KANSAS CITY COLLEGE 
OF 
physician* ? J|*tg*t** 
SECOND ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 
Marcli 7tlx, 1071. 
ADDRESS BY 
L. K. THACHER, A. M. 
President Board of Curators. 
VALEDICTORY BY 
T. B. LESTER, M. D. 
Prof. Principles and Practice of Medicine. 
Putolislaccl \>y tlio Class. 
. r~ -O 
KANSAS*C1TY, MO: 
PRINTED AT TIIE BULLETIN STEAM PRINTING HOUSE. 
1871. {(j’orus|iomlcw;c, 
Kansas City, Mo., March 8, 1871. 
Maj. L. K. Tiiaciier, Prof. T. B. Lester : 
Gentlemen :—At a peeting of the graduating class of the Col- 
lege of Physicians, held March 7, 1871, the undersigned were 
appointed a committee to solicit copies of your respective ad- 
dresses for publication. 
E. L. Burdick, Topeka, Kansas. 
Jno. E. Watson, New Santa Ee, Mo. 
G. AY. Gabriel, Ladore, Kansas. 
S. D. Bowker, Kansas City, Mo. 
Committee. 
Kansas City, Mo., March 10, 1871. 
E. L. Burdick, 
Jno. E. Watson, 
G. W. Gauriel, 
S. D. Bowker, 
Committee. 
Gentlemen:—Your note soliciting a copy of my address for 
publication, is before me. It would be an unworthy affectation 
in me to deny your request, although I sincerely believe that 
you overestimate its value. However, your judgment shall pre- 
vail, and herewith 1 hand you the copy desired. 
Respectfully, 
L. K. Thacker. 
Kansas City, Mo., March 10, 1871. 
Drs. E. L. Burdick, Jno. E. Watson, and others: 
Gentlemen :—A copy of my valedictory is at your disposal as 
you request. Please accept my renewed assurance of high 
esteem for yourselves and the class you represent. 
Yours truly, 
T. B. Lester. Address 
OF L. K. TIIACHER, A. M., PRESIDENT. 
Gentlemen of the Graduating Class:—Having successfully 
performed your part, it now becomes both my official and pleas- 
ant duty to pass into your hands the credentials of this college ; 
and at the same time, it may not seem immodest in me to add a 
lew words of congratulation ; and in doing so 1 do not ibrget 
that we are told that it was the custom of the ancients, never to 
salute with praise the outward-bound ship with her colors all Hy- 
ing, but only the returning vessel with its torn sails, battered 
sides, and banners gone, but still having out-ridden the storm. 
This was the practice of antiquity. Modern philosophy teaches 
that it is as useful and beautiful to give our hearty greeting to the 
starting as returning pilgrim. So I beg leave to congratulate 
you : first, upon the selection of this profession, which is to hold 
empire over your thoughts and energies throughout life. In 
age and historically, it may rank junior to the law or priest- 
hood, hut in so far as it touches the weal or woe, of this groan- 
ing world, where life is hut a remorseless compromise between 
existence and death, it is not wild or whimsical to say that it is 
the superior of them all. unless it be that one which is inspired 
by the promised diadem beyond the shades of the grave, and 
which owns Him as Royal, who took His birth from the manger 
and IIis disciples from the fishing boat. The voice of the past 
ages swells the testimony as to the power and influence of the 
healing art. Every condition of life gives to it the most un- 
feigned homage. No matter how craven the spirit or disloyal 
the heart when dealing with other vocations; no matter how 
tricky the tongue may dare to he on other occasions ; no matter 
how ingeniously we play the masquerade of life, there will 
surely come a time in the career of evefy individual when he 
will stand in undisguised truth before some one of your frater- 
nity. We all remember the wit of the old Roman, who taught 
his son to embrace three things in his prayers, to wit: that the 
Lord would keep his purse from the lawyer, his body from the 
doctor, and his soul from the devil. From the lawyer, with pru- 
dent care, he may escape, and from the demon ot darkness also 
through covenant mercy ; hut from the doctor never. No ranlq 
sex or age can claim immunity—the austere judge and the flip 
pant coxcomb, the man with his millions and the man with hi* 
shovel* some night or day will summon you to his bedside, and 
there in that presence you will stand as though you were Fate itself; the sick man and the sick man’s friends smothering all 
hope till you shall pronounce the victory of life or the agony of 
death. To the conscientious physician there can be no more 
wonderful, awful hour in his experience. The proper remedy 
gives a new lease of life—a mistake is fatal. There can not he 
imagined words blistering enough to express the execration and 
vengeance that should ever follow the impostor or medical 
knave, bold and bad enough, to trifle with human life. How 
brazen and shameless that man must be who dares to. touch the 
patient’s wrist, when the terrified mother is prying into his de- 
ceitful face, vainly trying to anticipate the verdict which only 
too soon she discovers to be hollow mockery. 
All that a man hath will he give for his life. Job stood im- 
mutable as adamant while his friends and fortunes melted away 
around him ; but cursed the hour of his birth, when scourged 
with bodily pain. The hour of physical adversity is preemi- 
nently the doctor’s golden hour. in the fullness of health, in 
the splendors of success, in the capricious flow of spirits; man 
may ignore the flimsy title he has to these ; but when the clouds 
of w'oe collect around him, when the shades and darkness of 
distress rise up in his path, when the ghastly possibilities of 
death look him in the face, how pitiful is his melancholy cry for 
medical help. Then it is thatlhe physician’s visible appearance 
is like an emanation from Heaven letting in a ray of hope or 
intensifying the dismay. 
Cassius’ sneer at Caesar prostrate with the fever and crying 
like a sick girl, is an episode none can escape. Misfortune 
comes tearing down our gilded castles of wealth, rudely blasting 
our ambitious plans,but the intellect, strong and well balanced, 
marches swiftly on to new creations and broader schemes; but 
let the finger of disease touch this mortal temple and the intel- 
lect becomes like Sampson shorn of his locks, helpless and use- 
less, until you with your healing art shall rebuild. Indeed so 
dependent has humanity become that all the projects, plans, and 
campaigns of life, are destined to inglorious failures if the med- 
ical profession is not taken in as one of the factors in the prob- 
lem. Who will take passage on the ocean steamer that has not 
a physician enrolled its officers? Who cares to cast his 
lot with that expedition bound on a voyage of discovery if his 
health is lated to be uncared for? How monstrous would be 
the blunder of that General who should organize the campaign 
and not invoke the presence of his medical staff? The enter- 
prises of the day might stand a burning reproach to the ener- 
gy and restless adventure of this century, were it not for the 
kindly hand lent by the medical department—as witness, in St. 
Louis where that marvelous work is being done, far beneath 
the waters of the Mississippi; a physician is steadily employed 
to critically examine each employee before he is sent below, and 
to discard his opinion would be for the man to commit suicide, or the work to suspend. Sanitary repudiation is the carnival 
hour for pestilence, decay and disaster. Away back among the 
centuries there was a time when man in his rude normal condi- 
tion needed but little help on his life’s journey. Ilis habits were 
simple, his food was plain, and after many years he laid himself 
down to sleep along with his ancestors, having fairly exhausted 
the flame of life, and having lived out his natural days. But this 
period is not that; years are crowded into the space of a day, 
and, generations into a year. Great questions “strut their little 
hour” on the stage of human action and are then elbowed off 
to give room to still greater ones. As man has risen to a plane 
of more rational and important life, making intellect the meas- 
ure of the man instead of physical prowess, in nearly that pro- 
portion has he sacrificed the power and tenacity of this mortal 
edifice to that resplendent power that presides in and over it; 
and just here is where the medical science moves into its exalted 
position. With all the inventions of the day; the unparalleled 
improvements ; the nameless traits and customs that distinguish 
the barbarian from the civilized; there comes up an ill sup- 
pressed murmur against this premature physical decay. The 
peerage of England has not the vitality in itself to supply the 
waste caused by wanton extravagance and guilty excess, and so 
from the more vigorous House of Commons men are chosen to 
keep the roll up to its requisite number. There seems to be a 
standing antagonism between the luxury of modern living and 
permanent health or stalwart bodies. The names that are illus- 
trious to day for wealth or talent, where are they to-morrow ? 
Gone like the comet. The boy cannot replace the father, be- 
cause he inherits from him only the infirmities which became 
the out-growth of his station. 
The citizen who loves his country and generation, will ask, 
“how can this profitless condition of things be repaired?” And 
as naturally as the needle turns to the magnet do we look to 
your profession to respond. The day of stupid, selfish policy 
ever narrowing, dwarfing the means and opportunities of justly 
ambitious men, is ended, and a day of expansion and demand 
has come. There is a greedy market for all your skill and all 
your wisdom. The iron-bound theories of the musty past are, 
and must give way before the irresistible tread of civiliza- 
tion; but it is not new theories that are wanted. Humanity 
sick cares not for these; the restoration of health, the man 
vigor that was the inheritance of the race when it began is 
gone, and like the wandering tribes of Israel, peering into the 
darkness for the promised land, so this race is trying to pene- 
trate the uncertain shadows which surround your medical sys- 
tem, firmly trusting to it for the full regeneration of! physical 
health. Nor will it believe that this is a fantastic dream, born 
in Utopia, never to be fulfilled, for are not your achievements 
written in blood; held in the sacred recollection of every na- 
tion; conspicuous in every war that has occurred, imprinted in the annals of every hospital in the land; and still more indeli- 
bly lixed in the memories of the unwritten heroes ? To lower 
your standard would be to insult the fair memory of Galen and 
pollute the bright record of your other worthies. You would 
commit treason to the expectation of your friends; you would 
be an infidel to the beneficent discoveries of the past; and still 
further, the triumphant genius that rules this eventful era, will 
permit no peace to lie at your door until you shall have made 
nature surrender into your keeping all her healing secrets. It 
is certainly within the domain of reasonable expectation to hope 
that the day is not far distant when every human ill shall have 
its corresponding cure, (old age and accidents out of the ques- 
tion of course). We have a right to trust the perfection of na- 
ture to that extent, as to believe that there are no questions 
which we may ask, which in and of themselves are unanswera- 
ble, but in their time and in their order will stand forth and be 
ranked with the trophies of other days. This problem or that 
may be handed down like an insoluble mass from generation to 
generation. The wisdom and science of this day may not be 
able to wrench from nature’s grip the full and satisfactory an- 
swer, but the genius and patience of to-morrow may be crowned 
with success. Inventions ever multiplying render all climes 
accessible with their local healing stores; and who shall dare to 
say, in contemplation of what we have a right to anticipate, 
that medical skill will not soon be able to give an unerring pre- 
scription for every physical distress. If the curative powers of 
the North, East, West or South cannot be brought to the patient, 
then the patient can be sent to them. This is the broad,delight- 
ful field that lies open before you. Success will be your glory— 
failure will be no fault of the profession. 
Again receive congratulations that you are to practice in a 
land where “ no pent up Utica will contract your powers.” 
As we have no divisions of caste, no hereditary rank, based on 
an “anchored wealth,” so we have no royal road to distinction. 
Individual worth is the only passport demanded or accepted. 
In European nations the medical department is regulated and 
circumscribed by codes, more or less elaborate, but the genius of 
our institutions points to a policy far broader and more liberal. 
We believe that under the banner of widespread education, 
with the masses cultivated and elevated, the skilled physician 
will be able to plant the laurel of success over the ashes of the 
dead empiric and ignorant pretender. No doubt, for a time 
this will strain our faith, for the sway of the outrageous cheat 
seems to be as unbroken in medicine as in other affairs. But the 
disintegration of sham and shoddy is as surely going on as are 
the silent forces which purity and revolutionize nature at times. 
Educated skill is the Hercules which is gradually cleaning out 
this Augean stable. But just here it is well to remember that 
not all who have their names written on college parchment are 
jewels indeed. Spurious coin circulates and deceives for a brief time; but as the fog of the morning yields to the pressure of 
the sun, so will these pass into the shadows of night when 
scorched by the sun of actual and severe test. 
In this country there is a friendly hearing for all your discov- 
eries, even though they are innovations and the overthrow of 
other pet theories. Novelties, simply because they are novel- 
ties, can not he hooted out of notice, and passed, untried, into 
the cool shade of retirement. Demonstrate that you have some- 
thing ot utility to man, and cowardly doubts will swiftly disap- 
pear. There is not a people on the face of the globe so eager 
and generous to reward merit or give aid to every experiment 
that has not a sensual or selfish aim. You may drift from the 
circle of your birth without the fear of being overshadowed by 
the dignity of an order or the pernicious barrier of society. 
This is what makes our land illustrious, and you are extremely 
fortunate that your professional career is surrounded with such 
auspicious prospects. 
And lastly, J should outrage this farewell ceremony, your 
patient toil, the fidelity and ability with which these professors 
have discharged their trust, if I were to omit congratulating 
this class on being introduced to the public by and through this 
college. Other classes will succeed you; hut you are the first- 
born of an institution established amid difficulties: on this new 
soil ; the farthest West of any (I believe) and in a city where 
the golden calf is the idol of nearly every heart. An institution 
founded by the enthusiasm and restless energy of this faculty 
who worship at this altar of their adopted mistress; who have 
surmounted obstacles, ignored personal gains, and spared noth- 
ing within their command that this college, in due time, might 
rank along with older and justly celebrated ones; and hence 
there will he a two-fold anxiety ever pursuing you; the public 
eye using you as a lense, will read what manner of skill and 
wisdom is taught here. Your triumphs and renown will add 
lustre to the name of the college that graduates you, and your 
disgrace or defeat will stain and disappoint it. Before }'ou lies 
the plane of undrifted snow. Your footprints will be easily 
traced. You can not leave a doubtful record ; and as Admiral 
Nelson at Trafalgar pronounced the undivided sentiment of the 
British nation, in those imperishable words : *■ England expects 
every man to. do his duty!” so this medical college, with a 
keen aspiration for its own success and yours, exults in the firm 
belief that this class, its first representative, impelled by an all- 
devouring love for its adopted profession, will vindicate that its 
hope was not built on any deceitful stability of the present hour, 
and that your talent and virtues will burn with undimmed splen- 
dor, looking forward to that millenium when with one hand on 
the sacred altar of your profession, and the other on the demon 
of disease, you can stand and swear by the eternal majesty of 
past achievements and present triumphs, that the last seal is 
broken and the dominion of physical cure victorious. Valedictory Address 
OE DR. LESTER. 
Gentlemen or the Graduating Class : 
The circumstances under which we have assembled, renders 
this an occasion of more than ordinary interest to you and to us. 
The scene which to-night surrounds you; this venerable Board 
of Curators; this corps of medical teachers; this assemblage of 
ladies and gentlemen; all these attest the concern and interest 
which is here felt in this epoch, in your individual histories, and 
especially in this, the birth-hour of your professional career. 
In obedience to the requirements of a long-established usage, 
and a time-honored custom, and by the appointment of my col- 
leges, I come before you, gentlemen, to utter the final words of 
advice and instruction which you will receive as pupils in this 
institution, which has to-night bestowed upon you its highest 
honors. 1 am not to speak of the path which lies behind us, 
nor of those hours of toil you have spent, nor the conflicts 
through which you have passed, during the period of your prep- 
aration for your doctorate. No: The struggles of your pupil- 
age are over, its battles are fought, its victories won. But it is 
n\y duty to point you to that future which stretches out before 
you, and if may be, to direct you in the way which leads to 
success, usefulness, happiness and honor—the bright rewards of 
a well-spent life—and to warn 3rou of the dangers which will 
beset your journey through life, that you may be better enabled 
to shun the rucks upon which so many noble barques have 
foundered. 
From this hour forward you occupy new positions in society, 
bear new relations to the world around 3*011, assume new and 
weightier responsibilities, with all their concomitant and rele- 
vant duties. 
While your duties as citizens and students have been faith- 
fully and honorably discharged, yet the profession of medicine, 
the mantle of whose authority has just been placed upon you, 
makes additional demands upon you, levies new and heavier 
contributions upon your time and your energies, and calls upon 
you for higher and nobler sacrifices in the future. Heretofore 
your labors have been of a mere personal character in their end 
and aim, the preparation for your degree, and the qua'ification 
for the practical duties of professional life ; but now you are 
required to make your offerings upon the altar of humanity and 
science. They both alike have the right to demand, and reason 
to expect, that, divesting yourselves of all mere selfish consider- 
ations, you will devote the best energies of your tuiuds to the relief of the sufferings of the one and the advancement of the 
interests of the other. The ties of the social state forbid that 
you should he stimulated alone by the desire to promote your 
own individual aggrandizement, to acquire for yourselves the 
renown of an honored name, but that you should strive to pro- 
mote the happiness, advance the interest and prosperity of those 
with whom your lots have been cast in life. And moreover, it 
should be your earnest desire to contribute something to science, 
from whose precious treasures you have been permitted to draw 
so freely, so that you may in some degree discharge to posterity 
the debt you owe to the Fathers who have gone before you, and 
who have bequeathed such rich legacies to the literature of the 
profession; whose labors have saved so much toil to us, and 
whose revelations have opened up to the inquiring mind such 
fertile fields of knowledge. In short, gentlemen, you should 
make it one of the great aims of your lives that the world may 
be bettered by your having lived in it; and while you are pass- 
ing down the stream of time you may be instrumental in deep- 
ening and widening the channels of truth and knowledge, send- 
ing out from them more tributaries on errands of mercy and 
humanity. The most brilliant intellectual achievement or sci- 
entific triumph cannot “fill the measure of the stature ” of true 
manhood, but by the standard of usefulness must all men be 
measured in this life. 
The dazzling laurels won by the victorious warrior do not re- 
ceive their brilliancy nor their true glory from the din of clash- 
ing arms, the fearful strife of battle, the sacrifice of human life,' 
or the seas of blood through which he may have passed to 
achieve his victory. These horrors of war go far in abatement 
of the grandeur and sublimity of the sanguinary conflict, and 
can only shed unsullied lustre upon the memory of the chief 
who has lod the host to battle and to victory, by the triumph of 
the right and the overthrow of the wrong, and the importance 
and value of those principles for the establishment of which the 
contest was waged or defended. 
The great end of the physician’s life is not alone that by toil 
and labor he may acquire knowledge and store his mind with 
the lore of the vast literature of his profession, that he may 
gild his name while living, and his memory when dead, with 
the perishing tinsel of popular applause, by the great amount 
of learning he may have acquired, but in addition to this, he 
must seek to learn the important lesson how he can best make 
that knowledge available in the treatment of disease, the allevi- 
ation of the miseries and sufferings of his race and the promo- 
tion of human happiness. 
In order to the faithful and successful discharge of the duties 
of the noble profession upon which 3*011 are about to enter, it 
will be needful that you bestow much meditation upon the great 
fundamental truths in medicine, which you have learned, that you may be better enabled to solve the problems of their adap- 
tation to the accomplishment of the great end in view. It has 
been well said that: 
“Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, 
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men; 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge a rude, unprofitable mass, 
The materials with which wisdom builds, 
Till smoothed and squared, and fitted to its place, 
Hoes but encumber whom it seems t’ enrich. ” 
By meditation upon what you read, as well as what you glean 
from your clinical observation, you will greatly promote the 
process of mental digestion and assimilation, whereby your in- 
tellectual capacities will be developed. 
In addition to the mental invigoration which you will derive 
from careful and scrutinizing investigation, you will become 
more familiar with what you learn, so that you will be enabled 
to render it more readily available at the bedside of your pa- 
tients. You should not render implicit confidence to the teach- 
ings of the highest medical authority, without first requiring 
what they teach to pass through the crucible of earnest thought, 
that you may obtain the approbation of your own judgments, 
that it is founded in truth and sound philosophy. By so doing, 
you will often save yourselves the misfortune of having fastened 
upon you the shackles of error. If you will turn to the history 
of your profession you will see how many ingeniously wrought 
theories have been advanced and believed, so soon to be trod- 
den under foot in the onward march of the medical sciences, 
and consigned to the grave which truth has dug for error, how 
many beautiful and plausib’e systems have reared their bright 
and haughty crest to the gaze of an admiring world, to be only 
toppled in the dust, leaving only here and there a morsel of 
truth to enrich the field of .science. What to-day seems clothed 
in the attractive garb of philosophy* and enthroned with exul- 
tation and joy in the temple of medicine, to-morrow may be 
thrust out, covered with the tattered rags of ignorance and folly. 
These reflections should afford no source of discouragement 
to the young, ambitious and inquiring physician ; but rather of 
gratillation and joy that he has attached himself to a progressive 
profession, in which there are no shackles for thought, and no 
despotic hand to stay the car of progress. And in addition to 
the circumspection with which you should adopt the opinions of 
other men, you should cultivate a just pride and an ardent de- 
sire that in your search for knowledge, you may be able your- 
selves to contribute some bright rayr of truth, which shall bear 
its part in dispelling the remaining clouds which overshadow 
the great profession you have chosen. 
Nor should the errors of the past in any* degree detract 
from our appreciation of the services, or our veneration for the memories of our forefathers in medicine. For although 
they taught much which by the subsequent revelations of science 
has been found to be false doctrine, yet deprived as they were 
of the many facilities for investigation, which we at this day 
enjoy, by their industry, zeal, and talent, they have furnished 
the great foundation truths upon which succeeding generations 
built, and will continue to improve the great science of medi- 
cine. 
It is also worthy of our notice that in the history of medicine, 
we find many of those whose labors and discoveries shed the 
largest benefactions upon the human race, were not only de- 
nied the encouragement of their fellow-citizens and oftimes of 
their brethren in the profession; but were met by the fiercest 
opposition and the most cruel persecution, while in the act of 
showering upon mankind some of its richest blessings. 
Harvey, whose memory has been rendered immortal by the 
discovery of the circulation of the blood, after the publication 
of his treatise upon that subject, was made the obbject of scorn 
and ridicule by many of the most learned professors of that age, 
and suffered the loss of a large share of his practice for daring 
to promulgate the great truth of the circulation. 
Jenner, rendered so justly illustrious by the discovery of vac- 
cination, met with neither sympathy nor favor from his profes- 
sional brethren; and we arc told that “so distasteful did his 
speculations prove to one of the medical societies of which he 
was a member, that he was forbidden to indulge in them at 
their regular meetings under the penalty of expulsion.” He was 
charged with attempting to beastialize the human race by the 
introduction of disease from a lower order of animals. And in 
addition to the maledictions of the doctors, the anathemas of 
the pulpit were thundered at him, and bis discovery denounced 
as “ diabolical.” In no wise discouraged, Jenner pursued his 
investigations, feeling the proud consciousness that he was right, 
and lived to see himself recognized and acknowledged, by the 
whole civilized world, as one of the greatest benefactors of the 
human race. 
lint we should not content ourselves with the glories of the 
past. W1 iile we enjoy the benefits of the achievements of our 
lathers, and contemplate with pride the triumphs of their genius, 
let us endeavor to keep pace with the present advanced state of 
the profession, and use our utmost exertion to bequeath as much 
to posterity as the result of our labor as we have inherited from 
our ancestors. 
lie member, gentlemen, that the profession at this day is 
making rapid strides in the solution of great problems, in the 
various departments of medicine. And he who tails to improve 
his time, and avail himself of the many facilities for the acquis- 
ition of knowledge, by closing bis eyes to the increasing flood 
of light being shed by the medical literature of the day, satis fied with what he may have already learned, will soon find 
himself groping in the darkness of doubt and uncertainty, it 
would be scarcely less criminal in a man to “w-aste his substance 
with riotous living” than to remain in want and squalid pov- 
erty while precious treasures lay all around him, which may 
he made his own, only at the price of industry and exertion. 
I exhort you, gentlemen, that as you leave your Alma Mater, 
you relax not your industry, to the end that you fall not be- 
hind in your profession, but rather that you may assume and 
maintain a high position in the front rank of those who are do- 
ing so much for the advancement of medicine. 
It would perhaps be needless for me to impress upon you the 
importance of the duties you are about to assume in societ3', 
and the weighty obligation which rests upon 3-011 to discharge 
them faithfully. No man in whose bosom dwells the soul of 
honor, will lightly regard the importance of a position in which 
the comfort, happiness and lives of his fellow-beings are in- 
volved. Than this there certainly could be no higher incentive 
to the utmost exertion; no nobler motives to prompt 3’our manly 
courage to bring into the field of contest every available weapon, 
brightly burnished, that 3-011 may successfull)- contend w ith dis- 
ease and death, or in the event that 3-ou should be unable to 
avert the final tragedy of life, you may enjoy the happy con- 
sciousness of having done your whole dut3\ 
In the character of the physician there are certain traits 
which should be especially cultivated, and certain rules of con- 
duct which should be carefully studied. You are to be throw n 
much upon your own resources, and held responsible for the 
results of your own conduct. Hence you should foster a feeling 
of self-reliance. Think for yourselves, as 3-011 w-ill be compelled 
to act for yourselves. The great abundance of medical litera- 
ture afloat in the world w ill not avail you. You will be called 
to treat disease in every form, both old and new-, which must 
be promptly, if successfully met, w hile 3-ou may be cut off from 
eveiy other resource save your own knowledge and skill. 
Go, then, to the bedside with 3-our minds well stored with the 
fundamental doctrines of medicine, with a firm conviction of 
their truth and correctness, and flinch not from doing that w hich 
is needed to be done. Let not 3-our course in the management 
of a case be turned to the right or the left, either by 3-0111* own 
indecision and w-eakness, or b3r the still more unmanly surren- 
der of 3’our own judgment to the whims or caprices of patient 
or friends. 
Be not actuated by motives of mere policy. To court the 
favor of individuals of wealth or influence, of classes or com- 
munities, at the expense of the surrender of 3-0111* individual or 
professional manhood and independence, is to lower the stan- 
dard of your own character, and will sooner or later bring upon you the contempt of those whose favor you had sought to pur- 
chase at so dear a price. 
The rich, the poor, the learned, the ignorant, the virtuous and 
the vicious, all in one sense occupy common ground when 
stricken down by the hand of disease. Disease, like death, is a 
great leveler, and, as the physician is called in the discharge of 
his duties, to mingle in every grade of society, and minister to 
the wants of every condition of mankind, it is his bounden duty 
to treat disease with as much care and circumspection in the 
one case as in the other. lie whose deportment at the bed- 
side of the affluent or influential is marked with tenderness, at- 
tention, and obsequiousness, while he manifests rudeness or in- 
difference, or perhaps turns away with disgust and disdain, at 
the couch of the suffering poor, most lamentably discovers the 
fact that he has formed but a limited conception of the grandeur 
of the profession he has chosen. Moreover he degrades it in 
the scale to a mere mercenary occupation, strips it of the dig- 
nity of its Heaven-born mission, charity, robs his own heart of 
many a thrill of joy, and drives deeper still into his own soul 
the envenomed tooth of avarice. No wider and more fertile 
field is anywhere furnished for the cultivation and practice of 
benevolence than is found in the profession of medicine, and I 
charge you, gentlemen, as you value your own happiness and 
usefulness, not to neglect this portion of your duty. And rest 
assured that your reward will come ; not perhaps by compensa- 
tion in gold and silver, but in that which is often more precious 
and valuable to man, the gratitude of the human heart, the 
richest offering which man can make to fellow-man. The biog- 
rapher of the celebrated l)r. Kush, thus pays the highest trib- 
ute to his heart. “During the whole of his professional life he 
regularly set apart a portion of his time for attention on the 
poor. Those persons who in seasons of prosperity employed 
him as their physician, he never forsook in the hour of adver- 
sity, when the hand of penury was heavy on their spirits.” 
Noble example for you, gentlemen. 
Young men, fired by the ardor of youthful ambition, are 
prone to direct their efforts to gain the admiration of the world, 
by other means than the solid claims of merit. This is an un- 
wise policy, and gives no hope of permanency. Far better will 
it be found to strive for a high standing for professional attain- 
ments among your medical brethren, than among the people 
alone. The clamor of popular applause of to-day may be turned 
to bitter imprecations to-morrow, but the approbation of your 
professional brethren, based upon your merit and proficiency in 
the science of medicine, will be permanent, if you are only true 
to yourselves and to them, and use that application which is in- 
dispensably necessary to keep pace with the advance of medi- 
cine. This, gentlemen, 1 repeat, is the surest road to perma- 
nent success; for il will soon give you a firmer hold upon the confidence of the people than any vain and ostentatious display 
of learning, or empirical trickery. Again, gentlemen, your 
honor, happiness, success and usefulness in life, all call upon 
you and demand that you erect for yourselves a high stand- 
ard of moral excellence, and that you guard with scrupulous 
care your characters from the contaminating inroads of vice and 
immorality, in addition to the direct damaging effects of vicious 
habits upon your health and reputation, they lead to the loss 
of much time and means, which should be studiously applied to 
the promotion of your intellectual and scientific attainments. 
It is not only your interest which so imperiously makes this 
demand upon you, but that of society, to which you owe a sol- 
emn and sacred duty, which can only be discharged with credit 
to yourselves and profit to the community, by the cultivation 
and exercise of a high sense of moral rectitude and professional 
honor. It will he in your power by a well spent and upright 
life to enhance the dignity and elevate the standard of your pro- 
fession, and to make yourselves a blessing to the community 
where you may live, while a life spent in licentiousness and wick- 
edness, at once degrades your profession and sheds blight and 
mildew upon every social channel in which you move. 
While the physician has more than ordinary opportunities 
afforded him for doing good, so he has corresponding and com- 
mensurate powers for evil. The intimate relations which he 
sustains to his patrons and their families, would alone suffice to 
establish the truth of this proposition. The great adversary of 
human happiness could not perhaps select a more successful in- 
strumentality wherewith to accomplish his fiendish purpose of 
moral devastation than the dissolute physician. Nothing can 
compensate the defects of moral character. The greater his 
talent, the more transcendent his genius, the more extended 
his scientific attainments, the more overshadowing and blight- 
ing will be his evil influence, and greater his ability to wound 
to the death everything good and lovely in society. 
J repeat it, that without good morals all is lost. In the lan- 
guage of the code of ethics of the American Medical Association, 
“ There is no profession from the members of which greater 
purity of character and a higher standard of moral excellence 
are required than the medical, and to attain such eminence is a 
duty every physician owes, alike to his profession and to his 
patients." Remember that your professional conduct in the 
life which sweeps out before you will be but the outcropping of 
the opinions you entertain, and the theories you embrace, and 
as you are to be held responsible for the results of that con- 
duct, it behooves you as honest men and conscientious physi- 
cians, not to content yourselves with transplanting in your own 
minds the unchallenged and unexamined opinions of other 
men, and making them the controlling principles of your lives, 
without first submitting them to a rigid scrutiny; thereby forth tying yourselves against the indiscriminate appropriation of 
truth and error. 
Again let me caution you against the shallow and baseless 
popular dogma that he is blameless for the result of his actions 
who thinks himself right; this i only grant to be true if he has 
first used every means in his power to learn what is right. The 
various interpretations of those great truths which underlie the 
medical sciences constitute what is known as the theories of 
medicine. All physicians embrace some one of them, or adopt 
others of their own. These constitute the mainspring of ac- 
tion; give direction to his thoughts, and influence him in every 
step in practice. How important is it, then, that you should 
exercise due diligence in the formation of this motive pow- 
er, which leads you to success on the one hand and disaster 
on the other, as it may be founded on correct or erroneous prin- 
ciples. Yet how lamentably true is it that men are prone to 
close their eyes to the evil consequences of their own conduct, 
if in accordance with some cherished opinion. Hence, they 
subordinate facts to theory. It has been said: “There is no 
well attested case on record of any theory having been aban- 
doned because it produced disastrous results. As long as a the- 
ory is believed men will ascribe its evil epnsequences to any 
other cause except the right one; and a theory which is once 
established, will always be believed until there is some change 
of knowledge which shakes its foundation. ” In the formation 
of your opinions keep close to the teachings of the inductive 
system of philosophy, studying closely the facts which arise 
under your clinical observation ; and be not defrauded of their 
value or significance, because they are in contravention of some 
preconceived opinion. Such was the teaching and practice of 
Hippocrates, the father of medicine ; and the neglect and disre- 
gard of his instruction, has, perhaps, as mbch as any7 one cause, 
retarded the progress of our profession. It was long ago said 
by one well known to fame: “It is in the old regions of medi- 
cine that we find the fountains of that mighty river which for 
more than two thousand years has fertilized the earth and made 
man its lord. Had the progress of man not been retarded by 
that ignorance which is tlie child and servant of barbaric des- 
potism, an earlier Newton might have enlightened the earth; 
an earlier Laplace measured the heavens; or a Cuvier disclosed 
the glories of a past and present creation. The mind of man 
would have burst its chains, and ages ago formed that holy alli- 
ance with knowledge and its first born, liberty, which is now its 
safeguard and glory. In the writings of'Hippocrates we find 
the germs of the inductive philosophy. A physician showed 
Uaeon the road to immortality.” He who by7 his observation 
tirst discovers a fact upon which is based a new born truth in 
medicine, adds another link to that golden-chain which will yet 
anchor the old ship of medicine in the harbor of eternal truth, no more to he “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every 
wind of doctrine. ” 
It only remains for me, gentlemen, on behalf of the Faculty, 
to hid you adieu, with the assurance that we will ever feel the 
liveliest interest in your welfare, and the most profound con- 
cern for your future prosperity. Wherever your lots may he 
cast on earth, we desire you to remember that you will ever 
have a warm place in the hearts and memories of your former 
instructors in this institution. 
LIST OF GRADUATES. 
At a Public . Commencement, held at the Cpllege of Physi- 
cians & Surgeons, March 7th, 1871, the Degree of Doctor of 
Medicine was conferred byJj. K. Thacher, A. M., President of 
the Board of Curators, upon the following gentlemen : 
NAME. 
lt£SIDEN< E. 
SI B.IECT OK THESIS. 
s. I). Bowker 
Inflammation. 
E. L. Burdick 
< Upward and backward Luxation ol' 
' \ nip joint. 
T. J ( ourv 
. Typhoid Fever. 
R. W. Co line.’ 1 
Kansas. 
U. W. Gabriel 
Acute Dysentery. 
H. R. Holman 
i Molecular Motion as concerned in 
• ( nutrition and tissue changes. 
R. F. Smith 
i 1 1 ( 
Quinine. 
F. A. Tappan 
i ‘ il 
(Joxalgia. 
John E. Watson 
. Eclampsia,