(&CLcZtel Ij. rjjodiey. 
Woman's Medical College of Penn'a, 
Philadelphia. 
(: nlrobtulonj 
Homan's jledical ollege of Pennsylvania. 
Prof. RACHEL L. BODLEY, A. M. 
October yth, 1875. 
GRANT, FAIRF.S k RODGERS, PRS. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 
DELIVERED AT THE OPENING 
OF THE 
Twenty-Sixth Annual Session 
OF THE 
Roman’s jjjedical | olle0CDf:|enns^liiania, 
October 7th, 1875, / 
BY 
RACHEL L. BODLEY, A. M„ 
PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY. 
(PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE CLASS.) 
PHILADELPHIA : 
Grant, Faires & Rodgers, Printers, 52 & 54 North Sixth Street.. 
1875- |f Oman’s jjj etlical |;otleijc of: Jennsytoania, 
NORTH COLLEGE AVENUE AND TWENTY-FIRST STREET, 
PHILADELPHIA. 
CORPORATORS. 
President, T. MORRIS PEROT. 
Secretary, C. N. PEIRCE. Treasurer, REDWOOD F. WARNER 
JOSEPH JEANES, 
Hon. WILLIAM S. PEIRCE, 
REBECCA WHITE, 
DILLWYN PARRISH. 
J. GIBBONS HUNT, M D., 
EDWARD LEWIS, 
JOHN LONGSTRETH, 
MARMADUKE MOORE, 
WILLIAM J. MULLEN, 
Gen. THOMAS L. KANE, 
ELI K. PRICE, Esq., 
A. J. DERBYSHIRE, 
E. H. CLEVELAND, M. D., 
ISRAEL H. JOHNSON, 
MARY L. LONGSTRETH, 
ALFRED JONES, 
MARY J BANES. 
FACULTY. 
EMELINE H. CLEVELAND, M. D., 
Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women. 
MARY J. SCARLETT-DIXON, M. D., 
Professor of Anatomy. 
RACHEL L. BODLEY, A. M., 
Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology. 
ISAAC COMLY, M. D., 
Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine. 
BENJAMIN B. WILSON, M. D., 
Professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery. 
CHARLES H. THOMAS, M. D., 
Professor of Materia Medica and General Therapeutics. 
HENRY HARTSHORNE, M. D., 
Professor of Physiology and Hygiene and Diseases of Children. 
J. GIBBONS HUNT, M. D., 
Professor of Microscopy and Histology. 
FRANCES EMILY WHITE, M.D., 
Demonstrator of Anatomy. 
RACHEL L. BODLEY, A. M., Dean, 
North College Ave. and 21st street 
{Thi next Spring Term of the Roman’s Medical College, of Pennsylvania, will open Monday, 
March 20, 1876, and continue ten weeks. IntrniUiriurij JJIkess, 
GREAT EPOCHS occur but seldom in the life of a public institution as in 
that of an individual; meet is it, therefore, that when, in the lapse of years, 
they do occur, careful attention should be bestowed upon them. 
Through such an epoch, great, and blessed as well as great, this College 
is now passing. The special period began one year ago, when the steadfast 
friends of our cause, gathered with the officers and students upon the founda- 
tion walls of this building, and while the mason stayed his trowel, and the 
burden-bearer rested awhile upon his hod, the corner-stone was laid by reverent 
hands, under a glowing sunset sky. 
A second stage was noted, when on the evening of the nth of March, a 
cheerful company thronged these completed halls, and congratulations and 
good cheer were the burden of the hour. 
Upon the third and last stage of this great epoch we enter, as on this 7th 
day of October, 1875, we assemble, Corporators, Faculty, and Students, to 
hallow this noble temple erected for the “ advancement of woman in the science 
and practice of medicine,” by the earnest work of the Twenty-Sixth Annual 
Session. 
As the new friends gather around us we each one in thought, if not in open 
speech, tell over again the tenderly-cherished names which are so interwoven 
with the warp and woof of the life and usefulness of this college, that they can 
never be forgotten. The self-denying labors of these good men and women so 
fitly adverted to by the Senior Member of the Faculty,* last October, beside 
the newly-laid corner-stone, constitute a page in its history which can never 
be erased. 
Who that knew her does not at this hour experience intense regret that 
Prof. Ann Preston, living, does not stand at this desk to address this waiting 
throng ! We never, throughout the whole glad year, have missed her presence 
more than here and now, as around us, above us, beneath us, are realized her 
brightest anticipations. But absent in body, she is present in the abounding 
fruit of her labors; these we thankfully accept, with full appreciation of the 
fact that had she and they of whom we have already spoken, not lived and 
toiled as only martyrs toil, the fair vision of to-day had never been ! 
They, Corporators, Professors, Students, labored, and we have entered 
into their labors. “ Into their labors,” and therefore year by year, as the 
Autumn comes, we renew the toil, rejoicing the while in the opportunity to 
work while our day lasts, as they worked. 
* See Page 15. 4 
As I have revolved in my thought during the summer months the subject 
of this Introductory Lecture, I have experienced solicitude that the theme might 
be one befitting my audience and the occasion. 
Only those whom stern duty compels on these annual opening days to 
bring forth from the treasure-house things new and old as a greeting to an 
incoming class, can realize how rusty the old garments of thought look as we 
unfold them, how faded the oft-repeated injunctions, how utterly insufficient 
both material, and the brain which would newly fashion the material, seem to 
weave the bright, cordial, inspiring greeting with which we would fain welcome 
the young women of the land to a course of professional medical study. 
The inspiration came at last, where I sought it not, in our spacious, sun- 
lit Chemical Laboratory, and following its leadings I present briefly to the class 
as an earnest of the better things which their professors have in store for them 
during the lecture season, the Progress made in the Science of Chemistry since 
I last delivered the General Introductory Lecture, or since the year 1868. 
Only seven years, you say, and yet, who that is cognizant of the facts will 
not respond, with me, Yes ! the fruits of the last seven years may be garnered 
with profit and even with pardonable pride, by the student in many depart- 
ments of the great domain of Science. One year earlier than the date proposed( 
or August 27th, 1867, Michael Faraday died in London, aged 73 years. The 
laboratory of the Royal Institution, the scene of his life's toil, had been 
occupied before him by Sir Humphry Davy, of whom he was the imme- 
diate successor. It assists us to realize the marvellously rapid development of 
the science of Chemistry, when we are reminded that within a period but slightly 
longer than the life-time of these two men, all has been wrought. 
Humphry Davy, when a youth, attempting in his master’s garret with a 
few phials, tobacco-pipes, plates and saucers, to repeat the recently performed 
experiments of Priestley, Lavoisier and Cavendish, saw Chemistry in its dawn- 
ing as a positive science. Faraday, his pupil, likewise toiling through a long 
and useful life, at length fell on sleep—but as he departed—lo ! through those 
same laboratory windows was streaming the full flood of glorious day. 
Faraday’s death occurred in the very midst of a time of great activity 
among the students of physical science in England, the natural outgrowth of 
the careful attention given to this department of knowledge under the patronage 
of the Prince Consort. 
But not alone in England ; in the laboratories of Germany and France 
for twenty years had raged, so to speak, a furor for experimental investigation. 
The great master, Liebig, who was himself the inspiration of the Laboratory at 
Giessen, doubtless had much to do with this enkindling of enthusiasm; but it 
was an idea, not a person, which marshalled this host of workers, and this 
idea was born in the laboratory of Dumas in Paris, January 13, 1834. 
At this date, while engaged in some line of experimental research with 
acetic acid and chlorine, Dumas discovered that chlorine could replace hydro- 
gen in the acid, and yet the compound remain unchanged as to its distinctive 
properties. 5 
From this wonder of wonders, as it was deemed at the time of its discovery 
—which afforded a glimpse entirely new into the composition of the ultimate 
particles of matter—arose the doctrine known in science as that of Substitution. 
Standing upon this, working chemists now took a new departure, and 
immediately, discovery rapidly followed discovery, both as regarded individual 
chemical compounds and series of compounds. Soon, however, the air of the 
laboratory world resounded with a great intellectual turmoil, which originated 
in the variety of novel and original theories suggested respectively by inde- 
pendent workers for the explanation of the particular phenomena to which 
the attention of each had been mainly directed. 
A few years earlier than the date at which our story of this afternoon 
commences, a few master minds in England and on the continent were able 
by the force of their genius to make themselves heard above the din of this 
conflict, and after not a little warring among these themselves, they began to 
see eye to eye, and the result was a profound transformation in the Science of 
Chemistry. 
, I hold in my hand a little book which is already historic. The interest 
which attaches to it in this regard is due to the fact that it gave to the English- 
reading world the earliest intimation in book-form of the radical revision of 
chemical truths already referred to. Its author is Dr. A. W. Hofman, a German 
Professor brought to London by Prince Albert, where he founded under the 
Consort’s patronage the Royal College of Chemistry. Upon the title page of 
this little treatise of 233 pages, published in 1866, occurs for the first time the 
expression Modem Chemistry, since translated on this side the Atlantic the 
New Chemistry. 
Let us, then, here record the introduction into our own country of this so- 
called New Chemistry as the marked event in the annals of theoretic 
Chemistry for the seven years just passed. 
It does not become me to essay to teach in this lecture, but it will not be 
unacceptable, I am sure, to some before me, if I delay a moment to dwell upon 
this new phase of our science. 
What is the New Chemistry ? I have been accustomed through these 
intervening years to give to the class among others a definition not found in 
the books. For it, I am indebted to the lamented Prof. Edward Parrish, late 
of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. At a casual meeting on the street 
in 1866, he held in his hand a copy of Hofman’s book, which he was about 
returning to the Mercantile Library, and which he placed in my hand as I 
walked beside him. 
Glancing at the title, I inquired its meaning. He quickly replied, “ The 
Modern Chemistry is an attempt to reduce to a Natural History classification 
the numberless compounds of Chemistry.” 
We were both at the time returning from a meeting of a Natural. History 
Club, where during a delightful hour we had been engaged with others studying 
plants. The words of the definition had their origin in the occupation of that 
hour, but for comprehensiveness, as well as clearness of conception, I have 
never met with a better. 6 
It brings definitely before us this truth, that the newness relates to 
theories, not to the facts of the science. It sets before us this attempt with 
balance and test glass to discover distinct family relationships among atoms— 
side by side with the successful attempt a half century earlier to discern by aid 
of the lens, glimpses of a divine plan in the Vegetable Kingdom amid the 
endless diversity of root, stem, leaf and flower which might serve as a basis of 
a natural classification in Botany. It permits also the sigh of relief with 
which, when wearied in possibly a vain attempt to comprehend the New, w'e 
sink back to give thanks that the grand underlying phenomena of nature, 
abide, that they are as impassive as the oaks, the palms and their kindred amid 
the storms of the New Botany : that they persist unchanged through all time, 
grand, silent, prophetic. 
Let us understand, then, that the starting point of the New Chemistry is 
the atom. Not the old-fashioned atom of Leucippus, but the atom as revealed in 
these later times by the joint labors of the chemist and physicist, as they have 
scrutinized physical and chemical interactions especially among gases and 
vapors. The speculative assumption at which they have arrived is, that dis- 
crimination, severe and constant, should be made between the physicist’s atom 
or the molecule and the chemist’s atom, par excellence, the atom ! When 
reminded that the definition of molecule and atom had long been the burden 
of research and experiment in the Laboratory of the Royal Institution, we are 
prepared better to understand the origin of that masterly discourse of Tyndall’s, 
which delighted scientific circles in 1870, entitled the "Scientific Use of the 
Imagination." 
Not alone in comprehending the omnipresent ether as its pulsations surge 
upward to human senses now in heat—now in light, is the trained imagination 
needed, but also as Tyndall well knew in grasping that most infinitesimal of 
all finite conceptions, the modern chemist’s atom. 
The starting point being the atom, we go on to learn that this atom is en- 
dowed with properties not hitherto ascribed to it. Beside the power of uniting 
with other atoms, it has the power of selecting with which other atoms it will 
unite. We no longer speak of chemical affinity as of old, using the term vaguely 
to signify the marriage of matter, as Boerhaave, the Dutch Chemist, who imposed 
the unfortunate affinitas upon science would have it, but when we enumerate 
the forces which energize matter, we close the list of so-called physical forces 
with electricity a dual force, and then add chemism or the chemical force, 
teaching that this likewise is dual in its nature. 
Its two manifestations we term Affinity and Atomicity. 
Affinity or the ability of unlike atoms to unite to form a new substance 
unlike either of the constituent substances, and atomicity, or the ability of 
atoms to select among other atoms as to how they shall unite and with which. 
This last, Atomicity, is the newest conception, and maybe said to constitute 
the basis of all modern theoretical ideas. 
It has been well paraphrased thus : Atoms are not equivalent. 
I repeat—Atoms are not equivalent. Let my non-professional auditor to- 
day grasp firmly the idea conveyed by these words, and she will carry away 7 
with her the key which will unlock more than one beautiful chamber in the 
new chemical edifice. 
Such in brief is the New Atomic Theory. Theory only let us remember. 
Prof. Cooke aptly characterizes it as a temporary scaffolding around the incom- 
plete building, which will be removed as soon as its usefulness is passed, but 
for the present it is the best staging upon which as chemical students we can 
stand. 
The superficial view in point of time must precede the deeper scrutiny, but 
at length the old gives place to the new, and that which was new soon becomes 
the old, as scientists climb the stair, and more and more clearly discern the 
Great Architect’s plan of creation. 
The new chemical notation and nomenclature claim in passing a place on 
my record. 
There came a day in the evolution of the new ideas when the speech of 
Chemistry faltered through lack of words to express the rapid progress of the 
science, and the written language grew too meagre to adequately portray 
discovered facts. It was 'a critical time. What should be done ? A few 
daring spirits essayed to supply the want by devising a re-modeled language, 
written and spoken, or a new chemical notation and nomenclature. 
These men, however, were no iconoclasts—they only sought to widen 
that which had grown too narrow and to lengthen that which had grown too 
short. They kept steadily before them those memorable words with which 
Lavoisier, in 1787, inaugurated before the French Academy, the for that time 
matchless achievement of the first chemical nomenclature the world had 
known. These were his words: “ Every physical science is formed of three 
things ; the facts which constitute the science, the ideas which recall them, and 
the words which express the ideas." 
. “ The word should give birth to the idea—the idea should accurately depict 
the fact." 
The notation of equivalents which had long prevailed was carefully con- 
sidered. The notation of atomic weights due in the first instance to Berzelius, 
but modified in important particulars by Gerhardt, was patiently gone over, 
and as the result a system offered which agreed with the data furnished by the 
law of specific heat, isomorphism, and the laws which govern the combina- 
tion of gaseous bodies. The best parts of Lavoisier’s beautiful conception 
remains, but we may compare these relics as incorporated in the new language, 
to the insects which are found imbedded in the amber of the Baltic—the 
medium in which they are preserved enhances rather than detracts from their 
beauty. 
I wish just here to utter a remonstrance against the idea popularly 
cherished, to-wit—-the idea that the so-called new chemical notation and nomen- 
clature aims utterly to overthrow and effectually to destroy the older chemical 
speech. Nothing can be more untrue than this. The old is labeled in the 
chemist’s thought the Notation of Equivalent Weights, a time-honored and 
useful aid which amply expressed the secrets of nature as understood when it 
was adopted. No single lineament is marred—it is tenderly laid away if you 8 
please, as we put aside one whose work is accomplished, but the new, which is 
known as the Notation of Atomic Weights, expresses the later insights into 
the same unchanging phenomena. 
Both notations express each with a distinctness which is entirely its 
own, two separate views as to the constitution of chemical compounds. In 
order that either shall be intelligently used, the lips which utter the words and 
the hand which wields the pencil must alike be moved by a clear-thoughted 
brain. A consistent chemist in the simplest scientific speech which she can 
use, reveals, it may be, her whole faith in a single word. 
It would be esteemed a strange phenomenon, if the good housewife in the 
pronunciation of the name of some familiar substance used in culinary art 
could reveal to her listener her particular shade of religious belief. 
But this marvel is wrought in the chemist’s case, substituting for religious 
conviction the shade of chemical belief. 
Let me illustrate: Take a salt nearly related to the housewife’s saleratus. 
If I prefer the dualistic definition of a chemical salt, and have decided to regard 
it as composed of two compounds, one of which plays the role of acid and the 
other that of base, I am careful to call my substance Carbonate of Potassa, 
and am still more careful in formulating the expression to oxydize the metal, 
and thus express the base which I separate from the acid by a comma, thus: 
KO, CO 2. She who comes after me and reads my formula recorded in the 
Notation of Equivalents, translates my belief without difficulty. 
If on the contrary I prefer the so-called unitary definition of a salt, and 
regard it therefore as a compound formed of two parts, one metallic, the other 
non-metallic, each able to exchange itself by double decomposition, I express 
my belief in the carefully pronounced Potassium Carbonate, and I put the same 
on record, thus : K2 C03) the notation representing the Notation of Atomic 
Weights. It will be observed that the two notations represent the identical sub- 
stance, viewed, however, from two different standpoints. The latter standpoint 
being higher than the former embraces a wider range of truth, and the notation 
which represents it is the one accepted in the Modern Chemistry. The notation 
and nomenclature of each system go hand in hand, and neither can be sub- 
stituted in the one couplet for the same in the other. 
By a happy device, which in its latest application is due to the French 
Chemist, Wurtz, these notations can be readily translated, the one into the 
other, and thus harmonized, while neither is destroyed. 
The nomenclature, or spoken language of Atomic Weights, while it is the 
stone of least importance in the whole structure, has provoked more criticism 
than aught else. Chemical symbols, as shown in the notation, now supply to a 
great extent the place of philosophical names, and hence the nomenclature is a 
far less important feature in the New Chemistry than it was in the old. I do not 
propose entering upon the defence of this new speech, because I should weary 
without enlightening. 
I will only say that it is pre eminently accurate, and its application easy. 
Should any of you chance upon a Winter’s lecture in which previous to 9 
entering upon the methodical study of the properties and the application in 
medicine of a valuable chemical, its classification was given, the better to fix 
its chemical constitution, and should find the class soberly noting the name— 
di-chlorincited methyl chloride—you might go away with a sarcasm on your lips, 
ready to be launched upon the first opportunity at the folly of the new-fangled< 
horrid chemical names; but I am sure the ladies who contentedly mastered 
this genero-specific name, the congener of the botanical name of a plant, 
would understand chloroform better all their lives for having learned it. 
In leaving this whole subject I would note that in all chemistry books 
issued by American publishers during the last three years, whether new work 
or new editions of old books, these modern views have either been wholly 
adopted or the teachings of the author have been greatly modified by them. 
Turning to the practical page of my record, and taking a survey of the 
work accomplished in the Laboratories of Chemists since 1868, I am greeted 
by the wealth of an abundant harvest. 
In the attempt to particularize a very few of these discoveries, I head my 
list with the change in fortune which has befallen Hydrogen, one of the 
six permanent gases. 
“ What do you think ?” wrote the late Prof. Thomas Graham of England, in 
1869, to a brother chemist. “What do you think of metallic hydrogen, a 
white magnetic metal ?” And yet now through Graham’s labors, the conden- 
sation of hydrogen in the solid state by metallic palladium, and to a less extent 
by other metals, has become a familiar fact to every chemical reader. This 
most subtle of all gases, newly-christened Hydrogenium, is in our latest text 
books enumerated among the metals. 
Among newly-discovered chemicals which possess an interest, viewed 
from our present standpoint, might be enumerated several chlorinated 
Anaesthetics. 
The new substances discovered by the'chemist are each succeeding year 
with accelerated rapidity finding their way into the daily life of the people. 
It is in this outer vestibule of the Chemical Laboratory that the physician 
achieves his triumphs, taking these chemicals, and with them questioning the 
animal organism, and carefully noting the answers it returns. 
It was while engaged in this highest application of chemical knowledge, 
blended with the physician’s skill, that Dr. O. Liebreich, in 1869, discovered 
the sedative properties of chloral-hydrate, a discovery which marks an era in 
medical chemistry second only to the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of 
chloroform. This substance, chloral had long been known to chemists as a 
valuable member of a chlorinated series, having been discovered by Liebig in 
1832 ; but its mission to suffering humanity was unsuspected until the date of 
Liebreich’s experiments. 
This two-fold discovery, which pertains to many of our most valuable 
drugs, challenges our attention. If we take up the long list, we shall find in 
numbers of cases the chemical discovery antedating the medicinal application 
by many years, as in the case just cited. 10 
To the young physician there is inspiration in the consciousness of the 
broad fields of inquiry which lie before her just here. In these almost end- 
less lists of new chemicals which daily grow yet longer, what potent remedies 
may not lie concealed awaiting the touch of her skilled hand, and the wings 
of her faith, to awake to a life of larger activity? 
Another sort of work, just the reverse of this, has likewise, during the last 
seven years, experienced a remarkable development. I refer to the synthetical 
work of the Laboratory following after, rather than preceding the applications 
of given substances. 
Since Wohler in 1828 achieved the marvel of building up, atom by atom, 
the molecule of an organic substance, urea, whose production had previously 
been supposed to be the sole prerogative of the animal economy, very much 
has been accomplished in the production, in an absolutely pure condition, by 
the way of synthesis, of compounds, whose sole source earlier had been the 
intricate substances derived from the animal or vegetable Kingdom. 
I can best illustrate what I mean by reference to one of the most brilliant 
chemical discoveries embraced within the limits of our record. This is the 
discovery by Graebe and Liebermann, in 1869, of artificial alizarine, the coloring 
principle of madder, which has been used as a dye from time immemorial. 
The chief interest for us which attaches to this discovery aside from its 
historical significance, is the insight it affords us into the possible achievements 
of the future. If theoretic chemistry can yield such fruit as this in the field of 
a remunerative manufacturing industry, what may it not afford in other fields ? 
What a red-letter day in medical chemistry, for example, will that be in 
which the eye of some chemist, (which has been accustomed to view by the aid 
of a severely-trained scientific imagination the atomic constitution of bodies,) 
shall see to crown the structure of some long-worked-over but hitherto incom- 
plete molecule, with its last constituent atom, and shall in the same moment 
give to the world the pure, artificially-prepared alkaloid Morphia or Quinia. 
The coal tar or aniline colors, whose whole production dates back no 
farther than the year 1856, have known a wonderful development within the 
last few years. 
The most casual observer of womanly attire, whether in shop-windows or 
on the persons of friends, cannot fail to have noted the variety of tints and the 
brilliancy of color which each season increasingly discloses. 
What we see in the streets of American cities is the response in material 
form to the questions which the master-chemist, Hofman, in his magnificent 
chemical Laboratory in the University of Berlin, is daily asking of inert matter. 
But death hides where beauty reigns! An enthusiastic sanitarian in 
Michigan, within the last year, has prepared and placed on sale a useful little 
work on the subject of arsenical wall-papers, which rejoices in the lugubrious 
title of “Shadows from the Walls of Death." 
A Philadelphia-educated woman physician might select the dry-good 
stores of Chestnut and Eighth streets as her field of scientific research, and in 
time produce a practical work of still greater value upon the Death which 
lurks in the dyes of silk and woolen stuffs used as clothing. 11 
Not only are the acids of arsenicum in constant use in the production of 
these colors derived from aniline, which of itself is a deadly poison, but of late 
years picric acid also, in and of itself a strongly active poison—has played an 
important role in the production of some of our choicest shades of color. 
Upon the page of a recent number of a German scientific journal is revealed 
a chemical reaction connected with picric acid, which interests us as women. 
This is the production of a chemical precipitate, lead picrate, upon silk 
while passing through the dyer’s vat—a process for which I have no English 
word—the technical German word being “ schipereti," which may be trans- 
lated “ the making heavy” of silks. 
It affords a solution to a mystery which of late has perplexed perhaps more 
than one woman before me: the mystery of the transformation of a silk, stiff 
and rich in texture and appearance as shown on the store counter, but 
marvellously cheap for the quality as you thought—a transformation which 
occurred possibly before the dress-maker had bestowed the finishing touches 
and which rendered it limp and cheap-appearing. 
This precipitate deposited upon the threads and filling the interstices of 
the goods, designed to deceive the purchaser as to true quality, might after the 
first annoyance of your disappointment, be passed with a smile as a good joke 
not to be perpetrated a second time were the weary fingers that toiled over the 
silk and the lungs of the needle-woman who breathed in the poisonous particles 
which permeated the air about the goods as handled, not to be taken into the 
account. 
A knowledge of these toxic possibilities lurking on every hand in our 
pampered and luxurious lives, in the wall papers which adorn our homes, 
upon the toys of little children, in the bon-bons, in the brilliantly dyed ribbons 
and tarltans, in the sewing-silks which the needle-woman threads in her 
needle, a knowledge of all this, such as can only be gained from a chemi- 
cal standpoint and by a chemical student will be a power for good in your 
hands in the near future. 
Many obscure symptoms of disease may, with the clue which this know- 
ledge affords, be traced to their true source, but only as the result of original 
research, for here we tread on ground quite new. 
As we advance, the subjects which deserve notice at our hands as a truthful 
historian, so multiply that we must be content with the briefest possible 
enumeration. 
The development of Spectrum Analysis as a valuable aid in medico-legal 
investigation during the last seven years has been marked and important. 
The valuable and thoroughly practical revision of the whole subject of 
Disitifectants, which occurred in Germany and France during the wars of 
1870-71, as the Science of Chemistry, humanely followed in the wake of car- 
nage and deodorized the horrible pits of death and disinfected the abodes of 
the living, deserves especial mention. 
The department of Chemical Climatology, which has been erected mainly 
within the last seven years by a Royal Commission in Great Britain, appointed 
to analyze the air of Mines and Close Places, cannot be passed over in silence. 12 
Here an attempt has been made to so circumscribe the vague idea of 
climate as to teach men and women that each building site, each living-room 
and bed-room, each work-shop, each school-room has a climate which cannot 
remain uninvestigated with impunity. The great changes in climate arising 
from the condition of our civilization have been viewed from the chemical as 
distinguished from the physical standpoint. 
R. Angus Smith, who has been the distinguished leader in these investiga- 
tions, has devised ingenious methods for detecting the solid matter suspended 
in the air and has been most indefatigable in his researches, which have 
yielded some curious as well as valuable results. 
The waning day reminds me that this record, already too long, must close. 
I heed the warning as I make grateful reference to the fact that during the 
past seven years Chemistry has been awarded in the best Medical Schools 
throughout the land a place of importance never before conceded to it. 
The department of Medical Chemistry now lends attractiveness to the 
curriculum of the schools in which it is erected, and experience has proven 
that cultivation of no other field has yielded a larger dividend to Colleges or 
their Alumni. 
The researches of each succeeding year widen the possibilities and 
enhance the value of such toil. 
The sub-department of Zoo-Chemistry is rapidly assuming the position its 
importance demands. The analysis of the Urine, of serous transudations and 
other animal fluids grows in significance to the medical practitioner day by 
day ; and just here an instrument, in the use of which the ladies of our College 
under their gifted instructor are developing an aptitude, looms up as of the 
last importance. 
Without the compound microscope, improved and perfected as it stands 
to-day, Animal Chemistry, in its present attainments, would not be possible. 
Gorup-Besanez, in the introduction to his admirable work, entitled “ A 
Guide to Qualitative and Quantitative Zoo-Chemical Analysis,” remarks that 
what the blow-pipe is to inorganic analysis the microscope is to zoo-chemical 
analysis. 
Thus, ladies, during the hour which is closing, have I sought to place you, 
our students, upon the high road along which Science is marching; and the 
patient attention which yo.u have bestowed upon the effort assures me that you 
are quite willing to follow its recent advancements. 
The activity which I have indicated as prevailing in one department of 
study comprehended in our College Curriculum, may be said to characterize 
all, and you, therefore, enter upon the acquisition of professional knowledge 
in a propitious hour. If propitious as regards scientific inquiry, how much 
more as regards womanly endeavor, per se. 
Look about you and consider where you are! No class of women earlier 
in the world’s history than to-day ever entered college portals which displayed 
grander possibilities than lie within your view at this moment! 13 
It has been my lot to spend many hours during the past Summer in these 
silent halls. The impression which their silence made upon me has been as 
remarkable as it has been overwhelming. 
In perfect order, Lecture Rooms and Laboratories awaited the coming 
of their occupants. 
The twenty-five-year-old College, in material form, was here, enriched by 
the munificent gifts of her faithful friends, and holding in store for her 
daughters’ use, against their arrival, every appliance and every convenience 
which the most advanced state of scientific research could demand. But the 
college which is not shapen of bricks and mortar—the college which is to be 
known across the waters and in far distant lands—the invisible, born of these 
superior opportunities—what was this to be ? 
The building itself, so light and cheery, and beautiful within, as to suggest 
the feminine element in architecture, seemed a favorable omen upon which 
my fancy might seize. 
A medical college building, and yet unlike any other one elsewhere, so 
visiting friends have said, as frequently in. leaving they have paid a grateful 
tribute to its unique character, and to the light and cheer which floods every 
apartment. So should the work performed within these walls be. Unique, 
bearing an impress quite its own. 
Take to your inmost consciousness, Ladies, the solemn realization, that 
with you as a College Class rests in large degree the responsibility of deciding 
the tone and the character of this work. 
Y ou are the Twenty-sixth Class—the successor of twenty-five earnest classes 
who have improved to the utmost such opportunities as could be afforded them, 
and with richest fruitage, as the professional lives of our 200 Alumnae show— 
but you constitute the pioneer class of the New Era—you are the first to enter 
upon these enlarged opportunities, and the attitude which you as listeners 
assume, the spirit of entire consecration with which you handle scalpel or test- 
glass will tell upon every succeeding class to the end of time. 
The lady professor who, when a class shall gather in this lecture-room in 
the autumn time which precedes the next centennial year of our nation, shall 
stand where I stand to-day, ah! what names now worn by fresh young faces 
before me will she not in her record link with thorough investigation, 
with brilliant achievement, and with genuine progress in medical science, and 
her audience, seated where you sit to-day, will judge of the hundred years 
which have gone, and give answer, let us hope, thus: “ It was not in vain 
that in October, 1875, a house was solemnly set apart for the professional 
studying of women, and for their advancement in the study and practice of 
medicine.” 
I have finished my introductory words, and yet there lingers a message 
upon my tongue. It relates to a matter of practical moment, and the message 
is one which comes from lips that shall not speak to us again. 
On the 9th of June, 1875, F)r. Mary F. Seelye, a graduate of our College, 
missionary physician at Calcutta, India, died (aged 28 years), in the midst of a 14 
professional career which, though brief, was as remarkable as it was brilliant, 
whether we consider the large amount of good she accomplished through her 
professional skill, or the admiration she excited in all classes among whom 
she labored. 
The unsolicited tributes to the value of her four years of service in Cal- 
cutta, which appeared in the public prints of that great city, are precious to all 
who look with favor upon this department of labor in which American ladies 
have no competitors. 
In the editorial column of a native (Indian) paper, these sentences occur : 
“ Miss Seelye, it will be remembered by many of our readers, is the lady doctor 
who came out to this country about four years ago, in connection with the 
American Mission in Calcutta. In virtue of her profession and her sex, she 
found the freest access into a great many Hindu households, where she was most 
warmly esteemed. She was one of the most modest and retiring of women, and 
she was an honor to her profession and her religion. May many more like 
her come out to represent the humanity and enlightenment of America in this 
country! ” 
It is the echo to this desire, expressed by a native Hindu, coming from Dr. 
Seeley’s folded hands and silent lips, which I am impelled to offer to this 
audience of ladies at this time. 
A successor of Dr. Seelye is urgently needed. Dr. Swain, the pioneer 
woman physician in India, also a graduate of this College, requires rest after 
her arduous labor of six years, and a physician is sought to take her place. 
Not only from these two localities have urgent appeals come to us, but 
two other missionary societies are soliciting suitable women for other fields. 
It is no exaggeration to say that were twenty-five women entering upon the 
study of medicine to-day with a view to foreign service, work ready to the 
hand would be clamoring for every one of them long before they could be 
adequately prepared to enter thereupon. 
There is undoubtedly resting upon American women a solemn responsi- 
bility which they cannot lightly esteem. They have themselves, humanly 
speaking, inaugurated this divine work of carrying healing mercies for the 
body to the zenanas of the Orient, into which such relief never before entered. 
This work, so wonderful in its rapid development, established at costly 
expenditure of money, time, and now of life—must not be allowed to languish. 
Women of piety, of good education, and social culture are those needed. 
I appeal, therefore, not alone to the professional ladies present or even to the 
members of the class, but to all ladies in the audience, in the hope either that 
they may themselves be moved to action by this recital of facts, or that they 
may by personal influence be able through successive years to induce suitable 
young persons to undertake medical study with especial reference to missionary 
work. nt E M A I\K S 
Of Prof. EMELINE H. CLEVELAND, M. D., on the occasion of the Laying 
of the Corner-Stone of the New Building of the 
WOMAN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
October 1st, 1874. 
It would better comport with my feelings to-day to remain silent, and 
listen to such expressions of satisfaction or congratulation as the hour might 
suggest to others. I yield, however, to the request of my colleagues, both of 
the Faculty and the Board of Corporators, in consenting to detain you for a 
single moment. 
This occasion is not less a proud one to us than it is unique. This building, 
the first as we believe, erected “in the name of IVoman and for her advance- 
ment in the science and practice of medicine,"* is at once a mile-stone in 
the history of woman, and a grand achievement in our especial work. 
finding myself, however, in a retrospective mood, my own satisfaction 
would lack something of completeness were we not to remember in our 
exultation some who worked with us in the past, either in the Faculty or the 
Corporate Board, and who bore the heat and burden of many a day while yet 
this fruition was impossible. 
At the risk of seeming invidiousness, the names of Harvey and Fussell, of 
the Professors still living, who have remained loyal to the profession and the 
college, deserve especial mention. They labored earnestly when labor meant 
both effort and sacrifice. 
Among those who have been called to the higher life, my mind reverts with 
fondness to the face and form of one who was for many years the honored 
President of the Board of Corporators, Professor Charles D. Cleveland, a man 
whose noble bearing lent dignity to any occasion. I see him still as he 
walked among us with the measured tread of calm assurance. I listen anew 
to the modulations of his cultured voice, as in purest classic diction 
he conferred upon each new graduate the earnestly sought degree. If 
anecdote were in order I would gladly call to the remembrance of some 
here to-day how on a public Commencement occasion, when ridicule was a 
burnished weapon, and even the clergy found ready excuse from all participa- 
* I he words used by 1. Morris Perot, President of the Board of Corporators, in laying the 
corner-stone. 
15 16 
tion in or sympathy with our work, he walked to the front of the platform at 
Concert Hall and offered an invocation touching in its simplicity and sublime 
in its appropriateness. 
I recall, too, with grateful emotion, a young man, gifted and ardent, Prof. 
David J. Johnson, who espoused the cause of the college in its early days from 
fullest conviction that its objects were worthy, and who devoted himself to the 
teaching of chemistry with an understanding and an enthusiasm which made 
even its darkest pages luminous. 
Of Isaac Barton, quiet, modest, unobtrusive, but ever mindful of the true 
interests and aims of the college, we need scarcely speak. Thanks to his 
efficient aid, we are enabled to realize in near prospect superior facilities for 
successful work. 
And last, as last translated, one whose name has been mentioned in loving 
regard, Prof. Ann Preston. Her passage within the vail seems but as yesterday 
when we remember her lively interest in the Very event we celebrate. Already 
had she begun the study of plans, and already in her mind was this very spot 
of ground consecrated to the purpose to which we devote it. And if the spirits 
of the departed do still linger about the places of their earthly abode, and 
still concern themselves with interests dear to them in this mortal life, our 
assemblage is assuredly graced with the presence of a Barton and a Preston, 
and if we may venture an interpretation of their message it is certainly one 
of lofty cheer. Beholding the foundations of this goodly edifice, they bid us 
rear the superstructure as guided by Him who is invisible, as seeing a long 
future of widening opportunity and widening influence.