The Medical Society met on October 21, 1896, for the special purpose of honoring the memory of Dr. J. M. Toner.

The President, Dr. S. C. Busey, called the meeting to order and said:

Gentlemen:

It becomes my duty to formally announce to you the death of Dr. Joseph Meredith Toner, who died, July 31st, at Cresson Springs, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to escape the heat of the city and to pass his summer vacation. A few days before my departure from the city, late in June last, I called at his residence to take leave of him. After a brief visit we parted with mutual good. wishes for a pleasant and healthful summer vacation, and return to our accustomed places and duties with improved health and vigor. Each of us knew of the other's failing health and declining life, but his genial countenance, cheerful words and cordial manner left no remembrance of the malady, that would surely, sooner or later, prove fatal to him.

I do not recall any circumstance, that freshened my recollection of that final parting, until the news of his voicelsss

and painless death came to me whilst sitting alone by the window of my room looking out upon the waves of the open sea as they came rolling in and dashed "high on a stern and rock bound coast," breaking into spray that sparkled in the gleaming light of the setting sun, and then flowed back with the ebb of the surging water into the deep sea. The moment, incident and scene shrouded thought with sadness, and the mental picture of that last parting was so vivid and the words of that last good-bye so pronounced, that it seemed, as if I was in his presence accepting his valediction; and, then, the picture broadened out in expanded outline as the memory revived the recollection of the incidents of forty and one years of an acquaintance and companionship, now broken to waste in the wreck of time.

I have been present on many occasions similar to this; for many, very many members of this society have died during the past forty-eight years, but it has not before fallen to my lot to witness the last tribute of respect to the memory of one, whose friendly and fraternal companionship, I had enjoyed

through so many years of professional life. There are but eight others now living, whose membership began before or is coeval with his, who can unite with me in giving expression to our sorrow at the loss of one, whom we honored during life and mourn in death.

Memory is crowded with the incidents and circumstances of four decades and one year of contemporaneous association. which bear testimony to his courage, fidelity, sincerity and impartiality. To an attractive address, courteous demeanor and genial temperament were added truth, justice and magnaminity.

It is not, then, surprising that those of us who knew him through so many years should mourn the death of a friend whose nature and character were so richly blessed with the nobler qualities of the human heart and mind. His good offices and friendships were not limited to his life-long companions and co-laborers of our profession, but were as widely extended as his acquaintanceship among the later membership of this society and in the community at large. The positions of trust and honor, to which the profession in this District and in the country called him, to some of which but few can hope to attain, testify to his worth as a man, his standing as a physician, and his fidelity to duty. This society will hold his memory in honored remembrance as the faithful historian, who through years of pains-taking and laborious investigation collated the early history of the profession in this District, from municipal and national records, newspaper publications, family reminiscences, legend and tradition. He verified and arranged these data with such accuracy and completeness in an address delivered September 26th, 1866, that it is now and always will be accepted as the standard history of the medical profession of this District prior to 1866.

Dr. Toner was neither a brilliant man, nor a profound thinker, but he was eminent and conspicuous as a patient, industrious and honest student. These qualities he applied with assiduity and sincerity to every purpose he sought to accomplish. He was eminently and acutely truthful. acutely truthful. He had the courage of his convictions with the will and force to maintain them, but always so tempered with magnaminity and forgiveness, that the crimination and bitterness of disagreement and controversy, were either wholly obliterated, or so mollified, that his friendships were purified and intensified.

His social standing and moral character were above reproach. He stood upon the highest plane of etiquette and ethics, but was never an offensive partisan, and set an example worthy of emulation by the most punctilious and circumspect.

His investigations and studies related mainly to medical and local histories, and his favorite fields of labor and research referred to subjects which had been, for the most part, entirely neglected, but which required persistent pursuit, accurate and impartial judgment, a well-balanced faculty of analysis and a keen and quick perception of mistake and misrepresentation. He had so trained his mind, that these qualities constituted the routine method of his thought and brought to his aid such ready and accurate knowledge, that made him a living and walking repository of a vast amount of useful information, sifted down to its absolute value and accuracy. He was not only a "fact hunter", but a hunter of useful facts, and of facts hidden in musty and forgotten archives, obscured by reminiscent and traditional misrepresentation. He re-discovered, re-habilitated, and utilized facts for the common good. It

was a phenomenal combination of the habits of the body, traits of mind and trend of thought, that enabled him to accomplish so much that will make the task of those who may follow along the same lines of research and study, easy and profitable.

He has left several curious, unique and valuable illustrations of this peculiar trend of thought and mind, that strikes one at first glance, as the work of one who was busy wasting time for something better to do, but those who know the value of such facts, will testify to his accuracy and originality of method of verification, arrangement and classification. The Medical Register of the District of Columbia; Dictionary of Elevations and Climatic Register; Plan of geographical classification, denoting by symbols the location of the counties of each state of the Union, adopted and now in use by the Post Office Department; Collection of maps and rare records which show the boundary lines of the farms as they existed when this city was laid out, which accompanies the work entitled "Washington in Embryo"; and "Alphabetical list of the

names of all persons residing in Washington and District of Columbia, June 1, 1880, aged seventy-five years and more", compiled from the census of 1880 are terse expressions of mental characteristics, original in conception, unique in utility and enduring in history with the name of Toner. I may, with excusable pride, add to these citations his address to the Rocky Mountain Medical Association, delivered June 6, 1877, in which, with most commendable industry, he classified and arranged the facts and data collected from the histories of all peoples and tribes of all ages and times, from which he deduced the following conclusion, set forth in the last two sentences of the address.

"Everywhere and in every age, among all tribes and peoples, whether the most savage or the most highly civilized, may be traced the presence of the physician. He was ever deemed a necessity, and his standing and influence have everywhere been commensurate with his high and honorable office, which won for him in the Apostolic age the appellation of the 'Beloved Physician'."

"Think of him still as the same, Ι say;
He is not dead-he is just away!"

Life came to our friend, as to all men, as opportunity. But to our friend, more than to most men, life seemed royal in its largess of being; existence an inalienable birth right of enjoyment in his chosen paths of duty and endeavor.

Who, remembering Dr. Toner's warm hand-grasp and countenance beaming all over with welcome in the presence of his friends-a friendship that was all embracing-and the "cup of kindness" that went with it all, who, I say, can doubt that somewhere that welcome still waits for us with its benediction of good will? The source from which such abounding life springs from our human need lies deeper than any grave. You may pile the turf above it, but you cannot stay the fountain of being from springing into everlasting life. To-night

I harbor no Sadducean doubts about our friend, he who had none himself. "He is not dead, he.is just away."

Yet, when such a life passes in its orbit beyond the limits of our horizon, it is fitting that we take note of its transit, estimate this personality which it was our privilege to know, and consider whether with the passing of that life any lesson abides. Over the hurrying bustle of the arena comes a momentary hush and we stand with uncovered heads looking to the end. No, it is not they

who go from us, it is we, ourselves, who need that lesson in our mad following after phantoms.

Of Dr. Toner's professional labors for more than forty years in this community; of his relations to this society and the interest that he always took, in whatever pertained to its welfare, others, whose more intimate association with him in the work has better fitted them to judge of the service than I, will speak to you to-night. But while his professional training, with its pains-taking research and critical study, doubtless left its impression on all his work, so that you might recognize the tactus eruditus through it all, there was a great deal to Dr. Toner outside the lines of the diploma, which the Jefferson Medical College gave him in 1853. The careful habits of observation, that were begun by him at the bedside, were extended to include the well nigh infinite vista of all science; those social amenities that won his way as the family physician, these went out in good fellowship toward all his neighbors, irrespective of the metes. and bounds of his practice, while the heart, trained to sympathy with his suffering patient, expanded to take in the philanthropies of a whole community.

Plainly he had outgrown the garments with which at the outset, his life was fitted. His profession I count the noblest in the world, but it is of Dr. Toner, the man, larger than his profession, that I desire to speak.

And yet, contemplating a life so ordered, complete and rounded in itself; his entire integrity of purpose and character which made all the aims of that life exalted and noble; the patient industry. that never wearied; the ambition that

was always worthy; the knowledge of and the interest in everything pertaining to the human, with that child-like trust in the Divine as beyond human knowledge-it is so like looking for salient points on a perfect sphere, that one is at a loss where to begin the estimate.

In the contemplation of a completely rounded life like that of our friend, estimates are likely to differ widely regarding its strong points. What impressed me most in Dr. Toner, was his untiring industry in collecting all the facts from their original sources, and his being satisfied with nothing short of the complete elucidation of whatever matter he might happen to have in hand. This was the habit of his mind, hence the value of his conclusions. It has been said, "Our life is two-fold," and the soul has inner shrines apart where it is not my purpose to enter, but one needed only to stand, as it were, in the outer courts of Dr. Toner's life to know that the shrines of that life's worship was, with all true Americans, at Mount Ver

non.

It was most loving service that he rendered there.

All this is very near to us now, and the limitations of the work accomplished are not well defined, but as it recedes into history, the name of Dr. Toner will be found closely associated with that of Washington, as of one, whose active life being passed in the city that Washington had founded, and becoming imbued with a sense of the greatness of that man's life as eclipsing all modern names and outranking all the heroic figures of history, had devoted himself to the preservation of everything-no matter how slight or trivial it may seem now—which might aid the future historian in the the exact delineation of the real man, George Washington, father of his country. The historian perchance of that era,when America extending her sceptre

from ocean to ocean, and from isthmus to pole, shall take up the empire of the world. Dr. Toner did not himself aspire to the rank of historian. A mighty presence awed him, about whom he was content to gather only facts, a truth seeker amidst well nigh infinite incidents, and the longing of his life was, like that of the German poet, for "more light." Is the longing satisfied now? Could he venture to place himself on the level of a historian? He had seen historians in their pictures of Washington, erase the dental deformities from the upper lip and gloze over the strong lines. of the real character with their beatific varnish. Such procedure to his mind was sacrilege. He recalled another historian, who had deliberately emasculated Washington's letters, giving to that great man the advantage of a Harvard culture and a polished diction, as unbecoming to Washington, as dancing pumps would have been to him at Valley Forge. From all this Dr. Toner shrank with horror, and, not as a historian but a collator, impressed like the mediæval monk, copying the Word with the sacredness of the work, he edited Washington's journals, giving the exact text as Washington had left it, down to the dotting of an "i" or the omision of the crossing of a "t", for who was heor any annalist for that matter that he should assume to decide what Washington ought to have written?

The result of all this industry and devotion of purpose upon Dr. Toner was that which is inseperable from the individual in all self-denying and earnest work, viz: the inductive force which inheres with high ideals and insensibly lifts self that too frequent synonym for selfishness-to higher levels, the intellectual development that is the necessary concomitant of such study, "profitable unto the life that now is,"