Literary Department.

Under the Charge of W. F. McNUTT, M.D., M.R.C.S. Edin., etc. Professor Principles and Practice of Medicine in the Medical Department University of California, etc.

A DICTIONARY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. Containing a full explanation of the various subjects and terms of Anatomy, Physiology, Medical Chemistry, Pharmacy, Pharmacology, Therapeutics, Medicine, Hygiene, Dietetics, Pathology, Surgery, Bacteriology, Ophthalmology, Otology, Laryngology, Dermatology, Gynecology, Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Medical Jurisprudence and Dentistry, etc., etc. By ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M. D., LL. D., late Professor of Institutes of Medicine in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. Edited by RICHARD J. DUNGLISON, A. M., M. D. New (21st) edition, thoroughly revised, greatly enlarged and improved, with the Pronunciation, Accentuation and Derivation of the Terms. In one magnificent imperial octavo volume of 1181 pages. Cloth, $7.00; leather, $8.00. Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1893.

We were about to say that Dunglison's Medical Dictionary is itself again, but it is more than itself. When the last edition, in 1874, was published, it had no equal or competitor. This edition is not only superior to the last, by addition of new subjects and terms to the extent of more than 44,000, but it is now for the first time a pronouncing dictionary. The great learning and ability of the editor, with his thorough training and long experience for the work, establishes Dunglison as the standard on pronunciation, as it has been for more than fifty years on definition and terminology. Under diseases are given their symptoms and treatment; under drugs, their properties and doses; under poisoning, the symptoms, antidote and treatment. In the edition of 1874, the first gotten out by the present editor, after the death of the author, his father, there were added 6,000 terms and subjects, and to this (21st edition) over 44,000-a most striking illustration of the progress and activity in the field of medicine.

During the last few years, finding our 1874 edition of Dunglison lacking in so many new terms, we provided ourself with Thomas, Keating, Gould, and as much of Foster's as is out, all good and some of them great, but no one of them is as satisfactory as is this edition of Dunglison. The typography and paper are in keeping with the magnitude and importance of the literary work.

PACIFIC MEDICAL JOURNAL.

Vol. XXXVII.

FEBRUARY, 1894.

Original Articles.

VALEDICTORY ADDRESS,

No. 2,

Delivered at the Commencement Exercises of the Medical Department, University of California.

By JOHN W. ROBERTSON, A. B., M. D.,

Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Medical Department, University of California.

Mr. President, Members of the Faculty and Graduating Class, Ladies and Gentlemen:

In selecting a subject for this evening's address, I could find nothing so appropriate as the discussion of the conduct that becomes the medical man, the demands that modern civilization makes upon him, and to contrast the present status of the physician with that which prevailed in times past. And to you of the graduating class I trust that, as a prerequisite to the study of medicine, the duties which you assume as physicians, the new relation you thus bear to the community and the sacredness of that relation were made plain. You will soon realize that medicine stands apart from all other vocations, that the life of the physician is devoted to deeds of charity and benevolence and that, under no circumstances, can it be regarded merely as a business. Self-sacrifice, a life of abnegation, no minute for your. self which the veriest stranger is not free to claim, must in the future be both your duty and your pleasure, and will develop in those of you who rightly aspire to the Sacred Calling, a love for mankind that is circumscribed by no creed, race or kinship. You must learn that there is no law above the law of humanity, and that, besides your duty of healing the sick, you will be called upon to comfort those in distress, to reassure the affrighted, to help others in bearing the burdens of untellable secrets and to go unhesitatingly where duty leads. He who hastens at the rich man's call, and lags when he is summoned to face squalid

VOL. XXXVII-5.

misery, who fawns at the millionaire's touch and frowns when he is beckoned by the hand of poverty, who will not give all that is best in him to whatever needy one demands it, has no place in our profession, and, without these moral and benevolent qualifications, can never attain professional dignity, honor nor station. Leading such a life it is impossible that money can adequately compensate, nor should it be taken as the standard of professional success. It is only when you forget this that you render yourselves objects of scorn and fit subjects for the caustic wit that has been heaped upon our profession in times past.

It is but recently that medicine has emerged from its dark age of ignorant speculation and senseless theorizing, and has been placed upon the foundation of positive knowledge, worthy to take a place by its sister sciences and to bear comparison with them, both as to the social and intellectual qualifications demanded of its practitioners. More recently still has surgery, the history of the lowly origin of which is written on every barber's pole, reached a position that entitles it to professional consideration. In England it is still regarded as of inferior dignity, and its practitioners are not recognized by the honorable title of Doctor.

We have not always been regarded as a class apart from others by reason of our moral integrity or mental acquirements, nor were our pursuits so one directioned as to guarantee any special knowledge. But a few years ago it was necessary for the physician to include, amongst his other duties, that of dispensing medicine, and it was not unusual to combine some other pursuit, usually mercantile, with his professional work. One of my most treasured antiquities quaintly illustrates this. It is a bill of the same age as our republic, rendered by one Dr. Robert Gelston. On the same bill I find entered such charges as: Two gals. of molasses...... Attendance for your wife...

One bonnet....

7 yds. of calico.

Bleeding wife.

58.

.14s. 68. 10d. 1£ 4s. 10d.

1s. 6d.

Surely, this Dr. Gelston, who combined in one the calling of grocer, milliner, dry-goods merchant and physician, could not have regarded his profession as other than a business, or he would not have included them on the same bill in a man

ner so indiscriminate. It is not to be wondered that, in times more remote, when, in the absence of knowledge, medicine was dominated by absurd theories, and its practitioners were neither so socially respectable nor mentally or morally qualified, that some could be found who were worthy prototypes of LeSage's Dr. Sangrado, or could have posed as models for Hogarth's company of physicians or his quacks disputing. The literature of the ancients teems with sarcastic phrases, in no uncertain tone claiming that physicians were not only morally corrupt but ignorant pretenders.

According to the Greek poet Pindar, when, angered that Esculapius should have been allowed to snatch a lost soul from his realms, Pluto complained to the king of heaven, he was comforted by the promise that: "For the one Esculapius has taken from thy domain his disciples shall send thee victims innumerable."

The old taunt cast at us by the lawyers that, while their mistakes were held up to light and freely exposed, those of physicians were deeply buried, is but a variation of ancient sarcasms. Nicocles, some four hundred years before our era, wrote: "Physicians are to be counted happy, because the sun lighted up their successes, while the earth hides their mistakes;" and again, according to Plato, "Socrates felicitated an ignorant painter on abandoning an art which exposed his faults to the eyes of the multitude and undertaking medicine, where his mistakes would be hidden under six feet of earth.'

That consultations are not of modern origin, but existed in ancient times and were fraught with as many objectionable features then as they often are now, is proved by their frequent mention, but always with the same expressed aversion. One of the Greek comic poets writes: "That which finished me was a consultation of physicians, which my doctor summoned. I suceumbed to their number." And again, after naming the doctors employed and the drugs prescribed, " Julius finally died. It was not a wonder, since, among so many executioners, a thief would have been killed." Again it has been said: "In order to cure, nothing is so effective as to take many medicines; but it is useless to take many doctors: one only is sufficient. Believe me, nothing so injures the patient as to confide his health to a multitude of physicians." It seems to have been forgotten in past times, and is often overlooked now, that consultation cannot

necessarily be regarded as a procedure for the benefit of the patient. Oftentimes it is only for the protection of the doctor; and who ever heard of consultants disagreeing in the presence of their patient or not cheerfully fathering their confrères' acts? Many are the jibes that contain even more pointed allusions to our occasionally unsuccessful attempts to cure. "In a single autumn Themiston killed more patients than the cold killed of leaves at the approach of winter. So Themiston himself in turn fell sick, but Pluto seized Parcæ by the hand, and said with irritated voice: How? Here is a man who has sent many thousands into our kingdom, do you wish him to die? Thou art a fool.'' And again: "The doctor is like the executioner; both kill with impunity and both receive pay for their work." This habit of ours seems even to merit certain commendatory notices. One of the comic poets wrote: "Orontes who once injured thee is sick; but Faustus treats him. Thou art avenged." Again, the epigram:

"Hast thou an enemy? Invoke not of Isis her wrath, Nor call upon Harpocrates, who inflicts blindness; Only call Doctor Simon, the guide for death's path;

He'll give you vengeance with his killing kindness." A last quotation might properly have emanated from the homœopathic doctrine of infinitessimals: "Phiscon neither gave me a clyster nor did he even see me; but I had a fever, recalled his name and died." Even the Good Book has not spared us. It is written: "Asa fell sick with violent pains in his feet; meantime he called not on the Lord in his sickness, but rather put his trust in the physicians. And he slept with his fathers.'' Writers merely reflect the thoughts and feelings of their age; so it is with pleasure that we leave these libels-senseless, yet teaching certain truths-and turn to modern literature to view, as in a mirror, the station we now occupy in the life-history of our fellow-men. In Dickens, who so caricatured human frailities, what personage, passage or sentiment reflects unfavorably on us? though in our chrysalis state of medical student we are made to suffer in the person of Mr. Robert Sawyer; and Thackeray, the loving cynic who so pleasantly deals with human foibles, evidently found in us nothing to criticise. When we are mentioned, writers either deal kindly with us or praise us for the good we do. Need man ask for a nobler monument than has been erected to the memory of Dr. Stone, the New Orleans phy