Now, I believe thoroughly in recitations. I am glad to see that Harvard has established them. I believe they ought to be official; that is to say, compulsory. Every man of the class should go before the examiner from day to day, and not merely before the professor for an examination at the end of his term; and he should be marked by this official quizmaster, and his standing be determined by his recitations as well as by his final examination. But, gentlemen, I do not believe that the time will ever come when the living voice, and the personality of the speaker, will be discontinued and forgotten. I shall never forget, for instance, one story that was told by dear old Charles D. Meigs, whom you remember, perhaps, as being rather worsted in the fight with Dr. Holmes over the contagiousness of puerperal fever. It was an illustration to emphasize the point which he wished to inculcate in his obstetrical lectures, that the child should be put to the breast very early. He gave a description, which I will not attempt to rival,-for it is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry in prose that I ever heard,-of the birth of Cain. He pictured the beautiful bower to which Eve retired and the pains that she suddenly felt, which-for it was a novel experience to her-she thought must be due to some grapes that she had eaten the day before that had disagreed with her. Finally, she fainted away for a moment. Then, on waking, she found her slippery little Cain, and, lifting him up in surprise in her arms, he fell into nature's cradle, and immediately took the breast. It was a very simple little story, but it was beautifully told; and to this day, more than thirty years since, it is as fresh to me in its grace and in its lesson as it was then. And, again, I shall never forget the power of Samuel D. Gross. When, in lecturing on diseases of joints, he began with the question of treatment, looking round the amphitheatre very quietly, he said, "The first requisite in the treatment of inflammation of a joint is rest," then after a pause, "rest"; and then, rising to his full height

and folding his arms, he bent majestically forward, and repeated, "In the name of God, REST." Now you might read that ten times in a book, and forget it the next minute; but once hear it from the lips of Gross, with his tall form, fine figure, and handsome, earnest face, and I would defy you ever to forget it.

THE ADVANTAGES OF AN ACADEMIC TRAIN

ING FOR A MEDICAL CAREER.*

THE

HE time is rapidly approaching when all over the country our colleges will send forth several thousand young men to begin their active work in life. The necessity for a wise decision as to what shall be each man's career needs no comment.

The Editor of the "Brown University Magazine" has asked me to present to its readers some of the advantages which attend an academic training before entering upon a medical career. Before doing so, however, I must add a word of commendation of the excellent work of the Brown University Medical Association, which has done so much to foster the medical idea among the students of the University, and to suggest changes and improvements in the college curriculum which adapt it to the requirements of future students.

As a teacher of surgery for now just thirty years, I feel that I may speak with some confidence as to these advantages, and it is with no little pleasure that in my own case I have always recognized the fact that whatever success may have attended either my writing, my practice, or my teaching has been due chiefly to the training I received in my dear Alma Mater. The logical acumen of Chace, the inspiration. from Lincoln, the rhetorical grace and fine criticism of Dunn, the historical generalizations of Gammell, and the extraordinary knowledge of Sears all had a most influential part in forming my mind and shaping my subsequent life. I can

* Reprinted from the Brown University Magazine for April, 1896.

never be grateful enough to them and their colleagues in the then Faculty, and I feel it is but a very small repayment on account of a large debt when I can do anything for Brown University.

That college men take precedence of others who have missed such invaluable training is shown by the statistics some time since quoted by the "Medical Record." Of 912 physicians deemed worthy of notice in Appleton's "American Cyclopædia of Biography," 473 are college-trained men. The "Record" estimated that during the present century about 300,000 men have entered the medical profession. Of these, therefore, nearly 1000, that is about 1 in 300, had gained more or less prominence. But on the basis of there being about 500 of these latter who were college men, the chances of distinction and influence for a college-bred man in medicine were increased from 1 in 300 to 1 in 60, or five times as great as if he had not had such intellectual training.

Never has there been a time when the demand for the best and ripest intellect in medicine was more pronounced than at present. The medical horizon is broadening most rapidly. The complexity of the problems constantly presented by disease and by the conditions of modern social life and the multiplicity of the means of investigating them; the logical methods necessary for the solution of these problems; the laboratory facilities which are required to that end; the relation of medicine to public health in matters of sanitation both for the individual and for the public, in peace and in war, in city and in country, all attest the marvelous activity of the medical mind.

To anyone about to enter upon such a life, the question will naturally occur: what are the requirements for such a professional career?

They may be stated, I think, under four headings: first, that a man shall have a strong body and an active mind; secondly, that he shall have the ability to acquire knowl

edge; thirdly, that he shall have the ability to use this knowledge; and, fourthly, that he shall have the ability to impart this knowledge.

As to the first, it has been a great pleasure to me in the years since I graduated to see what enormous strides have been made in the development of vigorous bodies in our college men. Saving for a few who took to rowing and for some sporadic games of ball, which would now be laughed to scorn, there were no athletics in my day. A few men went to a gymnasium in the city, but the great bulk of students at that time if they kept their health were fortunate. If they lost it, they were not blamed, though, as we all now know, it was largely their own fault. But I am thankful that at the present day the most important class of the future citizens of the republic, from the intellectual point of view, are also bound to be the strongest and best from the physical point of view, and that the men who are going to influence our public affairs in the senate, at the bar, in the pulpit, in engineering, in commerce, and at the bedside are to be men of a wholly different physique from those of thirty years ago. Moreover, the athletic field does far more for men than merely give them a strong body. It develops mental and moral characteristics of the highest order and the greatest importance in the later struggle for existence. But to the students of a college whose President has more than once declared himself convinced of the importance and value of athletics, both to scholarship and health, as President Andrews has done, it is not necessary for me further to enter upon this subject.

The strain of a medical life is very severe. The loss of sleep during many continuous hours of service (and the severer and more responsible the case, the greater the likelihood of such long hours of endurance); the responsibility which attaches to him who holds a human life in his hand; the acute nervous strain of difficult surgical operations; the