PROF. PATTERSON'S 
TOLlIDOCTsWo VALEDICTORY ADDRESS 
TO THE 
GRADUATING CLASS 
OF THE 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE, 
AT THE 
ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 
March 7, 1849, 
BY 
HENRY S. PATTERSON, M. D. 
Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 9 SANSOM STREET. 
1849. VALEDICTORY. 
Gentlemen : 
The prescribed term of your study being completed, and the evidence 
of your proficiency being granted you in the diplomas you now bear, 
I am commissioned by the Faculty to extend to you their valedictory 
congratulations, and to bid you, in their name, an affectionate fare- 
well. Farewell ! How many suggestions, both joyous and sorrowful, 
are connected with that little word. It includes within its narrow 
compass at once a prophecy and a prayer-a prophecy of a prosperous 
future for you, and a prayer that your feet may be guided in the paths 
of pleasantness and peace. With that word we dismiss you from our 
charge. No longer shall we watch over your progress, or labor, ac- 
cording to our humble abilities, to direct you in the pursuit of know- 
ledge. Our task is done. We commit you to the great world, to bear 
yourselves as you may in the battle of life, in which you are to be en- 
gaged. But the manner in which you acquit yourselves there can be 
no matter of indifference to us. Whether it be bravely and wisely, or 
meanly and dastardly, we shall have a part in your triumph or your 
fall. Whether you succumb basely in the strife, or whether you deck 
your brows with the well-earned laurels of the " victory of endurance 
born," we shall stand in a measure accountable for the issue. It is 
no wonder then, that we regard your departure with an absorbing in- 
terest, that we follow your retreating footsteps with a heartfelt fare- 
well, and that, knowing that as you bear yourselves, so will you fare, 
we devote this occasion to a few words of advice and exhortation. 
The first question that will present itself to you, after your gradua- 
tion, will be the choice of a location-a question, in many cases, of 
difficult solution. There is no doubt that some, perhaps many of you, 
have had the difficulty solved for you, and a situation already provided, 
by the kindness of friends or preceptors. Others, however, have the 
world before them, where to choose their field of labor. To such I 
would say-your place is where disease abounds, and medical aid is 
scarce or incompetent. Among the friends of your childhood or in 6 
the midst of strangers, that must be the only evidence that your ser- 
vices are needed. Lothario, in Wilhelm Meister, threw aside all his 
yearnings for distant scenes of enterprise and action, when he became 
wiser by experience and reflection, and learned that his America was 
there on the spot, or nowhere. To that field you are called, and there 
you must reap your harvest of reward. Whether it be in the crowded 
city, in the mountain hamlet, or on the far prairies of the west, your voca- 
tion is to it^and, in the unvarying system of providential remunerations, 
it will be made the best for you. Its duties may be trying and laborious, 
but in that respect they are but part of the common lot which the 
faithful man will every where expect to encounter. Beware, I conjure 
you, of consulting the love of ease in making your choice. No more 
fatal mistake is made by young practitioners, than in supposing that 
wealthy and populous neighborhoods are always the most desirable. 
The presumed abundance, of itself, invites a severe and crushing com- 
petition, where over-supply lowers more and more the rate of recom- 
pense. Poverty also clings closely to the side of opulence every where, 
and in the division of labor the pauperism of the place all falls to the 
lot of the youthful and unknown physician. These remarks apply 
particularly to the large cities. It is with regret that I witness the 
numbers of recent graduates who annually settle in and around our 
city. Deluded by erroneous notions of the comparative ease and com- 
fort of a town practice, they often doom themselves to years of struggle, 
poverty and disappointment. The outcry we have heard about an 
overstocked profession has arisen from this cause. Had those who 
made the assertion but looked at the facts, they might, at the very time, 
have seen wide districts of our country, and even of our own state, 
desolated by disease, without medical aid or abandoned to the mercy 
of uneducated or irregular practitioners. It is not true that either ease 
or fortune is best consulted, generally, by a city location. Here, as 
every where, the law holds good that it is in the sweat of his brow that 
man must earn his bread. The profession of medicine is at all times, 
and under all circumstances, a laborious task. The difference, even 
in the physical labor, between a city and country practice, is not so 
great as is commonly believed. When I have seen a young physician, 
in search of a scanty livelihood, struggling against ruinous competi- 
tion, and toiling over scorching pavements or through winter snows 
to distances to which no country physician would dream of walking, by 
night or day, I have wished for an Aladdin's lamp that I might, on the 
instant, put the worn pedestrian on top of a pair of saddle-bags and 7 
an ambling nag in the free air of our mountains. But the principal 
difficulties of the city are the uncertainty of acquiring practice where so 
many candidates are in the field, the slowness with which it comes 
under the most favorable auspices, and the temptations, both personal 
and professional, to which the young physician is exposed in the period 
of his probation. Five years may be stated as about the average time 
of obtaining a good living practice, leaving out of the estimate those 
who never obtain it at all, but either abandon the profession or make 
shipwreck of their hopes ; and they are not a few. These difficulties 
bring in their train, too frequently, bitterness of spirit and acrimony of 
temper, jealousy of rivals and disgust for the profession, with envy and 
all uncharitableness. In any country neighborhood which is not already 
abundantly supplied with medical aid-a fact easily ascertained there- 
a livelihood may be reasonably expected from the very outset of prac- 
tice, and in the end an assured competence, if not more. I fear, 
however, that an over-estimate of their own powers occasionally leads 
beginners to look with contempt upon such a location. Let them 
beware of vanity, which is, after vice, a young man's most dangerous 
companion. There is scope there for the energies of the most active 
and ambitious, provided they be turned towards true and worthy ob- 
jects. There is sickness to heal and suffering to alleviate. There is 
experience to be gained, and knowledge to be accumulated and trans- 
mitted. There is an opportunity to lead a true and manly life, and 
to meet a blessed and Christian death. He who is not satisfied with 
* 
these, is afflicted with unsoundness either of heart or head. 
Having found your appropriate position, the next counsel I would 
give you, is to stick to it and remain constantly at your post, in the 
confident assurance that your efforts will, in due time, meet their 
merited success. Poor Richard tells us that " the rolling stone gathers 
no moss," and the proverb is true in a higher than the pecuniary sense. 
All that patient labor can acquire, confidence, standing, friends and 
influence are forfeited by change. A good medical practice is to be 
built, up only by time and perseverance. A change of location involves, 
to a great extent, a beginning of the labor anew, a commencing of 
life over again. Frequent removals unsettle the mind and the habits, 
and produce, among the public, an impression of fickleness of spirit 
and want of that staid sobriety of judgment which should characterize 
the professional man. At least, they lead to the suspicion of a general 
want of success, for which, the public will imagine that there is a 
sufficient personal cause. Such removals are sometimes the product 8 
of a naturally unstable and unsatisfied disposition, but generally they 
rerult from a want of immediate decided success in practice. The 
young practitioner believes that the mere announcement of his name, 
and the sight of his tin upon the window shutter, or of his horse upon 
the road, are enough to entitle him to immediate cordial acceptance 
by his neighborhood. In so believing, he forgets the importance of 
his duties and the gravity of the circumstances in which the services 
of the physician are called for. It requires no light estimate of his 
abilities, to induce us to commit the life of those that are dear to us to 
a stranger. The first cases of a new practitioner are subjects of 
trembling solicitude, not only to himself, but to the patients and their 
friends. The ties of kindred, or personal intimacy, are not alone suffi- 
cient to give the required confidence. Relatives are often among the 
last to employ the tyro, perhaps for the natural reason that they have 
the greater difficulty in recognizing the doctor of to-day in the untitled 
youth of yesterday. With repeated success comes confidence, and soon 
grows mightily, until all doubt is removed, and reputation is establish- 
ed. The time required for this process will be greater or less, accord- 
ing to circumstances, but it never takes place in a moment. A false 
and transitory confidence may sometimes be instantly produced, among 
the ignorant, by the lofty pretensions of the empiric, but it has the 
ephemeral existence natural to a lie, and vanishes almost with the day 
that gave it birth. A true professional reputation is of slow growth, 
and he who has acquired it and knows its value, will not peril it by a 
restless lust of change, but cherish it as the best earnest of success and 
assurance of prosperity. 
The first efforts of your professional life will bring you into contact 
and contrast, perhaps also into collision, with the medical men of your 
vicinity. Much of your usefulness and comfort will depend upon the 
cultivation of the true professional relation with these, your brethren. 
They may be churlish, discourteous, even positively hostile in the 
attitude they assume toward you. Still, your duty is plain. It is to 
observe to the letter, in your connection with them, the established 
ethics.and etiquette of the profession. These are not matters of diffi- 
cult comprehension. The first will be supplied in a great measure by 
the dictates of Christian charity and a manly self-respect, the latter by 
the principles and feelings which every where regulate the intercourse 
of gentlemen. The temptation to violate them will be strongest in 
the outset of your career. Recollect that boastfulness and intrusive- 
ness are as objectionable in professional, as they are odious in private 9 
life. You have no right, in your medical capacity, to be impudent or 
importunate. You are to mind your own business, to the exclusion of 
that of other men. You are not sent to sit in judgment on the work 
of others, but to do your own faithfully and well. You may be an 
exemplar to your brethren, but not their censor. Any criticism on 
their procedures is an impertinence, and any intimation of your ability 
to have done better in a given case, is little other than the bragging 
lie of the open quack. All advertising of your superior skill, whether 
by print or speech, is rigidly forbidden. Do your work, and if it is 
well done, it will publish itself without your help. Keep your names 
out of the newspapers. An announcement of your place of residence 
is generally permitted to country practitioners, but any thing beyond 
this may compromise your professional standing. You cannot escape 
the danger by a resort to the puff indirect. A notice of your surgi- 
cal operations in the county paper, or the editor's gratulations on the 
saving of the life of a " valuable citizen," by your skilful aid, will 
stamp you as disposed to transcend the limits. In old times the em- 
piric built his stage in the village fair, and his clown amused the 
gaping rustics with mingled buffoonery and praises of the all-healing 
nostrums. We live in this wonderful nineteenth century, however 
and, in the progress of events, the Merry-Andrew finds his field of 
display on the pages of the newspaper, and his Jack-Pudding in the 
printer's devil, if not in the printer himself. From all this you must 
carefully abstain, avoiding even the appearance of evil. In like man- 
ner you must avoid all intriguing and scheming to obtain practice. 
It is mean and unmanly, if no worse. It leads inevitably to secret 
tattling, to scandal and backbiting, and gives rise to those bitter 
rivalries and animosities which too often disgrace medical men. I 
once heard a gentleman, who was checked for expressing a most con- 
temptuous opinion of the entire medical profession of his vicinity, 
say that he merely took them at their word and believed what each 
said of the other. Let not this be your sin. Remember that in 
assailing the members of your profession, you assail the profession 
itself, and that the odium and contempt you strive to bring upon others 
will full equally upon you. An eastern proverb says that curses are 
like chickens, that always come home to roost, and the same is true 
of all reviling and abuse. Towards your brethren, be always courte- 
ous, dignified and respectful; and, you may depend upon it, they will 
soon become so toward you. Esteem their interest as your own. 
Never, under any circumstances, hold any communication with their 10 
patients, except through them or by their permission. Be always 
ready to give them advice and assistance, whenever asked, but be 
cautious never to obtrude them unasked. An observance of these 
rules on the part of any number of the physicians of a given district, 
invariably inspires the people with unwonted respect for them collec- 
tively and individually, renders their intercourse pleasant and profita- 
ble, takes away the sense of solitude which must hang like a cloud 
over an isolated medical mind, and creates an esprit du corps benefi- 
cial alike to the profession and the public. 
The profession you have chosen is one, moreover, which will de- 
mand your constant and undivided devotion. It is not to be pursued 
to profit with a half-heart. Any thing short of a whole-souled, ener- 
getic and unwavering application will give partial and unsatisfactory 
results. Not that the physician should close his mind against other 
studies and the topics of daily general interest. Such mental seclu- 
sion would dwarf his intellect, and put him in peril of narrowness of 
thought. Esop's bow would lose its elasticity, if kept forever bent. 
Rest and recreation are necessities of the mind, as well as of the body. 
Dr. Priestley, a constant and unwearied student to the end of his life, 
believed that his intellectual vigor was promoted by dividing the day 
among a variety of studies, leaving time for exercise and social inter- 
course. But all this is not incompatible with an arduous devotion to 
a particular topic. To the physician, his science and its practice must 
ever be the principal object of thought and interest. If his mind 
wanders away to other pursuits, his strength will depart from him. 
This constitutes one of his chief dangers in our time. "The most 
essential sermon," says Jean Paul, "one could preach to our century, 
were a sermon on the duty of staying at home." The man who wan- 
ders out of his appropriate sphere of duty and action, goes from home 
and leaves his Father's house: well for him, perhaps, that he soon meets 
the prodigal's fate, so that, like the prodigal, he may speedily repent 
and return. The medical man can have no space in his attention for 
any other business pursuit. If a man tells you he can adequately 
practice, medicine in the leisure intervals of another calling, the truth 
is not in him. So essential has this isolation of the physician from 
other pursuits been considered, that in some ages, he has been con- 
sidered as set apart to a sacred vocation. It is said that Hippocrates 
required from his pupils a solemn oath, that they would devote them- 
selves faithfully to the healing of the sick, and that, not for the love of 
gain, but as freely among the poor and wherever disease was to be 11 
found. We know that a similar obligation was imposed by the School 
of Salernum upon its graduates, including, as its main features, exclu- 
sive devotion to the calling and the gratuitous attendance of the poor. 
The deep religious feeling of the middle ages found its fittest expres- 
sion in the idea,-not the highest, perhaps,-of renunciation of self 
for the sake of active charity to the needy and suffering. Hence, the 
mendicant orders that refused to possess worldly goods, to the end that 
they might be a living and ever-present protest against a worldly spirit. 
Hence, the Hospitallers, who left all behind them, and gave themselves 
up utterly, to minister to the wants and sicknesses of the pilgrims that 
sought the Holy Sepulchre. The same idea gave its coloring to the 
prevailing Christian theory of the medical profession. Its members 
were called upon to take up their cross, and, to a certain extent, to 
renounce all other worldly pursuits and pleasures, that they might be 
given solely to the performance of their great duties. This, as I have 
said, is not the highest idea of the profession. In a more developed 
form of society, it will not be so much a mere minister of alleviation 
to the suffering, as the appointed and recognized regulator and con- 
servator of the great social interest of physical health, having control 
of the prevention, management and removal of disease at large. Let me 
be understood. The denial of self for the sake of those that suffer, is 
a high and holy view of life and duty, but it is limited in its aim and 
partial in its results. " S'il n'y avait que des douleurs exceptionnelles 
et solitaries a soulager, la charite y suffirait peut-etre : mais le mal a 
des causes aussi generales que profondes."* The profession, in its 
advanced condition, and when established as a properly organized 
member of the social body, will one day be enabled to attack, and, in 
a great measure to control, through social regulations, the fruitful 
sources of physical derangement and suffering. At present, however, 
it would be well enough for us if we all lived up to the terms of the 
Salernitan oath, and were indeed messengers of mercy and solace to 
them that are ready to perish. The ceremony of conferring the diplo- 
ma, in the same ancient school, is not without significance. The Prior 
placed in the hands of the candidate a book, to teach him that he was 
to be ever, as then, a reader and student; next he crowned him with 
a laurel-wreath, in honor of the progress he had already made; then 
he placed a ring upon his finger, to remind him that he was solemnly 
wedded to an all-exacting calling; and, finally he implanted upon his 
cheek the kiss of brotherly love, as an accepted member of the same 
* Louis Blanc. Organization du Travail. 12 
fraternity with himself. This singular ceremony, thus moralized, is 
not without its lesson for us, in the evidence it affords of the universal 
recognition of the entire separation of the physician from all other 
avocations. 
The life of a medical man, rightly pursued, is an active one. He 
is much out of doors, hastening from one bed of sickness to another. 
His usefulness, other things being equal, will be in proportion to his 
activity and the rapidity and extent of his movements. You are not 
to look forward to days of literary leisure, and the luxurious perusal 
of volume on volume, after the wine on a summer's day, or with slip- 
pered feet on the evening hearth. Although students, you are not to 
be book-worms. There is danger to you in being too much in the 
library. Wolfgang Menzel is not to me an admirable or loveable 
writer generally, but he had the spirit of truth when he said this: 
" It is only single chords that are struck when you read a book; the 
infinite harmony which slumbers in your life, as in the life of all, no 
book has yet entirely caught. Never, therefore, hope to find in these 
note-books the key to all the tones of life, and busy not yourselves too 
much in the school-rooms; but rather, willingly and often, let your 
inward AEolian harp be moved, freely and naturally, gently and storm- 
ily, by the fresh breeze of life." Men grow mouldy in the closet; 
and all their reasoning upon subjects which require to be elucidated 
and corrected by observation and experience, becomes doubtful from 
vagueness of their premises. Closet-medicine has been proverbially 
hypothetical and futile. The Hippocratic school was in the temple, 
by the way-side and in the dwellings of the sick. While the Galenist, 
at the period of the revival of letters, puzzled his poor brain in his 
study with the metaphysics of Aristotle and the dogmatics of Galen, 
the Chemist went about with his mercury and antimony, and cured 
the sick in despite of the ancients and.in the very teeth of Celsus and 
Dioscorides. What you want in your profession is practical tact and 
talent, which books cannot give you. Some one has said to the over- 
bookful physician : Juvenis, tua doctrina non pr omit tit opes, plcbs amat 
remedia. Success in the world you will find to depend more upon the 
successful treatment of your cases, than upon familiarity with litera- 
ture, professional or general. 
In saying this, I do not mean to depreciate learning or undervalue 
study. Still less would I place wealth above wisdom as your aim in 
life. Were I to do so now, some of you might make the same reply 
that the Platonic poet, Henry More, did to his father. " Your early 13 
encomiums of learning and philosophy did so fire my credulous youth 
with the desire of the knowledge of things, that your after-advertise- 
ments, how contemptible learning would prove without riches, and 
what a piece of unmannerlinesse and incivility it would be held to seem 
w'iser than them, that are more wealthy and powerfull, can never yet 
restrain my mind from her first pursuit, nor quicken my attention to 
the affairs of the world." I trust also that you would be able to con- 
tinue in his words : " But this bookish disease, let it make me as'much 
poor as it will, it shall never make me the lesse just." Be but able to 
say this, with a sincere heart, and it is all we ask. The idea of medi- 
cal justice includes not only the doing all that lies in your power for 
your patients, but the arming yourself at all points and with all possi- 
ble weapons for your struggle with disease. You are to seek for 
knowledge and practical efficiency wherever you can find them. The 
lesson I wish to impress upon your minds, is that you will not find 
these in books alone. You will not fully understand the descriptions 
of others, till you have learned to see for yourselves. You must come 
into personal contact and conflict with disease, before you can rightly 
comprehend it. Then you will be able to reason upon it with clear- 
ness and confidence. Then the true value of books will be revealed 
to you. They will direct your mind, resolve your difficulties, and give 
you additional facts, whose importance and bearing you will be able 
to judge from comparison with those you have encountered in your 
own experience. They are essential to you, and you cannot possibly 
do without them. Journals also are indispensable, as indices of the 
current of thought in contemporaneous minds, working under in- 
fluences and circumstances analogous to your own. They form a 
necessary part of the general sura of the sources of knowledge, to 
which you are to apply. 
Nothing that is said in dissuasion from exclusive closet study, will 
apply to the pursuit of knowledge regarded in this larger sense. This 
is worthy of your most earnest effort, and your progress in it will 
afford the measure of your real professional success. There are, 
however, two ways of pursuing knowledge, into either of which you 
may fall. One will be an occasional looking up of facts and opinions 
pro re nata, and the other a methodic effort in the constant and en- 
larged spirit of a genuine student. Schiller has thus characterized 
the idea of knowledge conceived by the followers of these two methods 
in his inimitable way: 
" Einem ist sie die hohe, die himmlische Gottin ; dem andern, 
Eine tiichtige Kuh, die ihn mit Butter versorgt." 14 
The latter, never rising above the expediency of the moment, may 
still become a skilful workman in certain departments, where formula? 
will bear him out; but the former will be the open-minded and far- 
seeing medical philosopher. Such we earnestly desire that you may 
be. In order to this end, you must divest your minds of prejudice and 
bigotry; you must avoid sedulously the pride of opinion ; you must pin 
your faith to the skirts of no master; you must reverence the past, but 
have confidence in the present, and hope for the future; you must 
receive facts with due caution, and weigh the opinions of friend and 
adversary with equal care. In examining novel theories, you should 
avoid equally the extremes of easy credulity and stubborn conservatism. 
It is difficult to say which is the more dangerous, an itching desire 
of novelty or a dogged resistance to improvement. Some men go all 
their lives, like wide-mouthed rustics at a show, gaping for more won- 
ders, regarding every rocket that explodes as a new star burst into the 
firmament, and learning no wisdom, when the thing ends in a bad 
smell and a burnt stick. Others go obstinately stumbling on, with 
their heads turned to see only what is behind them, and will not turn 
again, even to greet the sun of a new day that rises on their path. 
There is place for both these in the Paradise of fools. The true 
thinker will bow with meek reverence before the accumulated wisdom 
of the past, and will appropriate to himself all of its stores that he can, 
but he knows that the mind of Man in the Ages is progressive, and 
that the grossest indignity he could offer to those who have raised the 
ladder of science is to sleep contented at the foot, when he might 
climb the topmost round and sweep the wide horizon. The joint 
efforts of the thousand noble minds, that are devoted to medical science, 
are carrying it onward to clearness and strength with unwonted ra- 
pidity, and it is to be expected that new generalizations r/ust result 
from the constant accession of new and momentous pMiculars. 
Every doctrine, however startling, that is broached by an honest and 
learned man, is deserving of patient and impartial investigation You 
cannot safely refuse it a hearing, nor dismiss it with a sarcasm. Be- 
ware of the spirit of ridicule, which is generally the product of a su- 
percilious vanity. Ridicule is not the test of truth, though it may be 
a test of men's sincerity or of the strength of their convictions. A 
laugh is no argument, nor is a jest a refutation of one. Pertness of 
speech and ludicrous perversions may take the place of reason at 
times, for they have the power of producing a state of mind unfavor- 
able to logical reflection. They may deface and obscure the truth 15 
as readily as they can expose error. Voltaire could satirize the fol- 
lies and superstitions of his time, and with them, hiss away what 
little religious faith was left among his countrymen. The notori- 
ous Jeffreys could quote Hudibras from the bench, and use Butler's 
ridicule of hypocrites to justify his sending Richard Baxter to the 
pillory. The greatest discoveries have been the subjects of the keen- 
est satire. John Fitch's steamboat was the laughing-stock of the 
senseless. I have no doubt that the Ptolemaic geographers were ex- 
ceedingly amused with the absurdity of Columbus' attempt to reach 
India by a western passage. Ridicule of scientific hypotheses generally 
depends upon the assumption, either authorized or unauthorized, of 
the truth of incompatible notions. It indicates, for the most part, a 
lazy and superficial mind, that would rather risk the truth upon the 
hazard of a joke, than proceed to its establishment by the laborious 
way of induction. It is particularly repulsive in the young, and is, 
not without cause, regarded as the evidence of an idle or an empty 
head. Avoid it as unworthy of the dignity of science and as calculated 
at some time, perhaps, to cause you to dismiss with a sneer that which, 
on further examination, you might have discovered to be an important 
truth. Avoid equally that spirit of complacent self-sufficiency, which 
jumps to the easy conclusion that all difference of opinion is the result 
either of stupidity or intentional fraud. Men are more generally 
sincere than we think. Scientific impostors are not common, and 
those who believe in the universality of falsehood and insincerity are 
therefore open to suspicion themselves. I never see a man who is 
eternally finding "humbugs" on every side of him, but that I fear he 
may be himself a "humbug." 
But it is not enough that you gather assiduously the scattered ob- 
servations and deductions of others, for the fortifying and building up 
of your own minds. Your duty does not end with yourselves nor 
with your immediate patients. The riddle of Samson must be re- 
enacted. Out of the eater must come forth meat, and out of the 
strong, sweetness. Having freely received, you must as freely give. 
You must take a part in furthering the progress of medical science. 
Your sphere of inquiry and experience will be, in some respects, diffe- 
rent from that of all others. The peculiarities of your mental consti- 
tution, the leadings of your particular education, and the incidents of 
your practice may carry you toward conclusions different from those 
of your contemporaries, may strike out new processes of therapeutics, 
or may cause you to fall upon singular experiences. These you are 16 
bound to give to the medical public, if they seem to you worthy of it. 
You will not obtrude yourselves upon your brethren without cause, 
nor afflict them with idle babblings; but if you have made any real im- 
provement in medicine, it is not your own. If you have made what 
seems to you an improvement,your duty is to lay it before your fellow- 
practitioners, that they may judge it also. There is an important 
ethical proposition involved in these assertions. It is this, that you 
have no right to keep secret, for your own benefit, any thing that will 
really alleviate the sufferings or preserve the lives of your fellow-men. 
He who does so, is guilty of his brother's blood. He is as accursed, 
before God and man, as if he attempted to keep the gospel a secret 
for his own advantage, or to make merchandise of the Holy Spirit. If, 
on the other hand, he merely pretends to the possession of such secret, 
to attract patients to his care, he is a mendacious quack. All such, 
the profession disowns and casts out from it, as not of it. The con- 
scientious physician knows that all that he receives is the property of 
his Master, and, as such, of that Master's entire family. This princi- 
ple extends farther than some of our American profession, I am sorry 
to say, are willing to admit. They would make an exception of sur- 
gical instruments and mechanical appliances for the cure of displace- 
ments and deformities. But with my convictions, I solemnly aver to 
you that I would no more hold a patent-right for a surgical instrument, 
however serviceable, than I would compound and hawk about an effi- 
cacious secret nostrum; and I would no more venture to do that,than 
I would venture to lock my door and enjoy a banquet in luxurious 
ease while a dying brother wailed with famine on the threshold. I 
rejoice, therefore, that our State Medical Society has laid down this 
broad ethical principle, and included the patentee of an instrument 
with the proprietor of a nostrum, as alike unworthy of membership 
in it. 
Hitherto, I have regarded (he profession only in its relation to the 
cure of individual maladies. But the physician has another duty to 
the community, quite as important and interesting as that mentioned, 
although he may not feel its responsibility so directly. The peculiar 
character of the education you are presumed to have received, gives 
you a knowledge of the laws of health and disease possessed by no 
others. You should be able to point out the sources of sickness, 
whether epidemic or individual. It is not enough that you heal the 
sick, after disease has come upon them. You can and must give your 
patients that information which will tend to preserve health and pre- 17 
vent sickness. Were your calling a mere mercenary craft, you might 
rejoice in disease and desire the epidemic, but your duty lies in the 
prolongation of human life and the abolition of pain and suffering 
alike by prevention and cure. The " Englishman's Docter " of 1607, 
therefore, breathed the true spirit of the profession in his quaint way, 
when he concluded his medicinal counsels with the generous wish: 
And ye our Physicke rules that friendly read, 
God graunt that Physicke you may never neede. 
The. plan, alleged to have been used in China, of paying the physi- 
cian's salary only when in health, and deducting a certain sum for 
every period of illness, is not so entirely absurd. Not that he could 
be supposed to protract the case for pecuniary gain, but because he 
probably might, by judicious advice, have prevented the attack. This 
important duty of the profession has been too much neglected, but is 
now attracting general attention. Parents will claim the right to ask 
of you such directions as will preserve the physical well-being of those 
committed to their care. The community, also, in all times of danger 
and alarm from epidemics, will call upon you for those wise regula- 
tions of sanatory police, which will protect the general health. When 
the pestilence, that you might have prevented, comes among your 
charge, you cannot excuse yourselves with the thought that it was not 
your business. That is the answer of Cain. It is your business. 
You are, in this sense, the keepers of your brethren. Jenner did 
not hold himself justified in saying nothing about vaccination, be- 
cause it was a means of prevention and not of cure. There never 
yet was an epidemic, in which the profession of the vicinity might not 
profitably have paused and asked themselves how far they were respon- 
sible for the coming of the scourge. Knowledge of this kind will be 
demanded of you, more and more, as the popular intelligence increases, 
and if it is not forthcoming you must expect to fall in the public estima- 
tion. In like manner, the public will look to you for the solution of 
the nice questions, bearing upon your studies, w'hich frequently arise in 
legal investigations. In all cases involving toxicological considerations 
or the character and effect of injuries inflicted by violence, the minds of 
the jury will hang upon your assertions, and the life or death of a 
fellow-being may depend upon the accuracy of your knowledge. The 
physician alone is able to arrive at reliable conclusions, upon questions 
of mental derangement and obliquity. The line which divides guilt 
from insanity is not so deep and trenchant as to be seen at once. In 18 
many instances, the decision must remain doubtful, with the clear- 
est medical testimony. Beyond all this, the entire subject of penal 
discipline is much more closely allied with the peculiar studies of the 
medical man, than legislators have supposed. The law-maker may 
easily decide that a certain crime shall involve a certain character and 
amount of punishment, but, when we approach the topic in the spirit of 
the philanthropist, it becomes more recondite and difficult. The causes 
which have led men by gradual steps to error, self-indulgence and crime, 
on the one hand, and on the other, the agencies which will correct 
their craving appetites and over-mastering passions, include the action 
of many and abstruse physical laws. Here the physician of the body 
must meet with the physician of the soul, and recognizing the dupli- 
cate aspect of man, as composed of matter and spirit, minister to the 
wants of his whole nature, that they may correct its errors and per- 
versities. In researches such as these, you may be made the instru- 
ments of conferring unimagined blessings on sinning and suffering 
humanity. 
In pointing out to you this varied and extensive field of labor, and 
exhorting you to its diligent cultivation, I do not wish to be understood 
as discouraging all attention to general literature. On the contrary, I 
pray you to remember that as members of a learned profession, you 
are to be generally intelligent. Men of one study will become men 
of one idea, to be recognized by a characteristic narrowness. The 
enlarged spirit of the scholar is only to be acquired by a more 
diffused reading. It should not be so multifarious and ill-assorted as 
to make your minds chaotic. It must always be subordinate to your 
professional researches. Still, it is necessary to your position as gen- 
tlemen and men of learning, and you will reap a rich reward from it 
in the open mind and scope of thought it will give you. There is one 
class of studies, to which I would particularly call your attention, as 
an almost essential part of your province of research. I allude to the 
natural sciences. These have an important bearing on your medical 
studies, from analogy with which they are generally referred to you. 
Their earliest and most celebrated cultivators were men of our calling, 
and I would, therefore, exhort you not to allow all the trophies of these 
noble branches of science to be carried away by others. Chemistry 
you have already been taught and must continue to study. Botany 
and Natural History belong of right to you, and it should be your object 
to acquire, at least, a general knowledge of them. 
I have thus endeavored, gentlemen, to stir up your minds to the 19 
love of learning, and the sedulous cultivation and development of your 
intellectual powers. I have striven to awaken in your hearts that senti- 
ment, which will raise you above a mere life of the senses, and cause 
you to claim 
The birthright of your being, knowledge, power, 
The skill that wields the elements, the thought 
That pierces the dim universe like light. 
But in doing this, I would do injustice to myself and you, if I failed 
to remind you that there is in man a higher principle than the intel- 
lect,-that there is proposed to him a nobler end than knowledge. 
Immanuel Kant, among all the wise things he has said, uttered never 
a wiser than the simple proposition : " In the intellect is no virtue." 
The sphere of wisdom and of bliss lies above and beyond its circle. 
The world has seen too many intellectual giants, whose experience of 
life has given them nothing but 
Mutinous passions and conflicting fears, 
And hopes that sate themselves on dust and die. 
The moral of Faust is as old as science itself. The ardent student 
may penetrate the innermost recesses of nature, may count the stars 
in their courses, and may follow the hidden track of the physical en- 
ergies, until the secrets of force and motion lie like an open book 
before him; and even then, in the moment of his triumph, his heart 
will waken as from slumber, and thrill through the depths of his spirit 
its whispered Vanity of Vanities. A master of the philosophies could 
mourn, in his old age, that he wandered, picking pebbles on the 
shore, while the great ocean of the unknown still stretched far away 
before him. Mighty as were his results to himself and to mankind, 
they could not meet all the necessities of his complex being. He who 
dwells only in the understanding, may curse himself with the palsy of 
higher faculties. Wisdom is better than knowledge, and is more 
easily obtained. To quote again the old English Platonist :-"'Tis 
better to drink of the bloud of the grape than bite the root of'the vine, 
to smell of the rose than chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the 
meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successeful in the 
latter." There is a wisdom that all the processes of philosophy can 
never find out, but is present to the free sense of the child. It resists 
all logical analysis, but it penetrates the meek soul that is laid trust- 
ingly open to it, as sunbeams flow through the liberal air. Science 
and philosophy must hide their heads in shame before the fact, that 
the great teachers of moral truth, those of deepest insight into the 20 
universal law and order, have been the humble and unlearned, the 
poor and despised of the earth. The noblest names in the literary and 
scientific world, are of those who could comprehend this diversity of 
functions, and, while they omitted no effort in their own department, 
could come and sit in childlike simplicity at the feet of some unlearned 
Gamaliel, to listen to lessons of the higher wisdom. A mere intel- 
lectual character is incomplete, and challenges only a half admiration. 
Voltaire died and made no sign, and men have left him and his works 
to their decay, his floral apotheosis seeming only a silly theatricalism. 
In what noble contrast with him stands blind old Milton, leaving his 
majestic visions, to listen in his conventicle, with childlike simplicity 
and sincerity, to the outpourings perhaps of some rude soldier, who 
had nothing but the earnest spirit of truth to recommend him to that 
cultured ear. The completeness of Martin Luther's character appears 
to me in these little traits. The hard-fighting giant, of whom it has 
been said that " his words were half battles," when he was wearied 
with philological and polemical labors, and his over-wrought brain 
conjured up spectres in his dim study, could walk in the evening in 
his garden, to cool his fevered brow, and there the little bird perched 
securely and trustingly on the tiny branch, with its head under its 
wing, could teach him deeper lessons than all his ponderous tomes. It 
told him of the sustaining power that kept it in safety and peace, that 
controlled the hostile elements that they might not harm it, that 
watched over him also with a Father's care ; and he could return com- 
forted and refreshed to his task. Such is the wisdom you should seek. 
It comes not with observation, but is freely revealed to every humble and 
confiding spirit. Get this wisdom, rather than riches and rather than 
knowledge. It is better than rubies, and more precious than the gold 
of Ophir. It is higher than all the learning of Aristotle, more 
profound than the deepest thought of Socrates. It will guide your 
steps in safety through the tangled paths of life, will give meaning and 
efficiency to your labours, will fill you with love, and peace and joy, 
will make you a blessing to all around you, and will shed over the 
darkness of your dying couch, the dawning radiance of a divine and 
endless day. May lie in whose hands are the issues of life, grant you 
its spirit without measure. 
I have detained you long already, gentlemen, and for my colleagues 
and myself, I again bid you a hearty Farewell. The word lingers 
on the lip, but it must be spoken. The ties that have bound us to- 
gether part with pain, but they must be severed. The voices of home 21 
call you away from us. Loving hearts yearn for your return, and 
gentle eyes already begin to look for your coming. A mother's 
anxious breast heaves with mingled hope and fear, and a father's cheek 
flushes with pleasure as he anticipates the return of him who is his 
pride and the object of his transferred ambition. A dearer than these 
perhaps may listen for the coming footsteps, with a secret anxiety she 
would blush to utter. We would not, if we could, keep you longer 
from that happy meeting. Go then, and God's blessing go with you. Go, 
and when next we meet, may it be to welcome you, not as pupils, but 
as friends and brothers, approved and recognized members with us, of 
the same great medical fraternity. PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. 
The number of matriculants for the session of 1848-49, was 102. 
Ata public commencement, held in the Musical Fund Hall, on 
Wednesday, March 7th, 1849, the degree of Doctor of Medicine was 
conferred on the following gentlemen : 
Name. Residence. Subject of Thesis. 
Joseph F. Adolphus, Jamaica, 
Concussion and compres- 
sion of the Brain. 
John C. Bastian, Pennsylvania, Scarlet Fever. 
R. Benjamin Berry, New York, Ship Fever. 
William Bryan, Pennsylvania, Army Fever. 
Samuel Rex Bucher, " Haemoptysis. 
Jacob C. Cooper, ; " 
Inflammation and its phe- 
nomena. 
Joseph Covode, " 
An anomalous case of Hys- 
teria. 
Geo. B. Fundenberg, " Union by the first intention. 
John Getty, " Compression of the Brain. 
W. H. Gobrecht, " Pathologic Urine. 
Geo. S. Goodhart, Wisconsin, Dropsy. 
Henry D. Graham, Delaware, The Foetal Circulation. 
Augustus Guettich, P ennsylvania, Strumous Diathesis. 
William Hafer, " Fractures. 
L. V. Hageman, : New Jersey, Neuralgia. 
Ed. A. IIeintzelman, Pennsylvania, Podophyllum Peltatum. 
James Hunter, New Brunswick, Dysentery. 23 
Charles Leib, Pennsylvania, 
Name. Residence. Subject of Thesis. 
Influence of Climate on cha- 
racter. 
Edw. G. M'Govran, " Concussion of the Brain. 
Thomas M'Kibben, Ohio, Duties of the Physician. 
Wm. H. H. Miller, Pennsylvania, History of Medicine. 
Andrew W. Murphy, " Rubeola. 
James T. Musselman, Ohio, Prostration, 
Martin Musser, Pennsylvania, Scarlatina, 
George W. Patrick, " Preparations of Iron. 
Henry S. Porter, " 
Development and organiza- 
tion of the Human Teeth. 
Wm. L. Robinson, Upper Canada, Apoplexy. 
Cyrus J. Snavely, Pennsylvania, Pleuritis. 
John G. Stetler, " Inflammation 
Inflammation of the Ner- 
vous Centres. 
Isaac Walborn, 
Allen Ward, New Jersey, Scrofulous Diathesis. 
Arthur B. Williams, Michigan, Chlorine. 
Luther E. Winter, Virginia, 
Concussion and Compres- 
sion of the Brain. 
Jacob B. Witmer, Pennsylvania, Delirium Tremens. 
Jesse E. Wofford, South Carolina, Retroversion of the Uterus. 
John G. Woodhouse, Pennsylvania, Menstruation.  
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. 
The Session of 1849-50 will commence on Thursday, November 15,1849, and be 
continued until the 1st of March, ensuing. 
THE FACULTY IS CONSTITUTED AS FOLLOWS: 
WILLIAM DARRAGH, M. D., 
Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine. 
JOHN WILTBANK, M. D., 
Professor of Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women and Children. 
HENRY S. PATTERSON, M. D., 
Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
WILLIAM R. GRANT, M. D., 
Professor of Anatomy and Physiology. 
DAVID GILBERT, M. D., 
Professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery. 
WASHINGTON L. ATLEE, M. D., 
Professor of Medical Chemistry. 
.Clinical instruction at the Pennsylvania Hospital, Fine Street, provided for all 
second course students, at the expense of the Faculty. Fees: Matriculation, (to be 
paid once only) $5 00; for each ticket, $15 00; Graduation, $30 00. 
The Registrar's address is No. 92 Arch Street, Philadelphia. 
HENRY S. PATTERSON, M. D., 
Registrar.