purchase of lands and erection of buildings for the 
cure of the intemperate,” stating the method proposed for 
“ the cure of the intemperate,” with the philosophy of the 
method, and, finally, appealing urgently for “ sympathy and 76 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
cooperation, and for liberal contributions of money.” This 
appeal was so far successful that the Pennsylvania Sanitarium, 
in which the philanthropic aims and philosophic views of the 
association took shape, with Dr. Parrish at its head, was 
opened for the reception of inmates in June, 1867, the insti- 
tution having been located in a retired and charming part of 
Media, the capital of Delaware County, Pa., fourteen miles 
from Philadelphia. The germinal principle of this institution 
is expressed in the proposition that inebriety is a disease, 
which no man, in either hemisphere, has grasped more firmly, 
advocated more ably, or developed and applied more judi- 
ciously than Dr. Parrish. It is not too much to say that he is 
the foremost champion of the principle. 
As soon as the Sanitarium got fairly under way, Dr. 
Parrish, true to his teaching instincts, and in furtherance of 
the interests of the institution, began the publication of a 
quarterly magazine, which he called The Probe; and certainly 
nothing about it discredited its name, unless it was the 
gentleness with which it searched to the bottom the some- 
what burning questions it discussed. Before long the Penn- 
sylvania Sanitarium made a name for itself, and for its 
superintendent and physician-in-chief, not only in this country, 
but in Europe. The institution at Media was taken the 
world over as an object-lesson or group of object-lessons in 
the study of inebriety. Everywhere it was described, cited, 
applauded. It grew renowned. 
When a good man gets hold of a good thing of a public 
nature, his first impulse is to share it with others, and make 
the circle of participants as wide and full as possible. 
Prompted by something akin to this impulse, Dr. Parrish 
in 1870 asked the superintendents, physicians, and others 
officially connected with the scattered inebriate asylums of 
the country, to come together on a designated day in the city 
of New York, with the view of multiplying such institutions, 
and of advancing, in all other feasible modes, the cause they 
represent. His call was cheerfully answered, and at the ap- 
pointed time and place the meeting came to pass, and, in Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
77 
pursuance of its object, organized The American Association 
for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, of which he declined the 
presidency, but accepted the secretaryship, and formulated 
the principles, formulating them so well that they stand now, 
word for word, as he defined them then. At the annual 
meeting of the association two years later, however, he ac- 
cepted the presidency, which he has since held. It is his 
incumbency of this office which furnished the nominal 
occasion of the honors recently paid him at his home in 
Burlington ; the real occasion, as the readers of this Journal 
need not be told, was his unsurpassed services to the cause, 
haloed with the charm of his character. 
The American Association for the Study and Cure of 
Inebriety in a short time made itself felt at home, and by 
consequence known abroad ; insomuch that, attracted by the 
rapid strides of the movement which it heads, Dr. Donald 
Dalrymple of England, M. P. and F\ R G. S., visited this 
country in 1871, expressly to examine the institutions under 
its wing, and, having by the examination satisfied himself of 
their superiority, requested the association to designate “ at 
least two of the most competent and best informed of those 
who are conversant with these institutions” to “come to 
England and give evidence before the Committee of the 
House of Commons,” the question having previously been in- 
troduced into Parliament by Dr. Dalrymple, and referred to 
a select committee, of which he was chairman. In compli- 
ance with this request the association designated Dr. Parrish, 
its president, and Dr D. G. Dodge of Binghamton, N. Y., 
its secretary; who accepted the appointment, and sailed for 
England in April, 1872. It may be noted here, paren- 
thetically, that Dr. Dalrymple, among other institutions in 
our country, examined the Pennsylvania Sanitarium, of which 
in his report to the House of Commons he made this men- 
tion : “ I visited the establishment at Media twice, though I 
only once saw the superintendent, Dr. Parrish, who, from 
length of experience, accurate knowledge, moderation of 
views, and sobriety of judgment, I place at the head of all 
those with whom I have had communication.” 78 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
Dr. Parrish and his colleague, on arriving at London, ap- 
peared before the committee, at intervals, for two weeks, a 
stenographic report of their testimony being taken, and pub- 
lished as a Parliamentary document. The views they ex- 
pressed in the course of their testimony, and which their 
testimony sustained, were unanimously adopted by the com- 
mittee in its report, and subsequently, under the.direction in 
large measure of Dr. Dalrymple himself, carried into effect. 
The American delegates, it should be remembered with 
pride, reflected credit on their country, as well as on the 
association that sent them. The association, it is certain, 
with the movement which it leads, scored a distinct triumph. 
Shortly after the close of this mission, Dr. Parrish, with- 
out his knowledge, was appointed by the President of the 
United States, and duly commissioned, to negotiate a treaty 
with the hostile Indians north of Texas; but in consequence 
of the illness of his wife declined the appointment, persist- 
ing in his declination in spite of repeated solicitations to re- 
consider it. Ultimately the appointment was conferred on 
his brother Edward, mentioned above, who accepted it, but 
unfortunately did not live to return home, dying among the 
Indians whom he had quieted. Not long afterwards, as may 
be remembered, they sent to Washington a great delegation 
of their chiefs, who, after doing homage to their great father 
the President, visited Dr. Parrish at Media, to pay their re- 
spects to him as the brother of their mediator, and relate the 
incidents of his brother’s death, which one of the principal of 
them did in pantomime, with marvelous distinctness and vivid- 
ness. Dr. Parrish received the chiefs with a short speech, 
happily pitched in the key of aboriginal eloquence, which 
they interrupted more than once with profound grunts of ap- 
proval, and at its conclusion responded to it in the same key, 
although an impartial judge, one may be pardoned for think- 
ing, would have pronounced the doctor’s felicitous remarks 
more Indian than those of the Indians themselves. The oc- 
casion, however, is noticed here chiefly on account of the sor- 
rowful event that brought it about. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
79 
In the fall of 1872, the trustees of the Maryland Inebri- 
ate Asylum at Baltimore, Md., called on Dr. Parrish to take 
charge of that institution, which,.though chartered in i860, 
was still on its first legs, that bade fair to prove also its last 
ones, being unknown, distrusted, and all but insolvent. How- 
ever, he consented to take charge of it temporarily, without 
relinquishing the superintendency of the Pennsylvania Sani- 
tarium, and continued in charge of it for two years, at the 
end of which the Asylum, no longer unknown or distrusted, 
was seated in new and beautiful grounds, housed in commodi- 
ous and tasteful buildings, and filled with inmates. He left 
it on the highway to permanent success. 
Dr. Parrish in 1876, after the lapse of nearly a quarter 
of a century, returned with his household to Burlington, 
N. J., vvhich is now his home, and in ail likelihood Will con- 
tinue to be, until he goes to his last home; whither, alas ! 
his estimable and devoted wife preceded him five years ago. 
In the shadow of his bereavement, and possibly thinking to 
assuage his own affliction by the congenial occupation of re- 
moving the afflictions of others, he opened in Burlington a 
private institution known as Parrish’s Home for Invalids, to 
which are admitted a limited number of the milder class of 
nervous patients, and which presents notably the aspect of a 
refined and luxurious home, as it is animated by the spirit of 
one. It fills his ideal of a remedial establishment. A few 
months later, doubtless influenced still by the two-fold motive 
that gave birth to it, he visited England on a tour of inspec- 
tion of similar establishments, and while there was honored 
with a reception at the Dalrymple Home, by the British So- 
ciety for the Study and Cure of Inebriety, of which the dis- 
tinguished Dr. Norman Kerr is president, the invited guests 
numbering about a hundred, and including members of the 
nobility, of the army, and of the clergy, as well as of the 
medical profession. In receiving Dr Parrish the president 
of the society made a congratulatory address, closing with a 
resolution of welcome, which, after being seconded by one 
of the most eminent members of the profession in Great 80 
Nineteenth Animal Meeting. 
Britain, and supported in laudatory speeches by representa- 
tive guests, was passed with cordial unanimity, and of course 
suitably acknowledged by the recipient of the honor. Ur. 
Donald Dalrymple, sad to say, for whom the Dalrymple 
Home was named, and whose tour in this country has been 
referred to, had meantime been numbered with the dead. Dr. 
Parrish, none the worse but rather the better for his trip, re- 
turned home in the spring of 1886. 
Some year and a half later, in June, 1887, he visited Eng- 
land once more, this time as a delegate of the American 
Association to the Colonial and International Congress on 
Inebriety in London, having as his colleagues in the delega- 
tion Dr. T. D. Crothers of Hartford, Conn., secretary of the 
association, and editor of its organ The Quarterly Jour- 
nal of Inebriety, and Dr. T. L. Wright of Ohio, author 
of a profound and striking work entitled “ Inebriism.” The 
day before the meeting of the Congress, the British Society 
gave to Dr. Crothers, in the rooms of the Medical Society of 
London, as it had previously given to Dr. Parrish at the Dal- 
rymple Home, a public reception in consideration of his ser- 
vices to the cause, Dr. Parrish being present as an honored 
guest, and making a graceful speech in acknowledgment of 
the compliment worthily bestowed on his distinguished col- 
league. At a meeting of the Congress which followed in 
Westminster Town Hall, Dr. Parrish presented a paper on 
the question “ Is there a Climacteric Period in Inebriety?” 
which, permission being granted, was read by his friend and 
companion, Mr. W. E. Schermerhorn. The paper was short 
but pregnant and suggestive. During his stay in England he 
received numerous marks of respect from the press as well 
as the profession. The American delegation as a whole, in- 
deed, was the object of especial attentions. He came back 
late in the summer, completing safely and agreeably a voyage 
which, in view of his impaired health, was not without some 
hazard. 
It may be worth while to state here, what was shut out 
above by the sequence of more important things, that Dr. Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
81 
Parrish was invited, as an expert on insanity, to attend the 
autopsy of Guiteau, and when he failed to appear was sum- 
moned by telegraph, with the assurance that the examination, 
should he consent to come, would be deferred till his arrival; 
but he declined to attend. 
Dr. Parrish has no children alive. A son, full of promise, 
died in childhood; and a daughter, Mrs. Charles S. Welles, 
of Elwyn, Pa., his only other child, departed this life in 1879, 
leaving a daughter, now some ten years of age, who is his 
sole lineal descendant living. This child was present at the 
late banquet to her grandfather, as the guests must well re- 
member, for she played among them like a sunbeam. 
In the course of the last year or two, Dr. Parrish, finding 
routine irksome, and feeling more and more the need of free- 
dom from care, resigned the active professional duties of the 
Home to his nephew and associate, Dr. Wm. G. Parrish, de- 
volving at the same time the duties of supervision on Mr. 
Samuel Parrish, his youngest brother, and indeed the youngest 
of the family, albeit he himself, vigorous and bright as he is, 
has entered upon Victor Hugo calls “the youth of age.” 
Dr. Parrish, it is true, remains physician-in-chief, but his serv- 
ices, as befits his years, are consultative rather than opera- 
tive, leaving him at liberty to indulge without restriction his 
tastes for literature and philosophy, for the society of friends, 
and in general for that ease with dignity to which he has so 
richly earned the right. He sits in the evening of life under 
his vine and under his fig-tree, where not only are there none 
to make him afraid, but all vie with each other in filling his 
cup of joy. That which should accompany old age, and which 
none but the good may look to have, is his in flowing measure, 
An estimate of Dr. Parrish’s character and intellect does 
not fall within the scope of this imperfect sketch. Yet a 
word or two on this head may be pardoned. Dr. Parrish in- 
corporates the cardinal virtues, but perhaps the trait of his 
character to which he owes most, and the world after him, is 
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends. 82 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
sympathy,—a sympathy manly, penetrating, true—a sympathy 
that raises instead of lowering the self-respect of its object — a 
sympathy, in fine, that is not pity so much as love. He is 
a man of strong and trained intellect, but his most potent in- 
tellectual trait, if the opinion may be hazarded, is common 
sense — common sense in an uncommon degree. Combine 
these two traits, vitally, and we have a fair working definition 
of genius. We at any rate, it is submitted, have the chief 
agency by which Dr. Parrish has achieved the beneficent 
work of his life. To it may be ascribed, in greater or less 
measure, his rare gift of comprehension, grasping intuitively 
the central point of a question — his rarer gift of expression, 
lodging his thought in the minds of others so simply that it 
seems not his but their own — his power to attract men, 
vitalize great enterprises, and conduct them to fruitful issues. 
It runs through his life like a golden thread. The jewels of 
his fame are strung on it. . , 
But there is one thing about Dr. Parrish, both as a speaker 
and writer, it must be owned, that can hardly be traced to 
this source, lying deeper in his mental and physical organiza- 
tion. And it is a very captivating thing. It is that force 
without effort from which his readers or hearers instinctively 
infer a reserve of force that puts them at ease with him and 
with themselves. At the intellectual feast which he spreads 
no guest ever feels that the service exhausts the supply; 
every one feels that, abundant as the good cheer may be, 
there is more where it came from. His force is not a barrel 
on tap, but a fountain welling forth. And no other trait of 
personality is so significant of the stamina of greatness. 
In person Dr. Parrish is below the middle height, but 
thickset and broad-shouldered, having withal, notwithstanding 
his sturdy build, a suspicion of the scholastic stoop. His 
manner in society is frank and cordial, with a shade of reserve 
in the background, and a touch of positiveness beyond, sug- 
gesting unobtrusively the decision and independence of his 
character. In conversation he is ready and genial, but speaks 
to the point, and stops when he makes it, whether it be serious Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
83 
or playful. If he should live to be twice as old as Methuselah, 
he would not arrive at the stage of garrulity. His quickness 
in retort or repartee is remarkable ; but his satire (of Damas- 
cus keenness and temper) is without question the deadliest 
of his controversial weapons, although, to his credit be it said, 
he has never used it, except under strong provocation, and not 
then save in defence of what he felt to be truth, realizing the 
chivalrous sentiment of Angelo’s suitor: 
It is excellent 
To have a giant’s strength ; but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant. 
He is fond of epistolary writing; and one of his favorite 
pastimes, more especially when bad weather or physical dis- 
ability confines him to the house, is dispatching to his friends 
brief epistles, composed in imitation of the Hebrew idiom, in 
which he is an adept, some of these little screeds rivaling in 
verisimilitude the parable of Franklin’s that once set so many 
bible-readers by the ears. In the circle of his intimate 
friends, at his own home or at theirs, he is simply a boy again, 
and no doubt even a more loveable boy than at first. Here 
he disports himself in anecdote, reminiscence, wit, and pleas- 
antry, returning quip for quirk, and giving the merriest as 
good as he sends, though it should chance to be no better 
than nonsense, which he is too wise a man to answer with 
anything else. Years, while ripening his head, have renewed 
his heart. Admirable in public, and agreeable in society, he 
in private is altogether delightful. His countenance is hand- 
some, expressive of sagacity informed by fellow-feeling, and 
but is it not graven in your frontispiece? 
It is a source of regret that the prescribed limits of this 
volume will not permit the publication of the over three hun- 
dred letters received by the committee, conveying congratu- 
lations to Dr. Parrish and regrets at not being able to be 
present. These letters are literally the most eloquent 
endorsement of the fact of the disease of inebriety and 
the labors of Dr. Parrish to bring this truth before the 84 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
world. Many of them coming from the leading medical 
men of the world, express the greatest interest in the 
medical study of inebriety, and predict in the coming cen- 
tury both the inebriate and his malady will be known and 
treated as successfully as the most common diseases are 
now. These letters show clearly that a great change has 
been going on in the medical world, that the facts which Dr. 
Parrish, his cotemporaries, and our Association have been 
urging for years have taken deep root, and are already recog- 
nized as established truths. The scientific men in the 
profession everywhere are independent thinkers and not 
followers of theory and tradition. Inebriety and its preven- 
tion are questions of fact and their meaning, and not of morals 
and theories. These letters also show that the leaders of the 
profession have started a line of inquiry on the right track, 
and no one can have any fear of the results. 
The following is a list of some of the many physicians 
whose letters are a graceful tribute to Dr. Parrish and his 
work: 
Drs. Meredith, Clymer, N. Y. 
H. R. Storer, Newport, R. I. 
H. G. Taylor, Camden, N. J. 
C. G. Hill, Mount Hope Retreat, 
Baltimore, Md. 
H. M. Lyman, Chicago, 111. 
E. Lamphear, Kansas City, Mo. 
John Morris, Baltimore, Md. 
E. G. Jones, Paterson, N. J. 
J. C. Carson, Syracuse, N. Y. 
P. O. Hooper, Little Rock, Ark. 
H. M. Bannister, Kankakee, 111. 
H. G. Norton, Trenton, N. J. 
G. Brown, Barre, Mass. 
J. W. Ward, Trenton, N. J. 
E. J. Doering, Chicago, 111. 
S. P. Jones, Merchantsville, N. J. 
J. M. Perot, Philadelphia, Penn. 
A. Flint, New York City. 
F. H. Gerrish, Portland, Me. 
F. A. Castle, New York City. 
J. B. Hamilton, Washington, D. C. 
E. M. Hunt, Trenton, N. J. 
A. P. Grinnell, Burlington, Vt. 
Drs.W. W. Godding, Washington, D. C. 
H. H. Longstreet, Bordentown, N. J. 
T. R. Buckman, Flint, Mich. 
J. S. Cohen, Philadelphia, Penn. 
W. F. Waugh, Philadelphia, Penn. 
C. K. Mills, Philadelphia, Penn. 
T. Green, Easton, Penn. 
E. L. B. Godfrey, Camden, N. J. 
S. B. Lyon, Bloomingdale, N. Y. 
C. F. Folsom, Boston, Mass. 
F. Peterson, New York City. 
J. Westar, Salem, N. J. 
L. Starr, Philadelphia, Penn. 
G. H. Rohe, Baltimore, Md. 
I. D. Young, Bordentown, N. J. 
S. W. Mitchell, Philadelphia, Penn. 
W. Hunt, Philadelphia, Penn. 
J. C. Hall, Frankford, Penn. 
G. B. Harris, Pennington, N. J. 
B. F. Lee, Trenton, N. J. 
H. S. Drayton, New York City. 
J. J. Levick, Philadelphia, Penn. 
F. Homer, Marshall, Va. 
A. Liantard, New York City. NineteentJi Annual Meeting. 
85 
II. McGuire, Richmond, Va. 
J. A. Roberts, Philadelphia, Penn. 
Pliny Earle, Northampton, Mass. 
J. C. Billings, Washington, D. C. 
J. H. Shoemaker, Philadelphia, Penn, 
A. Vandervere, Albany, N. Y. 
C. F. Barber, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
A. II. Smith, New York City. 
J. A. Lanigan, Hyde Park, Mass. 
T. W. Wright, Bellefontaine, O. 
F. B. I.evis, Mount Holly, N. J. 
R. W. Amidon, New York City. 
G. S. Hall, Worcester, Mass. 
II. A. Buttolph, Short Hills, N. J. 
B. T. Sanborn, Augusta, Me. 
A. L. Carroll, New York City. 
M. O'Hara, Philadelphia, Penn. 
T. B. Evans, Baltimore, Md. 
P. S. Conner, Cincinnati, O. 
B. Sachs, New York City. 
W. F. Hutchinson, Providence, R. I. 
J. W. White, Philadelphia, Penn. 
M. I). Hussey, East Orange, N. J. 
H. O. Marcy, Boston, Mass. 
L. E. Sayres, New York City. 
W. A. Hammond, Washington, D. C. 
G. O. Harlan, Philadelphia, Penn. 
I. N. Quimby, Jersey City, N. J. 
D. II. Agnew, Philadelphia, Penn. 
G. M. Hammond, New York City. 
J. Leidy, Philadelphia, Penn. 
A. Bennett, Norristown, Penn. 
C. H. Thomas, Philadelphia, Penn. 
E. P. Brewer, Norwich, Conn. 
L. C. Gray, Burlington, N. J. 
J. H. Blanchard, Fort Hamilton, N.Y- 
C. H. Hughes, St. Louis, Mo. 
G Goodell, Sykesville, N. J. 
F. Gaunt, Burlington, N. J. 
A. Gaunt, Burlington, N. J. 
F. A. Gile, East Orange, N. J. 
W. B. Hopkins, Philadelphia, Penn. 
W. Way, Elmira, N. Y. 
W. O. Potter, Buffalo, N. Y. 
J. W. Barstow, Blushing, N. Y. 
C. Thwing, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
J. Field, Philadelphia, Penn. 
R. I. Dunglison, Philadelphia, Penn. 
L. W. Baker, Baldwinsville, Mass. 
M. J. Dunlap, Vineland, N. J. 
J. H. Thompson, New York City. 
E. C. Mann, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
J. A. Loveland, Gilsum, N. H. 
F. H. Milliken, Philadelphia, Penn. 
D. Benjamin, Camden, N. J. 
J. B. Mathison, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
L. Van Rensselaer, 
W. E. Hall, 
J. H. Pugh, 
Burlington, N J. 
The following is a partial list of eminent clergymen, law- 
yers, editors, judges, and leading philanthropists who sent 
warm letters of congratulation : 
Clark Bell, New York City. 
M. R. Thayer, Philadelphia, Penn. 
Howard Crosby, New York City. 
H. Meltenbergers, Baltimore, Md. 
B. J. Lavell, Morristown, N. J. 
G. H. Barker, Philadelphia, Penn. 
T. T. Price, Tuckertown, N. J. 
C. II. Babcock, New York City. 
R. II. Page, Columbus, O. 
S. B. Collins, New York City. 
C. T. Taylor, Philadelphia, Penn. 
S. D. Wharton, Philadelphia, Penn. 
J. C. Morris, Philadelphia, Penn. 
B. Williamson, Elizabeth, N. J. 
M. B. Wiggins, Hightstown, N. J. 
A. G. Cattell, Merchantsville, N. J. 
S. L. Parrish, Philadelphia, Penn. 
C. Fisher, Lancaster, Penn. 
C. E. Hendrickson, Mount Holly, N. J. 
T. M. Eastwood, Burlington, N. J. 
W. N. Souder, Burlington, N. J. 
A. H. McNeal, Burlington, N. J. 
J. B. Westcott, Burlington, N. J. 
F. Brown, Burlington, N. J. 
E. Bowen, Burlington, N. J. 
C. R. Grubb, Burlington, N. J. 
N. Bugby, Burlington, N. J. 
II. D. Gummers, Burlington, N. J. 86 
Nineteenth Annual Meeting. 
The following graceful little poem has a special interest: 
In the glow of the calm, still evening, 
Who asks if the day were clear ? 
What matters the changing record 
When heaven seems drawing near ? 
Were these clouds at morning or mid-day, 
Concealing the tranquil blue ? 
They have passed away, and their lining 
Is turned to our wondering view. 
There are rifts in the glorious shadings 
Through which streams a golden glow, 
As we think on “ the glory excelling,” 
We whisper—“ We then shall know.” 
What is here but half-apprehended 
Shall be clear as the clearness of day ; 
This sweet revelation at sunset 
Sheds glory upon our way. 
So, my friend, to you who have numbered 
Your three score years and ten, 
Has come the calm, still evening, 
With touches of glory, when 
The friends who gather around you, 
Rejoice in the growing light 
Of a life whose undimmed luster 
Points on, past the shadows of night; 
Of a life in which love is triumphant, 
In which faith in brother man 
Has wrought its benign redemption, 
According to God’s own plan 
So, blessings upon the evening, 
The beautiful, tranquil hour, 
With its glow of heavenly glory, 
Its teachings of heavenly power. 
These lines are sent to my dear friend as a birth-day 
greeting from one whose life has been blessed and bright- 
ened by his goodness. With daily remembrance of the 
past, and daily prayers for his happiness, his friend, 
S. D. Neilson. 
Rogerville, Tenn. PARRISH’S HOME FOR INVALIDS. 
AT BURLINGTON, NEW JERSEY. 
JOSEPH PARRISH, M.D., Founder and Physician in Chief. 
WM. C. PARRISH, M.D., Associate. 
SAMUEL PARRISH, Supervisor. 
I'he Home is for that class of persons recognized as Nervous. 
It is emphatically a family home, with the privacy and free- 
dom of domestic life, the patients being under the counsel and 
guidance of experienced physicians, may often avoid the alterna- 
tive of commitment to a public Asylum or Hospital. Disappoint- 
ments, loss of property, grief, mental strain and worry, over-work, 
excess in the use of stimulants and narcotics, hysteria, are fre- 
quently associated with, or complicated by, Neuralgia, Rheuma- 
tism, Gout, Dyspepsia, and even Lung troubles, for all of which 
appliances are available in the way of Baths — Russian, Medicated, 
Massage — Electricity, &c.; and the Oxygen Treatment, the value of 
which in incipient Throat and Lung diseases is generally conceded. 
An attractive feature of the Home treatment is the removal 
of the family, during the summer, to a Country Seat in the vicinity, 
or to the Seaside, Mountains, or other Resort, accompanied by the 
Superintendent and Staff. 
Terms are arranged with or for each person, according to cir- 
cumstances and requirements. For further information call on or 
address JOSEPH PARRISH, M.D., 
Burlington, New Jersey.