Introductory Address 
TO THE 
Annual Course of Lectures 
IN 
JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE. 
Delivered before the Board of Trustees, Faculty, and Students 
of the College, on October i, 1883. 
By THEOPHILUS PARVIN, M.D., LL.D., 
Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. 
Reprinted from The Medical Bulletin. 
Philadelphia, October, 1883. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
TO THE 
Annual Course of Lectures, Jefferson Mhdicj>r College, Session 
Bv Theophilus Parvin, M.D., LL. D. 
A JUST conception of medicine is 
essential to the best medical study, 
and to the most successful medical 
life. He who would be a physician, indeed, 
must know the true character of medi- 
cine, its spirit, its genius. As thy faith is, 
so shall it be unto thee, has a far wider 
meaning than that which belongs to a 
single event of life. Thy faith ? Thy 
conception, thy belief, thy ideal, thy fixed 
conviction, a power permeating the soul, 
in-forming desire and thought, pervading 
words and deeds, and living in thy life. 
It is, therefore, believed that the Genius 
of Medicine is an appropriate theme for 
the occasion,—the beginning of the an- 
nual course of lectures in this honored 
institution. 
But what is the Genius of Medicine ? 
As the prism separates the solar beam 
into the many colors which, again com- 
bined, make pure light, so we may take 
the various characteristics of this genius, 
which, by their union, make its living 
power. 
First, this genius, this spirit of medi- 
cine, is scientific. A witty Frenchman,* 
referring to the scientific claims of medi- 
cines, gives, as a positive proof that a 
science does not yet exist, the fact that 
such alleged science is held to be com- 
mon property, adding, in illustration: 
“ My porter does not hesitate to diagnose 
a disease, to point out its cause, to pre- 
scribe a remedy, and to predict the result. 
He thinks he has a right to do so, and it 
seems that he has, for one readily listens 
to him, and often follows his advice.” 
But tried by this test many an admitted 
science would lose its claim. 
orology is a science, but are weather' 
prophecies confined to those who have 
studied it ? There are many persons, 
both in country and in town, who have 
that 
“ Old experience which doth attain 
To something of the prophetic strain,” 
and who often foretell with great cer- 
tainty the weather which the day or the 
morrow will bring forth ; at least their 
prophecies are quite as frequently veri- 
fied as the correct diagnosis and treat- 
ment of disease are made by the igno- 
rant. Theology is a science, and yet a 
well-known lawyer, possibly more famous 
for his oratory than for his legal learning, 
does not hesitate to decide the gravest 
theological problems—giving his solution 
from the platform with the greatest gen- 
erosity to his suffering fellow-beings at 
fifty cents a head—problems that have 
engaged the prolonged and profound 
study of great divines, such as Edwards, 
Stuart, Alexander, Hodge, Breckinridge, 
Thornwell. Law is a science, but some 
man who never gave a thought to Black- 
stone or Coke, except possibly as sugges- 
tive of winter fuel, may offer to solve 
legal problems, and sometimes may pre- 
dict the decision of a court, or the verdict 
of a jury, quite as correctly as even a 
Philadelphia lawyer. 
But, passing from this negative criti- 
cism, Comte’s definition of a science as 
that knowledge which enables us to fore- 
see and foretell results, justifies giving 
this name to medicine. Let any case of 
common disease be examined by half a 
dozen educated physicians, there would 
be in almost all instances entire agree- 
* Louis Peisse, La Medicine et les Medicine. ’ 2 
ment as to the nature of the malady, as 
to its course, and as to the means ad- 
visable to alleviate it, or to shorten its 
duration. The natural history of diseases 
is so well known the physician can, in 
most cases, foresee and foretell their 
course. “It is not essential to science 
that it be at any given time complete 
or free from error. It is called science 
in reference to the aims and methods of 
the intellectual process of which it is the 
result, not in reference to its own abso- 
lute correctness and completeness.” What 
adventurous explorer in any part of the 
domain of physical science dare say he 
has seen the pillars of Hercules, that 
there is nothing more to learn, or noth- 
ing to unlearn? 
The certainties in diagnosis and in 
prognosis given in recent years by the 
thermometer, the microscope, the oph- 
thalmoscope, the laryngoscope, the spec- 
troscope, and the sphygmograph, add to 
the just claim of medicine to be called 
science; and, finally, the electric light waits 
to reveal pathological changes in the living 
hitherto recognized only after death. 
In the department of therapeutics very 
important advances have been made in 
recent years; indeed, the treatment of 
disease becomes every year more scien- 
tific, less empirical. In this treatment 
physicians generally prefer a few and sim- 
ple rather than many and compound rem- 
edies, an Enfield rifle, rather than a Gat- 
ling gun. But in this they imitate the 
great masters. Hippocrates used but few 
medicines. Sydenham half jestingly said 
that he could carry all the medicines he 
needed in the head of his cane, and Boer- 
haave, I believe, said the enlightened phy- 
sician could practise medicine with opium, 
cinchona, tartar emetic, wine, and water. 
If Hoffman were to return to this earth he, 
while still using his famous anodyne, 
would rejoice in the great advance made 
in therapeutics, and cheerfully recant the 
famous declaration of scepticism he made : 
Fuge medicos et me die amenta, si vis esse 
salvus. 
While rejoicing in the important posi- 
tion which medicine holds to-day, the 
student must not forget that the founda- 
tions of our science were laid, and the 
form of the superstructure largely directed 
by that noble Greek who must ever be 
among physicians as Alexander among 
warriors, Homer among poets, and Plato 
among philosophers, the divine Hip- 
pocrates. It seems certain that neither 
the Jews nor the Egyptians made any im- 
portant contribution to the beginning of 
scientific medicine, though recently it has 
been stated* that the physicians in the time 
of the Pharaohs recognized the heart as the 
centre of the circulatory system, and 
referred the beating of the pulse to its 
movements. Still other discoveries are 
attributed to the priestly physicians ot 
the Nile. 
Nevertheless the general rule is, as 
stated by Boyer, that in all peoples who 
have left durable traces in the arts and 
sciences, the arts have flourished first; 
the imagination awakens the other facul- 
ties, the poets open the scene, the philoso- 
phers and savants follow. But Egypt 
failed to take the first step. The Jews 
indeed had their poets, whose lips were 
touched with hallowed fire, and whose 
sublime utterances are for all the races 
and all the ages : but it must be remem- 
bered that this people had an admirable 
system of preventive medicine, and there- 
fore but little necessity existed for the 
study of the cure of disease. 
Darembergf has clearly shown that 
Greek medicine, the origin of the medi- 
cine of to-day, came neither from the 
temples, nor from the gymnasia, nor from 
the schools of philosophy, but from the 
laboratory of physicians. In Homer the 
medicine is quite human, and even on 
Olympus the physician of the gods used 
means familiar to the physicians of the 
Greek army. He further observes that 
theurgic medicine occasionally appears 
in the time intervening between Homer 
* Dr. George Ebers, Cotemporary Review, June, 1883- 
f Histoire des Sciences Medicates. Paris, 1870. 3 
and Hippocrates, but true medicine still 
lived without eclipse, just as it lives to-day 
without eclipse by spirit-rapping, animal 
magnetism, or hoirueopathy. Esculapius, 
who was the chief medical officer of the 
Greek army, seems to have been brevetted 
for distinguished services ; as he did not 
want an office he was given divine 
honors. But, sad to say, getting his god- 
ship had a very bad effect upon his charac- 
ter ; he became so extremely avaricious, 
he did worse than engage in the grave-rob- 
bing business, he went to breaking open 
the jail, and letting prisoners out, pro- 
vided they paid him well ; in other words, 
he restored the dead to life. As this sort 
of work threatened to depopulate Hades, 
Pluto, who had a monopoly in the whole- 
sale undertaking business, made appeal to 
Jupiter, who, very properly and promptly, 
with one of those many thunderbolts 
which he had at hand, knocked Escula- 
pius forever out of time. Since then doc- 
tors have let dead people stay dead, influ- 
enced to this conservative conduct quite 
as much by fear of the fate of Esculapius 
as by the reason which Moliere has put 
in the mouth of Sganarelle: “ The best 
of this profession is, that there is the 
greatest honesty and discretion among 
the dead ; for you never find them com- 
plain of the physician who has killed 
them.” 
But, leaving myths that came into the 
history of medicine after Homer sang the 
wrath of Achilles, let us see something 
of the work that Hippocrates did toward 
the establishment of scientific medicine. 
He emancipated medicine from supersti- 
tion and charlatanry; he co-ordinated 
facts that had been collected, separated 
between the true and false; he taught 
that pathology was a part of physiology ; 
he urged the importance of careful clini- 
cal observation. Lord Bacon, whose 
great mind grasped so many subjects of 
human knowledge, irradiating all it 
touched, gives just honor and importance 
to medicine, but condemns “ the discon- 
tinuance of the ancient and serious dili- 
gence of Hippocrates, which used to set 
down a narrative of the special cases of 
his patients, and how they were judged 
by recovery or death."’ 
That the medical views of Hippocrates 
were eminently catholic is shown by the 
fact that many of the schools springing 
up after his day, claimed his authority ; 
but he belonged to none ; he belonged to 
all, for he had uttered such truth as each 
had, and he had united these individual 
truths in a harmonious whole which they 
took asunder, trying, like some medical 
sects do to-day, to build a house with one 
brick. Malarial fever is known 'to some- 
times occur in puerperal women, and 
within a few years a question of priority 
in its description has been mooted relat- 
ing to two distinguished American phy- 
sicians. But the disease was most accu- 
rately described in the beginning of the 
present century by Osiander, and by 
Torti at a still earlier date. I believe we 
must go back very much farther, finding 
the first reference to the disorder in 
Hippocrates ; certainly he has described 
a disease now known as puerperal sep- 
ticemia. Littre has shown that this man, 
whom Galen termed the greatest of phy- 
sicians and the first of philosophers, 
observed facts more than 300 years B. C., 
which have been re-discovered in our day. 
Thus in “the Epidemics” he describes 
a disease characterized by cough which 
was often followed by paralysis : this 
disease was diphtheritic angina, some- 
times simple angina, as shown by Gubler 
and Trousseau. For twenty-two cen- 
turies the connection between angina and 
paralysis was not recognized. Accord- 
ing to Laennec, Hippocrates* furnishes 
the germ of auscultation ; he describes 
paralysis of the veil of the palate accom- 
panying paralysis of the face ; lesions of 
the right side of the brain causing paraly- 
sis of the opposite side of the body ; 
muscular atrophy following paralysis ; 
erysipelas of the throat complicating ery- 
* “ Physicians who understand percussion and auscultation 
have halt of medicine, and two-thirds of diagnosis.”—Darem- 
berg. 4 
sipelas of the skin ; gangrenous erysipe- 
las ; hydatid cysts of the lung. 
The character and work of this wonder- 
ful man have been thus summed up:* 
A man grave, modest, wise, charitable, 
careful of the dignity of his art, avowing 
his frequent powerlessness; a sagacious 
observer, endowed with exquisite medical 
sense, judging phenomena in their con- 
nection, he assured to medicine a form 
which has triumphed over the ages. 
But further, the genius of Hippocrates 
made known what Chauffardf eulogized 
as the traditional truths of medicine. 
These primordial truths are the autonomy 
of life, the unity of existence, its sponta- 
neity, and its own finality. These prin- 
ciples were the soul of Hippocratic medi- 
cine; they animated it, gave it life, and 
under their inspiration, though • the 
anatomy and physiology of the day were 
in almost hopeless infancy, a body of medi- 
cal doctrine, a system of medical science 
was formed. From age to age, through all 
the development of the science, these 
truths, the first views because they are 
first in splendor and power, have remained 
in some way immutable, reappear with 
increasing power, lifted above all strifes, 
all vanishing opinions of the day, receiv- 
ing a sovereign authority by common 
consent, transmitted from master to mas- 
ter, from teaching to teaching. 
Medicine is not only scientific, but it is 
progressive ; onward is ever the voice of 
its genius, and the example of its teachers 
and disciples. The progress made in the 
past fifty years is but faint prophecy of 
that which will be made in the next fifty, 
that which hath been but the earnest of 
that which shall be, for the scientific 
spirit is everywhere quickened, the means 
for scientific research constantly increased 
and improved, the great army of workers 
becoming larger, and the facilities for in- 
ter-communication and for interchange of 
thought so great. It seems a sad thought 
that a successful medical book rarely lives 
more than twenty years ; but the fact is a 
striking testimony to the rapidity of medi- 
cal progress. How the words of our 
great master come to us with their simple 
majesty, and yet almost with the sadness 
of a threnody: Life is short; art is 
long; the occasion fleeting ; experience 
fallacious, and judgment difficult. 
The very fact that so much remains to 
be discovered in medicine makes it one of 
the most inviting subjects of study, “for 
the sciences always studied with keenest 
interest are those in a state of progress 
and uncertainty; absolute certainty and 
completion would be the paralysis of any 
study.” 
Honest pleasure and just pride in dis- 
covery await the diligent medical student. 
Read Aselli’s account of the joy he had 
when he discovered the lymphatics. Think 
of the undying glory which belongs to 
the name of Harvey from his discovery 
of the circulation of the blood, a discovery 
which at first was denied by many of 
the physicians of his day, but gradually 
gained acceptance. Strange too, to say, 
one of the most learned of American phy- 
sicians, the late Dr. John Redman Coxe, 
of this city, published a work to show that 
“ of all the ancients and moderns Harvey 
had least to do with the discovery which 
has made his name immortal.” 
Sometimes the zeal for discovery has 
been so great that a false fact has been 
found, and physicians have disputed the 
question of priority; thus two* of the 
profession in the seventeenth century 
quarrelled as to which was the first to find 
an acid in the blood. 
Important as are discoveries in anatomy 
and in physiology, those discoveries which 
are directly applicable to the prevention 
of disease, such as vaccination, or for the 
immediate relief of pain, such as the use 
of anesthetics, adding at once to the 
power of medical art, seem the more im- 
portant. The word “ art ” is probably 
derived from the Greek apery, signifying 
goodness, excellence, power, force ; it is, 
* Revue des Deux Mondes, 1883. 
f Des Verites Traditionelles en Medecine. 
* Vieussens and Chiras. 5 
indeed, in medicine, its practical good- 
ness, excellence, power, force. Increase 
in medical science is the enlargement of 
medical art. Science, knowledge organ- 
ized in a system, a body of truth, reasons, 
but art acts; science has laws, art has 
rules ; science does head-work, art hand- 
work ; science asks why, art knows lioiv ; 
in medicine the one is the necessary com- 
plement of the other. 
In one respect the medicine of to-day 
is probably inferior to that of Galen’s 
time, the inferiority being in the number 
of specialties. Then there were not only 
oculists, lithotomists, herniotomists, and 
others, but also doctors who did nothing 
but bleed, some from artery, others from 
vein, and doctors who limited their prac- 
tice to giving clysters. If the last spe- 
cialty is revived in our day those devoted 
to it would doubtless take the name of 
clysterodidomatisis. Ah, how the length 
and euphony of that word, which can be 
rolled as a sweet morsel in the mouth, 
and which one speaks so trippingly on the 
tongue, clysterodidomatists, would excite 
the just envy of ophthalmologist and gyne- 
cologist, who have so greatly enriched 
medical language with sesquipedalian 
and euphonious Greek compounds! 
The genius of medicine is catholic. 
This catholicity is evident: first, in the 
physician’s comprehending the entire 
nature of man, and thus understanding 
his true character. To the mere physi- 
ologist, man is simply a living organism 
with machinery working not unlike that 
of a monkey or a dog, or some other 
inferior animal. The psychologist tells 
us in the words of Phavorinus, which 
were written upon the walls of S'ir Wil- 
liam Hamilton’s lecture-room, in the 
University of Edinburgh : On earth there 
is nothing great but man ; in man there 
is nothing great but mind. The divine 
has his attention directed especially to 
man’s moral nature, and seeks to bring it 
under the control of the highest motives 
and the most sacred influences. The 
political economist sees in man either 
producer or consumer; the legislator 
sees him the subject of poll-tax, if he be 
a man, but if he be a woman, only a 
promising candidate for the burden and 
responsibility of a poll-tax, which then, 
in the belief of those who are not yet 
educated up to the advanced thought of 
the times, would be a very great poll evil. 
The poet, the novelist, the philosopher, 
each has his ideal man, and generally 
this ideal is very different from the actual 
man as the physician knows him. The 
doctor comprehends the three-fold na- 
ture of man—man intellectual, moral, 
physical, and thus comes to a true 
anthropology. He sees him, not in the 
framed and flattering picture of the artist, 
not arrayed in the clothing of social con- 
ventionalism, but without artificial adorn- 
ment, and stripped of all disguise; he 
sees him at all times, in all places, in all 
circumstances; he knows the glory and 
the shame, the power and the weakness, 
the valor and the cowardice, the good- 
ness and the wickedness, the selfishness 
and the self-sacrifice, the virtue and the 
vice, the joy, the hope, the gratitude, the 
love, and the despair, the hate, the in- 
gratitude, the sin and the sorrow of this 
human nature. 
The genius of medicine is catholic as 
to its creed. From Hippocrates on, true 
medicine has lived despite the work of 
system-makers and the defection of sects. 
Theurgic medicine, dogmatism, method- 
ism, empiricism, humorism, pneumatism, 
iatro mechanism, iatro-chemicism, vital- 
ism, animism, no more did it permanent 
harm than can any of the unnamed path- 
ies of the day. 
“ Like clouds that rake the mountain’s summit, 
Or waves that own no curbing hand, 
How fast has system followed system 
From sunshine to the sunless land.” 
A whole truth, a half truth has some 
times been made the foundation of a 
theory, of a school, while the great body of 
medical verities was ignored. How many 
false facts, too, as well as false theories, 
have been brought forward in medicine. 
Think of so able a man as Von Helmont 
believing and telling this story : A citi- 
I zen of Brussels having lost his nose in a 6 
combat, consulted a surgeon named Tag- 
liacozzi. The latter, to cure the deform- 
ity, took a flap from the arm of a domes- 
tic and the patient returned home. Thir- 
teen months after, he was suddenly sur- 
prised by finding his nose becoming cold 
and immediately mortifying. How did 
this happen ? After many lamentations 
and inquiries it was learned that the 
domestic from whose arm the nose had 
been borrowed, died at the moment the 
organ became cold. Think, too, of the 
illustrious Sylvius, compelling his patients 
to drink from one hundred and fifty to 
two hundred cups of tea every day. For- 
tunately this practice did not prevail in 
1774, in this country, when patriotic 
Americans were emptying the Chinese 
leaf by the ship-load into the sea. 
Belonging to the same century as 
Sylvius, we have the illustrious Des 
Cartes proclaiming that man and all ani- 
mals are mere automata, machines, and 
anticipating Professor Huxley’s compari- 
son of man to a clock. Des Cartes was 
more generous than some who have 
adopted his automatic theory, for he 
allowed man a soul, seating it upon the 
pineal gland like an English sparrow 
perched on the top of a telegraph pole. 
As Professor Huxley* has so highly 
commended his theory of automatism, 
let me quote a distinguished physician's!" 
general estimate of his contributions to 
medicine. Des Cartes introduced into 
physiology, and maintained in anatomy, 
more new errors than he destroyed old. 
He was the parent of the worst part of 
the iatro-chemical school, and the Carte- 
sian physicians were generally very bad 
physiologists, and only moderately good 
anatomists. 
Des Cartes denied mind to animals; 
they did not feel any more than the plant 
feels the warmth of the sun or the chill 
of the frost; and thus vivisection was 
encouraged. He was himself a vivisec- 
tor, and his example was followed by 
the recluses of Port Royal, who made 
the following a syllogism of their logic : 
No matter thinks : every soul of beast is 
matter: therefore no soul of beast thinks. 
I would rather take my lesson in the treat- 
ment of animals from Coleridge’s Ancient 
Mariner than from Des Cartes: 
“ He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast.” 
The genius of medicine is catholic in 
its relations to science, to philosophy, 
and to social interests, and is one of the 
most important factors in the progress of 
civilization. But these topics can only 
be suggested, not enlarged upon. 
Medicine is catholic in its practice. 
The physician is ready to relieve the 
poor as well as the rich, the mean as well 
as the noble; the cry of suffering, no 
matter whether it comes from hall or 
hovel, from virtue or vice, from learned 
or ignorant, is his call to duty. Hip- 
pocrates expressly directed that the physi- 
cian sent for by two patients, one poor 
and the other rich, should go to the 
former; and the illustrious Bayle at- 
tended to poor clients, spending upon 
them in the latter years of his life a large 
part of that which he had accumulated 
by practice, saying that the rich could 
always get doctors; when an urgent 
call to the sick comes the physician 
rarely thinks of his fees, but, if possible, 
goes at once. However, our charities 
for the relief of the sick poor have 
become so well organized, hospitals and 
dispensaries abounding where the best 
professional services can be had gratui- 
tously, there is less demand for the sacri- 
fice inculcated by Hippocrates and prac- 
tised by Bayle and so many others. 
The genius of medicine is beneficent. 
It is not necessary before an audience so 
largely professional as this to argue that 
medical agents have power to assist the 
natural course of certain diseases to re- 
covery, to shorten the duration of others, 
to immediately arrest still others, and to 
lessen and remove physical suffering; inex- 
orable death claims us all at last as victims, 
buthiscoming maybe delayed, life length- 
ened by the physician’s art. The fact 
that quitea million of men and hundreds ot 
women are engaged in the practice of med- 
icine is proof that there is need for them. 
Not only is the beneficence of medicine 
manifested in the cure of disease, but in 
its prevention. Sanitary science, preven- 
tive medicine, has rendered impossible 
those terrible epidemics which in past 
centuries ravaged the great centers of 
* Address before the International Medical Congress, 1881. 
■f Daremberg. 7 
population ; the sanitary state of a people 
is the criterion of their civilization. 
While the most important sanitary 
work belongs to health officers, to the 
medical members of sanitary boards, and 
to physicians to'public institutions, yet in 
private practice the opportunities and the 
demand for this work are great. The 
office of family physician, that position 
held by the great majority of the profes- 
sion, brings mote happiness where the 
medical adviser is sincerely respected, 
trusted, loved, than public honors or great 
wealth, and offers abundant opportunities 
to prevent disease and to promote health. 
Moreover, how much the family physician 
can do to set lives right morally as well 
as physically; to allay social discord, 
to correct misunderstandings, to comfort 
the sorrowing, to give garments of praise 
for the spirit of heaviness, to rouse a 
slumbering will, sometimes to reclaim the 
profligate, enforcing the highest lessons 
of virtue from the penalties of disease, 
in short to make men, women, and chil- 
dren healthier, happier, better. Oh, what 
infinite sympathy the physician learns to 
exercise, the loving charity that must be 
his, forbearing harsh judgment and stern 
reproach, as he knows the frailties and the 
follies, the sins and sorrows of mortals ! 
Knowledge and love are necessary 
for this priestly calling. Hippocrates 
declared that ours was the most noble of 
arts, and that we must love man if we 
wou’d exercise it aright. 
Very justly, too, does he speak of the 
incompetent physicians of his day, who, 
of course, were relatively much more 
numerous then than now, comparing them 
to the figures which are introduced in tra- 
gedies, for as they have the shape, and 
dress, and personal appearance of an actor, 
but are not actors, so also physicians are 
many in title, but very few in reality. 
The genius of medicine is heroic. The 
heroism of physicians has sometimes come 
from their love of science ; but more fre- 
quently its source has been conscience, 
and philanthropy. To them medicine is 
alike a code of morals and a mission of 
love. Doctors have inoculated them- 
selves with the poison of specific disease, 
in some cases to study its effects, in others 
to allay the fears of hospital patients. On 
all the battle-fields, where masses of men 
are hurled against each other for the 
destruction of human life, the physician 
goes to save life. In hospitals, where 
contagious epidemics are rife, he makes 
his way, with never a thought of his own 
safety, if he can save others. When the 
pestilence rages in some of our Southern 
cities, and all who can flee from its ter- 
rors, physicians not only remain to com- 
bat the disease, but, if need be, a brave 
army of volunteers go to their help, 
laboring with them,and in many instances 
’dying with them. The Church has its 
noble army of martyrs embalmed in per- 
petual loving remembrance. Medicine 
has its army of martyrs whose names 
should never perish. 
How many a surgeon after performing 
tracheotomy in a case of diphtheria, has 
found the tube obstructed, his patient in 
peril of instant death, and has applied his 
mouth to the tube, removed the obstruc- 
tion, saving his patient, it may be, but 
killing himself. When the Alabama was 
hopelessly disabled by the well-directed 
shots of the Kearsage, the gallant sur- 
geon, Lewellyn, got his wounded men in 
the only two boats left, but, though urged, 
refused to enter either of them lest by 
overloading the safety of his patients 
might be imperilled, and went down with 
the ill-fated ship to sudden death, but to an 
immortal memory. It is needless to 
multiply cases ; the history of medicine is 
full of instances where the physician 
has sacrificed himself for the good of 
others. Does any one suggest that 
Galen refused the request of Marcus 
Aurelius to accompany the army against 
the Germanic tribes, and that he ran away 
from Rome because of the plague ? As 
to the first, possibly Galen had no taste 
for military surgery, and he wanted to 
finish in the quietness ofhis Roman home 
some one of the three or four hundred 
volumes he wrote. As to the second 
charge, running away from the plague, 
who knows but that was a campaign lie ? 
The Greek doctors at Rome said all sorts 
of naughty things about Galen, scarcely 
scrupled at any means in their efforts to 
break him down ; and, as probably some 
know, medical campaigns even in this day 
occasionally fail in always giving illus- 
trations of the love of truth characteristic 
of George Washington. 8 
Nevertheless I am afraid the case 
against Galen* is too strong to admit of 
excuse ; it can only be said that his con- 
duct was quite exceptional; the great ma- 
jority of the profession meet disease rather 
than run away from it, risking their lives 
bravely and cheerfully if thereby they can 
save the lives of others. 
Finally, the genius of medicine is rev- 
erent. This human body even in its 
dumb dissection speaks of power and 
wisdom that no merely human hypothesis 
can explain. Even conceding Haeckel’s'! 
assertion of spontaneous generation as 
the beginning of life on this earth, and 
from this starting-point tracing the evo- 
lution of man, it is utterly inconceivable 
that such result could be accomplished 
without a directing mind. However, this 
opens too wide a discussion for the pres- { 
ent occasion, though even Dr. Maudsley, 
in his recent work upon Body and Will, 
says, in referring to the ovum, “ in its 
nature is inscribed the architectural plan 
ox form of its development,” and one nat- 
urally asks, “ Who made that plan ? ” It 
is vain to attempt to get rid of the notion 
that a product implies a producer, that 
houses, and books, watches, and all won- 
derful pieces of machinery never make 
themselves, but that they are the thoughts 
of men given expression and form ; the 
common sense of men revolts at the sug- 
gestion that this world, with its flora and 
fauna, is such an infinitely improbable 
accident as could be made by a blind 
evolution. If, says Voltaire, a watch 
proves a watchmaker, a palace an archi- 
tect, how is it that the universe does not 
demonstrate a supreme intelligence ? 
What plant, what animal, what element, 
what star, does not bear the imprint of 
Him whom Plato called the eternal 
Geometer? It seems to me that the 
body of the least animal demonstrates a 
profoundness and unity of design which 
ought to enrapture us with admiration. 
It is useless for any one to tell us that 
monism and evolution explain the mys- 
teries of organic life, and of man, the 
highest in earth’s creation ; we must still 
believe in design, and in an intelligent 
designer, no matter how near to or 
remote from his work, no matter whether 
the chain of second causes has a dozen 
or a million links. 
In the study of anatdmy and physi- 
ology the evidences of design, of con- 
trivance are apparent to every thoughtful 
mind. Let me suggest from the almost 
infinite number a few : some of the veins 
in the human body have valves, others 
as the visceral veins and the vena por- 
tarum are valveless, and the law, as stated 
by Marey, is that those veins do not 
have valves which are not subject to 
localized and intermittent pressure. This 
difference cannot result from chance. 
The walls of the left ventricle of the 
heart are much thicker than those of the 
j right; but in the foetus the walls are of 
equal thickness ; a study of the differ- 
ence between the intra-uterine and extra- 
uterine circulation gives a reason tor this 
difference. Why should the sebaceous 
glands of the foetus be so active that its 
body is more or less covered with fatty 
matter? Because immersed in the fluid it 
it is, there would possibly be a danger- 
ous osmosis froqi its blood, and certainly 
it would present at birth a shrivelled, 
wrinkled appearance like one’s hands 
after having been kept in water for some 
time. In the latter part of pregnancy the 
fibrin undergoes a wonderful increase. 
Why ? As the most important safe- 
guard against post partum hemorrhage. 
But I cannot continue these illustrations. 
Observe, think, in the course of your 
professional studies, and you will find 
abundant reason for faith in final causes. 
The great founder of pathological anat- 
omy, Morgagni, said,“ The more I study 
anatomy, physiology, pathology, and 
pathological anatomy, the better I know 
God, the soul, and its immortality.” 
I believe that whether we take medi- 
cine as a study or as a practice, or the 
examples of the most illustrious men in 
the profession, we may justly say that the 
genius of medicine is profoundly reverent. 
“ The grand voices of the profession unite 
with the grand voice of nature to 
affirm the existence and the attributes of 
a supreme legislator, that of our spiritual 
nature, of the faculties which distinguish 
it, and the certainty of our future destiny.” 
* Dechambre, in his interesting article upon Deontologie, 
Dictionnai,e F.ncyclopediqu* des Sciences Medicates, sug- 
gests that Galen went away to escape the hatred of the Greek 
doctors. The plague of lying lips may be worse than any 
bodily plague, and the pestilent breath of the slanderer, who 
tries to. traduce any one who is more prominent than he, 
may be feared more than physical disease.