Alfred Stillé

“ The individual, whom I have just delivered from the greatest distress and affliction, in all his relations of life, both with his family and fellow citizens, has sustained an irreproachable character. Not to possess those talents which are requisite for a lecturer, is his misfortune, not his crime. In the name of this University, which has for nearly a century diffused blessings the most inestimable to every part of our country, and out of respect to the character of the individual, I implore you to desist from any such proceedings in future. ”

“ So mortifying an experience I had never before endured, and I think it could hardly befall one now, so largely has the vain dream been dispelled which long was cherished that America was competent to create an exclusively American science and art of medicine, and which tended to hold back the wheels of medical progress. No one doubts at present that medicine had its roots in the very dawn of humanity, and has never ceased to grow in stature and strength, and by its very nature must continue to grow while mankind survives and disease and injuries occur. ”

“ And yet, as the sunshine in the fable cajoled the traveller of his cloak which the storm could not wrest from him, so faith will often exorcise the demon of disease which science had vainly endeavored to cast out.
To determine the limits which should separate science and art is, perhaps, impossible, since the one grows out of the other. Science is the product of art as the crystal is formed in the liquid that holds its substance in solution. Every physician, however humble his attainments, performs a scientific act whenever he compares together the facts of his experience ”

“ It is a custom as universal as civilization to celebrate a new era in the history of a public institution, by assembling its friends together to rejoice with one another and unite in wishing it prosperity. It has fallen to my lot to-day to represent the Medical Faculty of the University in the dedication of its new Hall, and in their name and behalf to offer you an earnest and hearty welcome. Honor to the government of the University, and gratitude to its benefactors, that we are enabled to exhibit to you a building so noble in its proportions and complete in its appointments! ”

“ Coxe yet remained. A hasty explanation ensued; and in a few moments the Professor of Practice re-appeared with Dr. Coxe upon his arm. Under this generous protection, the Professor passed through the opening ranks of the students, who, by their breathless silence, testified respect, even in his humiliated condition. There was not a heart that did not swell with emotion, as the old man faultered by, but it was the emotion of pity, rather than of sympathy; it was pity for one who had not pity on himself, forbearance towards one who had failed to sustain his dignity as a man of honor. ”

“ But during the dark ages in the history of medicine it must not be supposed that the darkness was complete; the night was illuminated by many stars that more or less guided minds strong enough to burst the shackles of conjectural systems, and which heralded the dawn that was ultimately to break upon every field of knowledge, and cause its hidden seeds to germinate and grow and bring forth fruit. Infinite pains and skill were needed to render its fruit palatable and nutritious—pains that no one man nor many generations could furnish, and which must be suffered to the very end of time. ”

“ Or shall I speak of the physician no longer as a naturalist or a pathologist, but as a man, whose moral, not less than his intellectual nature, must be exercised in his calling? What are drugs and what are ingenious instruments but so many material agents, essential, perhaps, for the cure of the sick; but what is their power, when used alone, compared with that they display when vivified and potentialized by the spirit of humanity guiding a keen insight into the secret places of the heart? Hope is often no less enlivening than the most stimulating elixir ”

“ To one who is not content with the simple observation of facts, but seeks to learn their causes and mutual relations, it seems at first a dark problem how science and art shall be mad to harmonize with one another. He knows that perfection in the one should correspond to perfection in the other, since both are essentially but different modes of the same truth; that science should be prepared to explain the phenomena produced or observed by art, and that art, in like manner, should be competent to reduce into practice all the conclusions of science. ”

“ A house cannot be built in the air, nor can we create a science or an art unless it rests upon foundations consolidated by time and approved by experience. In vain do we try to detach it from its origin and its history. As well might we expect a tree to bring forth fruit if we uproot it from the ground out of which it sprang. Attempts have never ceased to claim for it an independent existence. ”

“ But the question recurs, was the class competent to judge? In one sense, no. Not as the artist is competent to judge of a painting, a watchmaker of a chronometer, or a physician of the prognosis of a disease. But as every man of common sense can perceive coarseness in the painting, neatness or awkwardness in the chronometer, and judges with instinctive accuracy of the approach of death, so the student, guided by a similar principle, with at least equal correctness may form a judgment of his teachers. ”

“ Along this vast range there is hardly a science which he may not invite into the service of humanity; hardly an art which he may not make subservient to the health and happiness of mankind; hardly a branch of knowledge which he may not compel to be his help-mate in the prevention or the cure of disease. He cannot constantly watch the reactions of soul and body, as he alone is able to, without being impelled to study the great questions that lie at the foundation of human belief. ”

“ But this rapid and intuitive faculty is always inborn, one of those mental operations that we attribute to genius, and which is unknown to the average mind. It is like the power to declare the result of arithmetical calculations more rapidly than they can be worked out by the most expert accountant. No calculating prodigy has ever been able to describe the process by which such astonishing results are reached; and, strange to say, these natural arithmeticians have generally been otherwise quite undistinguished either as mathematicians or in the common business of life. ”

“ There was a time, and that quite within the memory of the elders of our profession, when physicians of reputation, and who even filled official positions as teachers in medical schools, were not ashamed to promulgate such doctrines, and actively and even zealously oppose every hint and resent every declaration which implied that the teaching of medicine in this country was disgracefully crude and narrow. They stigmatized those who clamored for a nearer assimilation of our schools and of the profession to the best models of the old world as unpatriotic, if not disloyal. ”

“ In certain countries of Europe in which the institutions of science and learning have for centuries given but little evidence of life either in activity or in fruit, it is easy to trace their intellectual lethargy to political and ecclesiastical tyranny; and it is equally plain that in the freest nations, and especially in our own, an infinite amount of talent and labor is frittered away, and its results are shaken off like untimely fruit. Genius is often dwarfed in its growth for want of nurture and protection ”

“ It never deserved to be pondered more carefully than at the present day, when every fledgling in science or literature feels impelled to spread his wings for a flight toward the stars, too often forgetful of the melancholy fate of Icarus. But not only does immaturity of intellect produce abortions in science and art, but it also generates many that are feeble and incoherent rather than incomplete. ”

“ Let them go their ways; but let us endeavor so to exalt our own profession by improving it, that they who may hereafter bear the name of physician shall by that very title be recognized as being thoroughly educated; learned that they may know what has been done before them, solidly grounded also in the science of medicine, before attempting to build upon it the superstructure of medical art, and so enriched by knowledge, that when they go out into the world they may feel assured of securing the confidence of society in themselves, and in the art which they practise. ”

“ This faculty, which has been called the scientific imagination, is not the faculty of the poet, by which he sees things that do not really exist, but the power of mentally conceiving or realizing the whole of a picture of which a part only is presented to the senses. It is this scientific imagination which derives its value from the uniformity of nature, and enables one not to speculate at random under the spur of the imagination, but by obeying the laws of cause and effect, and the associations which nature infallibly creates, to become a faithful intepreter of nature's laws. ”

“ This is, indeed, the very reason why the profession of medicine exists. Health is one essential condition of human happiness, for all possessions lose half their value if the ability to enjoy them is wanting. But it is life, as well as health, that will be entrusted to your keeping; life, with its hopes and plans, its loves and friendships, its duties and responsibilities, that will often depend upon your knowledge and skill, and the sense which you may here acquire of the dignity of your office. ”

“ We hear a great deal of "the advance of medicine," and are often reminded of discoveries made in human and comparative anatomy and physiology through vivisection, experimental phyisiology, and chemistry, and are apt to believe that before us all the world was in darkness. But if the light of the present day does not dazzle us so much as to prevent our reading the history of medicine aright, we shall be surprised at the uniformity of the pictures of disease bequeathed to us by ancient writers, and of their identity with those that nature furnishes us to-day. ”

“ The judicious student of history is apt to discover that the longevity of institutions, like that of animal organisms, depends first of all upon their inherent vitality, the perfection of their structure, and the freedom and regularity of its action, and then upon the external circumstances to which it stands related. Whatever nation or institution develops its natural powers by a diligent cultivation of whatever will promote their growth tends to become strong and independent. It is not so much the form as the acts of its government that develop the resources of a nation or an institution. ”

“ For him it is eminently true that "the aim of university teaching is not to perfect the student in knowledge, but to prepare him to learn." It is not absolute truth which men in general are competent to understand, nor is anyone competent to teach them; neither are they able duly to estimate those partial and approximate truths which even philosophers discern but dimly. Out of the multitude of devotees a few only are qualified to approach the sacred shrine. Even the most learned and gifted hardly do more than see it through a glass darkly. ”

“ If I have seemed to dwell upon the idea that the Medical Department of the University owes its success and reputation to a wise balance of the powers which control it, let me, I beg, be excused, since I am convinced by the history of the times we live in, that the great defect of political, educational, and even scientific movements in the present day is—haste. The slow and deliberate progress of travellers in other days compared with the present lightning-like swiftness of their movements, illustrates in many points a similar contrast in the intellectual world. ”