GALEN ISM: 
AN ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
GRADUATING CLASS OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS 
AND SURGEONS OF INDIANA. 
By THEOPHILUS PARVIN, M. D., LL. D. 
Prof, of Obstetrics and the Diseasetqf Women and Children. 
LOUISVILLE: 
PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, 156 WEST MAIN STREET. 
I875- GALENISM: 
AN ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
GRADUATING CLASS OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS 
AND SURGEONS OF INDIANA. 
By THEOPHILUS PARVIN, M. D., LL. D. 
Prof, of Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women and Children. 
LOUISVILLE: 
PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, 156 WEST MAIN STREET. 
1875. GALEN ISM. 
Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: It is at once my duty 
and privilege to congratulate you upon your recent honors. The 
first-born of this medical school, you are the heralds of those who 
in successive years shall stand where you now stand, and depart as 
you will soon depart to exercise the noblest of secular avocations. 
You are to be the first living epistles, known and read of all men, 
asserting the fidelity of your instructors and the fitness of the 
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Indiana to take high rank 
among the medical institutions of the country. Socrates taught 
his disciples that they should not so much desire to be known for 
being philosophers as to honor philosophy by living virtuous lives; 
and let your chief honor be not that you are physicians, but that 
your professional lives shall bring new glory unto medicine. 
And now in this final hour, amid all the glad emotions of 
success, of hope, of ambition incident to the occasion, before these 
witnesses attesting their deep concern in your entrance upon pro- 
fessional life, in this temple of the living God, what farewell words 
shall be uttered, what final counsels are most suitable, and how 
can I contribute in some slight degree to your future usefulness, 
happiness, and honor? The usual topics for such occasions—the 
trials, responsibilities, rewards, and general conduct of professional 
life; its temptations, its progress, its philanthropic character, its 
true glory, etc.—are indeed very old and familiar; they have been 
presented again and again with all the graces of rhetoric and all 
the powers of eloquence. Old and familiar though they are, they 
can never be trite and forever cast aside. In this regard history 
repeats itself; they recur as the seasons recur; they come as like 4 
GALENISM. 
periods of life in individuals of successive generations. The tale 
of love is an old one—old as Eden—but immortal as the race. It 
was uttered before the Red Sea swallowed up the Egyptian host; 
uttered before the Roman eagles swept over Judea; uttered beside 
the plashing of Galilean wave, or amid the dark recesses and 
beneath the rustling leaves of olive-groves. This mighty passion 
burned in Leander’s bosom unquenched by the Hellespont; it 
glowed in Petrarch’s verse, and until the end of time some beau- 
teous Genevieve will be learning 
‘All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
All are but ministers of love, 
And feed his sacred flame.’ 
The love of parent for child is the same now as when the old 
patriarch wept over the bloody coat of his beloved son, or when 
Israel’s monarch bewailed the dead Absalom, or when the widow 
of Nain followed the corpse of her only child to the burial-place, 
or when another mother climbed the Alpine cliff, so steep that 
hardy mountaineers dared not, to rescue her babe from the eagle’s 
nest. Valor and patriotism, these are old, these are new; Leonidas 
and his companions at Thermopylae; Horatius 
‘facing fearful odds 
For the ashes of his fathers 
And for the temples of his gods;’ 
Arnold Winkelried gathering into his bosom a sheaf of Austrian 
spears, and thus making way for liberty—are historic figures repre- 
senting sentiments that never die. The sweet lullaby that hushed 
many an infant to its rest to-night was sung, and the simple 
prayer that in many a Christian nursery floated from child-lips 
heavenward was uttered long years before the land was girdled 
with railroads, or ocean surface plowed with steam and its depths 
made the whispering-galleries of the nations. Spring is coming— 
is coming with the breath of the warm south wind, with verdant 
fields, bursting bud, unfolding leaf, with blooming flowers and the GALENISM. 
5 
sweet carolings of birds — but she has no treasure differing from 
those she brought in the years gone by, or will bring in the years 
to come. And if to-night I utter a tale much more than thrice 
told—repeat that which was said long before we were born, and 
will be said long after we are buried—it is because like occasion 
invites like thought, and the work of the physician is the same 
from age to age. 
The late Sir James Simpson, in an address at the University 
of Edinburgh many years ago, stated that it was the custom in 
some ancient continental universities to present the graduate on 
the day he received his doctorship with a ring, a barette, an open 
and a sealed book. The study of these symbols will give us an 
ideal of the medical character, a picture of the medical life. 
The ring represented the marriage of the physician to medi- 
cine. Here is thy bride to have and to hold, for richer for poorer, 
for better for worse, to love and to cherish until death do you 
part; a bride whose beauty and grace will more and more unfold 
with each passing year, and hold a loyal heart in willing bonds. 
Coleridge once playfully remarked of Southey, whose devotion to 
books was constant, that his library was his wife. Now it is not 
suggested that celibacy is the normal condition of a doctor, and 
that he should have no other wife than his profession. That 
would be an exceedingly ungracious utterance to those of you who 
are already in the paradise of matrimony, as well as to the rest, 
who doubtless intend entering therein at the earliest opportunity; 
ungracious too in the presence of so many of the gentler sex, 
among whom there may be some fancy-free maiden who has wisely 
decided that a medical gentleman would be the most desirable of 
life-partners. So far from holding to such heretical creed, I believe 
the doctor, like the bishop, should be the husband of one wife. 
Indeed I know of many instances where his professional happiness 
and usefulness were largely the results of a wife’s intelligent and 
loving help. A most interesting volume might be written upon 
doctors’ wives, showing how they had contributed not only to these 6 
GALENISM. 
ends, but also materially assisted their husbands in professional and 
scientific investigation. A few years since a talented physician and 
medical teacher of Columbus, Ohio, published a book of original 
study. This book was enriched by skillful engravings that were 
the admiration of scientific men at home and abroad. Now these 
engravings were his wife’s work. Her artist-eye and cunning hand, 
stimulated by wifely love, accomplished that which professional 
engravers shrunk from attempting. 
However, married or single, the physician must constantly 
remember that medicine is his great work in life. No other occu- 
pation can be permitted to come in conflict with it; and that if, 
Atalanta-like, he turn aside to pick up a golden apple, he may miss 
the goal. To work, to work with all our might, is one of the great 
laws of our existence ; and it is a sad thing if a man does not love 
his chosen or allotted labor with his whole soul. Now medicine 
is worthy the purest love and noblest consecration. More than 
four centuries before the Christian era—about the time indeed that 
the divine old man of Cos was laying the foundation of medical 
science—one of the greatest of Greek poets makes the baffling of 
disease an evidence of man’s extraordinary power. In the Antigone 
of Sophocles the following passage occurs: ‘ Many are the mighty 
things, and naught is more mighty than man. He even sails 
beyond the seas when whitened into foam with the wintry south 
wind’s blast, passing amid the billows that roar around; and the 
supreme of divinities immortal, undecaying earth, he furrows, his 
plows circling from year to year, turning up her soil with the off- 
spring of the steed. Ensnaring the swift-winged birds, he bears 
them away as his prey ; and the tribes of the monsters of the wild, 
and the marine race of the deep in the inwoven meshes of his nets, 
he, all-inventive man; and he masters by devices the tenant of the 
fields, the forest beast, and he will bring under the dominion of the 
neck-encircling yoke the shaggy-maned horse and the untamable 
mountain bull. And he hath taught himself language and lofty 
wisdom, and the customs of civic law, and to avoid the cold and GALENISM. 
7 
stormy arrows of uncomfortable frosts. . . . Only this he can 
not do, find escape from the grave; but he has devised remedies 
to baffle disease.’ Another heathen writer spoke of the physician 
as ‘the hand of God;’ and when the Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among men one of the frequent manifestations of infinite 
love and power was in healing the sick. Surely we may claim for 
medicine a celestial origin, a divine lineage, and she is worthy any 
man’s espousal. Take this divinity as yours, accept this bride; for 
in her right hand she offers virtue and truth, and in her left hand 
philanthropy and gratitude, while to some few—very few indeed— 
she grants honor and riches. 
It is hardly necessary to insist on these latter points, nor shall 
I do it other than to introduce as to one of them a noble passage 
from Sydenham, who seems to stand out among British physicians, 
as we look back upon him through two centuries, very much as 
Edmund Spenser among early British poets, each surrounded with 
deathless glory. It will show that Sydenham had little honor in 
his life-time, and that he did not regard it as of much value. The 
great physician has been thanking a professional brother who has 
written him in approbation of his works, and states that he has 
seldom received any thing of this nature, and then adds in golden 
words: ‘Yet, notwithstanding I endeavor all I can, and will do so, 
to learn and promote the curing of disease, and to instruct those 
that are less conversant in practice than myself, if any such there 
are, let other people think of me as they please. For, having 
nicely weighed whether it is better to be beneficial to men or to 
be praised by them, I find the first preponderates and much con- 
duces to the tranquillity of the mind; but as for fame and popular 
applause, they are lighter than a feather or a bubble, and more vain 
than the shadow of a dream.’ 
A barette was also given the graduate, signifying that he was 
now a priest, and called to the exercise of priestly functions. You 
need not be reminded that in former times—among the Jews, the 
pagans, and the Christians—the sacerdotal and medical offices were 8 
GALENISM. 
frequently united, the priest being the physician; and while in all 
civilized countries this union has terminated, yet there are striking 
analogies between medical and priestly functions, and intimate re- 
lations between medicine and religion. The priest was the inter- 
preter of the law, the minister of comfort to the sorrowing, and 
made sacrifice for the sinning. The physician too is the inter- 
preter of law, law as divinely instituted as any written upon tables 
of stone or uttered by prophet-lips when touched with hallowed 
fire; and he too ministers to those who suffer, bringing pardon or 
at least mitigation of punishment. 
Medicine in its scientific aspect studies laws; indeed the 
simplest definition of science is the knowledge of law; and prob- 
ably there never was a time in the history of human thought and 
scientific study when the prevalence of law was more generally and 
earnestly insisted upon. Yet we can turn from Huxley and Herbert 
Spencer to one of the great lights of the English Church, more 
than two centuries ago, and find declarations as positive and com- 
prehensive as any that meet the ear in modern times. Take this 
passage from Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, a passage which for 
vigor of thought and splendid rhetoric has rarely been equaled, 
and tell me if its inclusion is not large enough for all subjects 
of human study in science, our own among the number: ‘Of law 
there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom 
of God, and her voice the harmony of the world. All things in 
heaven and on earth do her homage, the very least as feeling- her 
care and the very greatest as acknowledging her power; both 
angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though 
each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent 
admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ There can 
be no antagonism; nay, there is harmony between medicine and 
theology thus presented. So too the following passage from one 
of the most brilliant of modern writers (Ruskin) would receive the 
complete assent of most physicians: ‘As you know more and more 
of the created world you will find that the true will of its Maker is GALENISM. 
9 
that its creatures should be happy; that he has made every thing 
beautiful in its time and in its place, and that it is chiefly by the 
fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting his 
laws, that creation groans or travails in pain.’ 
However, disobedience to law is frequent, and the peace and 
joy are disturbed, and creation does groan and travail in pain. 
Not only do the violators themselves suffer, but they often involve 
others in a common calamity, like the blind Samson. And when 
the innocent — innocent so far as directly transgressing—suffer, are 
we, the priesthood of medicine, to read off God’s decrees, and pro- 
nounce the suffering punishment for some moral cause? Not thus 
did a famous physician years ago, as the following incident testifies. 
Passing along with some of his pupils, a case of blindness in an 
adult, most probably congenital cataract, was presented him, and 
those pupils were anxious to know the cause of this affliction. It 
could not be a punishment for his own sin, for he was born blind ; 
but had not his parents done something very bad? The answer 
came promptly from his lips, silencing those unjustly-judging 
pupils: ‘Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but tha 
the glory of God might be manifested,’ and he immediately gave 
him his sight. The glory of God manifested in giving vision to 
the blind man; and is it too much to say that the physician, in 
his daily work of healing the sick, is also manifesting that glory? 
And then is it too much to claim for medicine that she especially 
meets the two great ends which Lord Bacon declared the true 
objects of human learning, ‘the glory of God and the benefit of 
man’s estate.’ 
So far as personal religion on the part of the medical practi- 
tioner is concerned, let me say it can hardly be thought, even by 
the most skeptical, that a true religious faith and practice militate 
in the least against the performance of professional duties, or 
detract in the slightest from the excellence of medical character; 
nay, rather that they assist the one and enhance the other. No 
one will judge Boerhaave a weaker man because he spent the first 10 
GALENISM. 
hour in each day reading the Bible and in prayer. No one will 
think that one of the most extraordinary men of the century, the 
late Sir James Simpson, should have any less honor because he 
took an active part in religious meetings; nor will the reader abate 
a tithe of his admiration for Thomas Sydenham when he finds in 
his tract on dysentery that the gifted author pauses in considering 
the disease to utter the words, ‘And truly I can not here forbear 
mentioning with gratitude that Omnipotent God, the giver of all 
good things, has not provided any other remedy for the relief 
of wretched man, which is so able either to quell more diseases 
or more effectually to extirpate them, than opiate medicines taken 
from some species of poppies.’ 
The other presents received by the graduate were an open and 
a closed book; the one signifying the knowledge already obtained 
and the other that which he should diligently seek. 
No matter how faithfully a student may have worked during 
his medical pupilage, he has only entered the vestibule of a vast 
temple, only touched upon the shore of an immense continent. It 
is to be feared that many relinquish study, or at best become only 
case-readers. The reasons for such neglect of systematic study are 
in part the natural indolence of the human mind, the diversions 
of social life, the temptations of business speculations or of political 
management, and above all a want of true love for medical knowl- 
edge and of just appreciation of its value. 
Disguise it or explain it as we may, there sometimes is a down- 
right antagonism between Young Physic and Old Physic; the former 
being disposed to exaggerate the value of knowledge derived from 
books and teachers, while the latter, who has seen the rise and 
fall of so many theories, and has seen too material changes in 
therapeutics, trusts chiefly to that knowledge derived from his own 
personal observation and the 
‘ Old experience that doth attain 
To something like prophetic strain.’ 
Young Physic commences his professional career brimming 
with good resolutions; his brain is full of theories, pictures, and GALENISM. 
11 
definitions; he is cognizant of all bones, muscles, nerves, blood- 
vessels; knows all the fanciful names with which the old anatomists 
were so generous, from trees of life, forks, bridges, triangles, etc., 
to Turkish saddles. He is familiar with all the wonderful instru- 
ments of modern medical research, and has invested some of his 
last dollars in supplying himself with a goodly share of them. He 
can enumerate and describe diseases, and is omniscient of rdles 
and rhonchij and not to multify his qualifications, as the crown and 
conclusion of his scholastic attainments, can repeat the barbarous 
terminology of recent chemistry without fracturing his tongue. His 
diploma he possibly regards as a certain passport to public favor, an 
open sesame to the homes of the sick. 
But Old Physic, who perchance never attended more than 
one course of lectures, and that thirty or forty years ago; whose 
library of venerable volumes might be carried in a market-basket, 
and who is careless of medical journals, but who has the unpur- 
chasable knowledge drawn from intelligent experience, keeps most 
of thejDractice, and his ambitious young rival becomes digusted at 
the want of public appreciation, murmurs against it very much in 
the spirit, though of course not in the manner, of the complaints 
by Tennyson’s ‘ Northern Farmer ’ when he has to die, suggesting 
that God Almighty does not know what he means in taking him: 
‘A mowt ’a taaken Joanes, as ’ant ’aapoth o’ sense, 
Or a mowt ’a taakin Robins—a niver mended a fence,’ 
and in his disgust declares there is no use in studying. Where 
such conditions exist there is a mistake on the part of each. Each 
has knowledge that would be beneficial to the other; and if there 
were always, as there oftentimes is, a mutual recognition of this 
fact, they can be wonderfully helpful to each other. 
But this error is not the only one Young Physic commits in 
relinquishing his studies. No matter how slow the public may be to 
recognize his qualifications, no matter even how greedily they may 
run after all manner of quackeries and medical abominations, let 
him patiently bide his time, strengthening himself for those respon- 12 
GALENISM. 
sibilities which are sure to come to every faithful worker in medi- 
cine, responsibilities that are sometimes of almost crushing weight. 
Immediate entrance into a large practice, whether obtained by acci- 
dent or by cunning and dishonesty, is generally an unmitigated curse 
to the young physician. Neither will natural indolence nor disap- 
pointment at delayed success, either leading to neglect of study, 
be excused by the remark sometimes made, ‘ I am not going to 
practice in a city, nor even in a town, only in a village, and I know 
enough for a country doctor.’ 
Here again two or three grievous errors. Human life is just 
as sacred, disease just as difficult of comprehension in the country 
as in the city; and there are country doctors that are the peers 
in medical knowledge, in culture and professional skill, of any of 
their city brethren. Country doctor indeed, and consultant many 
miles and hours away, with some one of those terrible emergencies 
pressing upon you, a human life trembling in the balance, emergency 
taxing the wisdom and skill of the highest, how can any mediocre 
attainments satisfy either your intellect or your conscience! 
Country doctor indeed, and therefore no grand achievement 
for you, no great discovery to be made! 
Within the first decade of the present century a country doctor 
in Kentucky made the greatest surgical triumph of the century, 
opened the way by which hundreds of human lives have been saved, 
and he became the teacher of the professional world. Some time 
in the sixth century one of the most horrible and fatal diseases was 
first observed. It raged unchecked among the civilized and savage, 
devouring human beings as Saturn his offspring, until millions and 
millions were its victims, France alone contributing thirty thousand 
every year. It raged unchecked for twelve centuries; but in the 
year 1776 — immortal in the history of this republic, immortal in 
the history of medicine—there was the dawn of the grandest dis- 
covery ever made—a discovery which was to rob death and the 
grave of these untimely victims, saving more lives than all the wars 
since then have destroyed—and he who made it and successfully GALENISM. 
13 
worked it out to its great conclusion was only a country doctor! 
Ah! the names of Ephraim McDowell and Edward Jenner can no 
more be blotted out from the annals of medicine than the stars 
from the firmament. 
Now surely with such illustrious examples no one will wrap 
the garment of sloth around him and lie down to pleasant dreams. 
The Master one day will demand his own with usury. Dream with 
the sublime possibilities which stand in the foreground and beckon 
you on to triumph, or at least heroic endeavor. Dream, with so 
many treading the via dolorosa and sinking into premature graves. 
Dream, with Misereres rising from every land and floating on every 
breeze. Dream, with that closed book vastly larger than the one 
you have opened and studied ; that closed book whose pages no 
mortal, even unto the latest times, shall ever fully master, but which 
in their richness of knowledge and affluence of blessing are a true 
El Dorado. No, other things are believed of you. Hopes bright 
as day mantle your future. See to it that the world is better for 
your living in it, that medicine is exalted in your hands, and the 
people will rise up and call you blessed. 
Did time permit, many other topics involving your future 
conduct might be presented. ’ For example, your relations with 
members of the regular profession; and I would urge you to beware 
of even forming, still more of expressing, hasty opinions, either 
favorable or adverse, for few persons move in active life without 
veils; and also to beware of hasty friendships and confidences. 
So far as so-called irregular practitioners are concerned, personally 
let them be treated with such courtesy as their social character may 
entitle them to, having no concern or criticism for their medical 
beliefs. While you contemn dishonorable conduct in high or low, 
never meet violations of professional honor by corresponding acts 
on your part, and thus getting even, as it is said ; rather make the 
golden rule your guide, as you would they should do unto you. 
You will be astonished and pained sometimes to find that men in 
their greed for gain, or from some natural moral obliquity, men 14 
GALENISM. 
from whom you would expect better things, will be guilty of con- 
duct in reference to getting or keeping patients, the counterpart 
of which in high-toned commercial circles would be regarded as 
dishonorable and dishonest, and that the Code of Ethics generally 
adopted by medical organizations, even if it were ten times more 
stringent, can never right all these wrongs or prevent these evils; 
but the derelictions of others should only induce greater circum- 
spection on your part, so that you shall acquit yourselves in all 
emergencies not only as skillful physicians, but as high-toned 
gentlemen. 
I should like to urge upon you the importance of keeping 
a daily record of your practice; of being not only readers of some 
of the best medical journals, but also of being contributors thereto 
as occasion may offer; of connecting yourselves with local, state, 
and national medical organizations; of not only diligently pursuing 
your professional studies, but also of cultivating some science or 
art allied to medicine in part as recreation and discipline, and in 
part for the positive help it may be. Some acquaintance too with 
general literature ought also to be the possession of every member 
of a liberal profession. 
What is to be your treatment of female practitioners? No 
matter what you may believe on the abstract question of women 
studying medicine, these are to receive all the professional cour- 
tesies you would give to those of your own sex having similar 
qualifications. 
A word as to suits of malpractice which just now are threat- 
ening to become in this state epidemic, or rather epitnedic, if such 
a barbarism can be tolerated. Never advise, never countenance one 
of these, no matter what the provocation or who the prosecuted. 
Better that nine guilty men should escape than one innocent man 
should suffer is, I believe, one of the humane maxims of the law; 
and if this be true, no suit for malpractice has ground to stand 
upon a single minute. 
The pathway upon which you have entered has its thorns, 
its glooms, and its perils. You can not always command success, GALENISM. 
15 
and you will sometimes meet with unjust censure. The defection 
of fickle friends, the misrepresentations of envious rivals, your 
mistakes — for doctors are not infallible, and mistakes you will 
sometimes make—and the imperfection of our art will try you as 
the furnace tries the gold, as the storm tries the mountain-rooted 
oak. Only see to it that you are purer for the fire and stronger 
for the storm. But the pathway has its fragrant flowers, its golden 
sunshine, and the good is vastly more than the evil. 
Summon up all your energies for the conflict; gird yourself 
for the race; accept humbly but bravely your God-given labor, and 
you can not fail. The commander in a great battle is doing a 
sublime work. Those thousands and ten thousands of soldiers are 
mere automata, moving obedient to his will. Now, with all the 
horrible enginery of war, he holds them in his hand like thunder- 
bolts, and now he launches them forth on their swift mission of 
death, and writes in the wreathing cannon-smoke and in the writh- 
ing bodies of postrate foes that one word supreme in his mind— 
victory. So too the leader of a great orchestra, an orchestra of 
many voices and instruments: at a look, at a gesture from him, 
silence is no more, the great deeps of sound are broken up, and 
the flood pours forth, wave upon wave spreading wider, swelling 
higher, billow surmounting billow, as if to rock the deep founda- 
tions of the earth and assault the very heavens with tumultuous 
raving; but the magic wand of the leader guides all these separate 
forces, compels and combines all these mighty utterances into one 
common harmony, into one sublime melody. But grander, sublimer 
than aught ever accomplished on battle-field or orchestral stage is 
the bringing a human soul in harmony with divine law, concen- 
trating and combining all its high powers upon a single noble 
purpose in life, subduing all evil passions, and kindling upon its 
altar a flame of celestial light and love. This is a victory bringing 
an immortal crown. This is a music whose sweet melodies shall 
float beyond the stars, and may endure when the stars shall perish. 
Unto this eternal harmony and unto this sublime victory, my 
brothers, are you called to-night.