be the "old man eloquent," and in the enjoyment of a handsome practice, instead of rising, with much trepidation, to pronounce this valedictory.

The thoughts that swell in our bosoms to-night are of the same form and pattern that similar occasions, for hundreds of years, have excited. The human heart is much the same now as it was when our profession was in the cruder stages hundreds of years ago, and as it will be when the learning of other hundreds of years shall have sloughed off crudities that still linger in and about it.

And so we to-night feel as men just launching out into untried fields, like a departing child who lingers on the threshold of his home, while a flood of tender memories rushes o'er his heart. The youngest here, no less than the oldest, all feel an earnestness, and pray God may never forsake us while life lasts, and the victims of broken laws suffer from self inflicted pains.

Let us, each and every one, as we enter upon the active duties of our profession, feel that we have a duty before us that we may not lightly put aside. Believing, as I do, that our profession stands foremost in all that is good and great, I say that it is our duty not only to be good physicians, but it is for us to bring into the profession the traits and qualities of a high moral character.

If we do this, it requires no great prophetic talent to discern in the near future the consummation of the hopes and desires of those gentlemen who have given the best movements of their lives to this good work. I shall be pardoned if I say a single word in regard to our honored president, who has not only given his time and talents, but has also sacrificed a fortune for the benefit of Eclecticism. All honor, then, to Robert S. Newton! may he live long enough to see the seeds ripen and bear fruit, that he planted so many years ago! It is an old proverb, that "honesty is the best policy:" but no man who remains wholly on that lead can safely trust himself. He is not building upon a safe foundation, and sooner or later the quicksands will discover themselves. The probability of discovery as a chief motive for honesty and purity has failed disastrously, as the experience of the world has proved beyond the trace of a doubt. It is a motive that alike actuates the most grovelling of would be criminals, and some members of our own profession, in the discharge of duties involving the most sacred trusts which

it is possible to imagine. There is no maudlin sentimentality in the thought that he who has been deemed worthy of this sacred calling, that of family physician, should in season and out of season, whether in the actual discharge of his professional duties, or in the seclusion of his own office, in the daytime and in the night, consider that in every circumstance and in every thought connected with his practice or his connection socially with his patient, he is to feel himself in their places in every sense possible for him.

Gentlemen of the faculty, I but express the feelings of my associ ates in extending to you our heartfelt thanks, not only for the instruction we have received, which is to be our capital in the grand business of life, but for the uniform kindness and consideration received at your hands. Intermixed throughout your teachings have been many valuable moral suggestions regarding our conduct in the sacred calling upon which you bid us go forth as sober, fair minded, honorable men. That these thoughts have taken root in our inmost souls, let our future lives attest, and for the sincerity with which we accept them, we ask you to watch our career.

With feelings of tender emotion we greet you in separating, not saying farewell in the sense of final parting, for are we not to continue in the same path? Surely if we live our best, we of the class taking a broad view of our duties and privileges, we are now coworkers of the faculty of that college whose halls are roofed only by the arc of heaven, whose pupils are the people, and whose graduates are they, and they alone, who live pure lives.

Fellow students, I trust we shall ever recall our associations here with pleasure. As we pass from these exercises, it is to disperse widely from each other. Few, indeed, will be the exceptions. It is to be expected that we shall all be proud to claim membership with the class-proud to have been taught by the noble faculty of this college; and though we should dwindle into well merited obscurity through our own folly, that claim would still be left us. But how barren the honor in such a case! But the course that is open to us, and which we to-night so confidently anticipate, is that our lives shall be so ordered, that the gentlemen of the faculty of the Eclectic Medical College, of New York, may trace them with pleasure, and from time to time be able to point to an old pupil, and say with pride, he was a graduate of the class of 1880.

I would at this, the parting hour, be true to teachings which to me have been priceless. I would, were it possible for me to do this, speak words that would have a tendency to impress into the lives of us all a truer and higher idea of our profession, and the various conditions connected with it. It will be expected of us that we shall always be ready, not only to carry out the teachings we have received here from these several professors, but that we shall hold ourselves in readiness to maintain, by sound reasoning, every part of the ground we have been over during these months of study. To an Eclectic student there is a deep meaning in the grand march that has been made and is still working toward the perfection of this great science. "The advent is coming"

'Tis coming up the steep of time,

And this old world is growing brighter;
We may not live to see its dawn sublime,

Yet high hopes make the heart throb lighter.

We may be sleeping in the ground

When it awakes the world in wonder,

But we have felt it gathering round,

And heard its voice of living thunder. 'Tis coming; yes, 'tis coming!

Chaucer tells of a mirror in which he that looked saw all his past life. That magical mirror is no fable. Let us see to it that it shall be kept so polished that we, the graduates of this class, may in years to come be able to cast a glance back to this hour, and find reflected there nothing that will detract from the honor and glory of this college and our alma mater.

Hold on-still hold on,

In the world's despite;

Nurse the faith in your heart-
Keep the lamp of God bright.
And, my life for them, it shall
End in the right.

Ladies and gentlemen, in behalf of this graduating class, I return you our sincere thanks for your presence here to-night, and will now say the last word, farewell. Farewell is often heard from lips of those who part.

'Tis a whispered tone, and a gentle word,

But it springs not from the heart;

It may serve for a lover's closing lay,

To be sang 'neath a summer's sky,

But give me the quivering lips that say

The honest words, good by.

Miss Berlin, Signor Coda and Mr. Corbit sang the trio from "Attila." It was recalled three times, and so enthusiastic became the audience, that cheers were given after the encores. With the benediction closed the most enjoyable and entertaining commencement ever held by this college. So many friends were made that night, that the name Eclectic made an impression, and received an impetus that will last forever.

MISS BERLIN, SIG. CODA, MR. CORBIT, by kind permission of Prof. Marco Duschnitz.

EPILEPSY: ITS PRESENT PATHOLOGY.*

BY ROBERT S. NEWTON, JR., M. D., L. R. C. S.,

Late Medical Officer, London Hospital; Chef de Clinique, Hospital for Diseases of Throat and Chest Physician in charge of Throat Department, Manhattan Hospital, New York. At the very commencement we encounter one of the many difficulties that must be overcome, before a definite knowledge of this complex condition can be arrived at, namely, its definition. Many various conditions are included under this general term, and

Extracts from paper read before the Eclectic Medical Society of the City of New York, March 16, 1880.

the findings of the post mortem room have rather increased than removed these difficulties. It is a regret deeply deplored, that the phraseology of medicine is so loosely applied, and until the terms used are as exact in their meaning as the value of the numerals, pathology will ever be hampered, and the science of medicine detracted from. Epilepsy is that condition where loss of consciousness is mostly followed by convulsive moments and concomitants. Without coma there can be no epilepsy; but epilepsy does exist without evident convulsions.

Of all nervous affections, seven per cent. are epileptics. Niemeyer placed the ratio as high as six in every thousand persons; but the intelligent practitioner, who discriminates between convulsions, unassociated with loss of consciousness and epilepsy, will agree with me that the percentage is too great. The sexes appear to be equally attacked, though this is in dispute, and the arguments have neither established nor refuted the proposition. Epilepsy is oftenest seen between the ages of ten and twenty, though the cases denom. inated "hereditary" often develope the condition earlier. puberty the sexes are not liable to have the condition develop until middle age is approached, when the condition is found in sixteen per cent. of hereditary and fifty-five per cent. of non hereditary subjects.

After

The causes of true epilepsy are rarely understood, and it is only by a division of cases that we find: 1. Those patients who have epilepsy at other than the usual periods of life, perchance have one paroxysm which never reappears, or reappears at unlooked for times, as once a year or in several years. 2. Those that develop epilepsy without any ascertainable cause, the condition becoming chronic, the paroxysms daily, and dying without leaving any heritage to pathology; the majority of cases belong here. 3. Those who ascribe their unhappy condition to circumstances which have disturbed cerebral equilibrium, as sudden shocks, prolonged mental anxieties, great grief, etc. 4. Those who have suffered through accident, as wounds and injuries to the head, foreign bodies, irritating nerve, etc. 5. Where organic lesions, as Bright's disease, diabetes or cerebral tumors undermine the healthy tone of the system; but pathology has recently rejected the latter class, and no longer talks of renal epilepsy-labyrinthal epilepsy—