L 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 CALIPORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 A 
 
 f
 
 
 
 r. 
 
 DEDICATION 
 OFTHE NEW- BVILDING • oE THE 
 
 BOSTON i^lEDICAL- LIBRARY 
 
 SATVRDAY JAN 1211! ATS P./n. 1901
 
 
 ..'•■■•/ 
 
 A 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW BUILDING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Boston /Hbebical Xibrarv 
 
 8 The Fenway 
 
 Saturday, January 12, igoi 
 
 ORDER OF EXERCISES 
 
 ADDRESSES BY THE PRESIDENT, DR. DAVID W. CHEEVER 
 AND THE LIBRARIAN, DR. JAMES R. CHADWICK 
 
 REMARKS BY 
 
 DR. FRANCIS W. DRAPER, President of 
 THE Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
 DR. WILLIAM OSLER, Professor of Med- 
 icine, Johns Hopkins University, Bal- 
 timore, Md. 
 
 DR. JOHN S. BILLINGS, Librarian of the 
 New York Public Library. 
 
 DR. HORATIO C. WOOD, Professor of 
 Therapeutics and Clinical Professor 
 of Nervous Diseases, University of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 DR. HENRY P. WALCOTT, Acting Presi- 
 dent of Harvard University, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 BOSTON 
 PRINTED BY S. J. PARKHILL & CO. 
 
 1901
 
 OFFICERS 
 
 t^lf f^i f^m 
 
 DAVID W. CHEEVER, M.D. 
 FREDERICK I. KNIGHT, M.D. . 
 OLIVER F. WADSWORTH, M.D. 
 JAMES B. AYER, M.D, . 
 JAMES R. CHADWICK, M.D 
 EDWIN H. BRIGHAM, M.D. 
 MRS. E. J. COLLINS 
 
 President 
 VicesPresident 
 Secretary 
 Treasurer 
 Librarian 
 Assistant Librarian 
 . Cataloguer 
 
 MALCOLM STORER, M.D. Curator of the Storer Collection of Medical Medals 
 
 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 
 
 DAVID W. CHEEVER, M.D. 
 OLIVER F. WADSWORTH, M.D. 
 WALTER L. BURRAGE, M.D. 
 JOHN W. FARLOW, M.D. 
 JOHN HOMANS, 2d, M.D. 
 MORTON PRINCE, M.D. 
 CHARLES P. PUTNAM, M.D.
 
 z 
 
 n 33 
 
 Df 
 
 ADDRESSES. 
 
 ADDRESS BY DAVID W. CHEEVER, M.D., LL.D., 
 
 President of the Boston Medical Library. 
 
 IVTembers of the Boston Medical Library, Our Invited Guests, 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: — By the liberality of many citizens, women as 
 well as men, whose gifts we gratefully acknowledge, and by the free offerings 
 of our professional brethren, we have erected this commodious and safe deposi- 
 tory for our medical library. It is with a peculiar feeling of thankfulness that 
 I officially welcome here the physicians of Boston and of New England. The 
 object for which we have striven is so vital to our welfare that a certain 
 solemnity is appropriately mingled with our gratitude. Over and over again, 
 in these later years of financial prosperity, have we seen vast schemes of 
 benevolence, of religion and of education begun and finished promptly by the 
 munificence of a single wealthy citizen. Such has not been our good fortune. 
 We have received but one large gift and that from a lady who wishes to 
 remain unknown. 
 
 " Inter tedia et labores" literally, have the doctors toiled to make this 
 library and to give it a safe and suitable building. Our librarian will detail 
 to you, as he alone can do, the long years of effort by which he has raised 
 this to the fourth place among the medical libraries of this country. 
 
 It is my simple duty to welcome you here, and to recount, briefly, the 
 importance and the advantages of our work. 
 
 A medical library is peculiar in that it must also be a contemporary and 
 a periodical library. The present is even more valuable to it than the past, 
 although the records of the past are inestimable. It has been well said that 
 the burning of the library of Alexandria set civilization back through all the
 
 4 ADDRESS. 
 
 centuries of the Middle Ages. So, were all records of medicine blotted out, 
 the next generation of doctors would begin as children over again. What 
 has been discovered has been recorded, and were that lost, humanity would 
 be reduced to the rough medical practice of the savage. It is impossible to 
 set a money value on medical science, and without the records of science, 
 there would be no medical art. Were anatomy, physiology and pathology 
 lost, we should be groping in the first footsteps of ignorance. Were the 
 history of all diseases, recorded in our books, destroyed, we should be only 
 children as observers. But to the younger doctors who listen to me it will 
 appear that the present is all important. And if we were suddenly deprived 
 of the knowledge acquired in the last fifty, twenty, or even ten years, what a 
 change would come over medicine! Anesthesia, antisepsis and bacteriology 
 are now the paramount factors of all our progress. And the peculiarity 
 of this species of knowledge is that it is ephemeral ; it lives but a day ; it is 
 not lost, but its seeds germinate in new discoveries the next day. What we 
 know today may be obsolete tomorrow, simply because it is subject to daily 
 investigation and dailv modification. 
 
 This form of knowledge requires an ephemeral literature to record it. 
 The monthly, the weekly periodicals supply this knowledge. Hence the im- 
 portance of a periodical library in medicine. More than five hundred such 
 publications are taken here ; read here ; preserved here in files. This, then, 
 constitutes a most valuable part of our library. 
 
 To allow the busy doctor and the student an opportunity to use this 
 knowledge, it must be rendered accessible in commodious and quiet rooms, 
 for reading, writing, excerpting. In our fine halls we can now offer the 
 wisdom of the older authors, and the discoveries of almost every hospital and 
 clinic and school in the world. Special subjects can be searched and ex- 
 hausted ; and the hurried doctor can drop in for half an hour and find the 
 facts he is in search of, speedily and surely. 
 
 This is not all our function. A meeting house for physicians is also 
 here provided ; a medical centre, where professional intercourse will be aided 
 by social features also. 
 
 I believe that the future influence of this Boston Medical Library on
 
 DAVID W. CHEEVEE. O 
 
 the doctors of New England will be beyond computation, in advancing science, 
 softening prejudices and modifying opinions. 
 
 In 1874 six physicians met in the office of the late Dr. Henry I. Bow- 
 ditch, and laid the foundation of this library association. Three of these 
 gentlemen still serve us : Dr. F. I. Knight, as vice president ; Dr. O. F. 
 Wadsworth, as clerk ; Dr. James R. Chadwick, as librarian. We may fittingly 
 recall, also, that our assistant librarian, Dr. Edwin H. Brigham, is still in 
 charge ; having faithfully filled that office since 1875. Mrs. Collins, our cata- 
 loguer, has served ps well for twenty-two years. Such permanence and relia- 
 bility have been great helps in our progress. In 1877 an act of incorporation 
 was obtained. Twelve of the fourteen original incorporators survive. We 
 have lost three presidents by death : Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, presiding 
 from 1875 to 1888; Dr. Hodges, presiding from 1888 to 1890; Dr. Minot, 
 presiding from 1890 to 1896. 
 
 A quarter of a century has elapsed, and we have moved from Hamilton 
 Place to Boylston Place, and thence, here. In this chaste and appropriate 
 edifice we now are domiciled. That it is so well constructed we owe to the 
 good taste of the architects, Messrs. Shaw & Hunnewell, aided by the sug- 
 gestions and the oversight of our building committee, Drs. J. Collins Warren, 
 J. R. Chadwick, Farrar C. Cobb. It is a noteworthy fact that we have com- 
 pleted our building for less than the estimated cost. This is unusual ; and 
 we owe it largely to the prudent management and practical knowledge of Dr. 
 Farrar Cobb, whose experience in building a large hospital has well served 
 him and us. 
 
 The young men in our ranks have pushed us on, and furnished that 
 spur of enthusiasm which conservative age sometimes lacks. We owe also 
 much of our financial success to the tact of our committee to solicit sub- 
 scriptions, of which Dr. .John Homans, 2d, is chairman. I consider that we 
 have made a financial success, because we have collected by subscription 
 about $73,000. 
 
 We have paid out $125,000; and $15,000 will complete our building 
 and furnishing; thus bringing the total cost up to rising $140,000. Sixty- 
 seven thousand dollars are still due ; but we have $25,000 to meet this, in
 
 6 ADDRESS. 
 
 land we own, unsold, leaving a balance of debt of $42,000. We have mort- 
 gaged this library, building and land, for $50,000. 
 
 Our younger members have generously guaranteed the interest on 
 $25,000 for five years. And this leaves us a yearly burden of interest of 
 about $1,000. We are not so badly off then. Fifty thousand dollars would 
 clear us of debt. 
 
 But looking forward to the future we need an endowment to buy books. 
 Many physicians have given us their libraries ; others will do so as time goes 
 on. But we need modern contemporary books. We ought to have on our 
 shelves every modern treatise and textbook, in English, French or German, 
 as soon as published ; medical students and doctors alike need this. We 
 need a fund with a yearly income to enable us to receive students freely ; to 
 give them a room to themselves. We want students to come here as well as 
 doctors, and we want to be able to give them good facilities for study. 
 
 Our hall for business meetings has been beautifully fitted up in memory 
 of Dr. Richard Sprague, by his mother and by the Hon. C. F. Sprague. 
 Mrs. Fifield, the widow of our late genial associate, has furnished a room, 
 as a memorial. Holmes Hall speaks for itself. I need not describe its excel- 
 lence. Would that some one might decorate and furnish the hall we occupy 
 this evening. From the walls of Holmes Hall, from other rooms, look down 
 upon us the portraits of many of our medical forefathers and teachers : The 
 Warrens, Bigelows, Jacksons, Homans, Shattucks, Wymans, Bowditchs, 
 Cabots, Putnams, Storer, Ellis, Buckingham, Holmes ! How can I cease the 
 enumeration ? These were scholarly doctors. We need to continue this 
 patrician Gens. Science enlightens, but does not wholly satisfy ; the humani- 
 ties in education soften manners, nor allow them to be harsh. 
 
 The moral effect produced on the patient and the community by the 
 learned, as well as gentlemanly, physician, is great and wholesome. Let the 
 doctor cultivate books, and let the influence of this library help him to do so. 
 
 It is now my privilege to introduce to you our librarian. If any one 
 man were named who had collected and created our library, it is he. He is a 
 bibliophile, who travels over Europe with a list of missing numbers always 
 in his pockets. Persistent as the bee, he never comes home without honey.
 
 JAMES R. CHADWICK. 
 
 ADDRESS BY JAMES R. CHADWICK, M.D., 
 
 Librarian of the Boston Medical Library. 
 
 '' Hbrce periunt et imputantur" "The hours perish and you must 
 account for them." These words, taken from the sun-dial at Oxford Uni- 
 versity, seem to express the sentiment with which you give me your attention 
 today, when I speak to you, fellow-associates, in the name of the governing 
 body of tliis library. Hours have lengthened into days, days into years, and 
 years have spanned the quarter of a century, since you laid upon our shoulders 
 the burden of creating and building up a library to meet the wants of our 
 profession in this community. Most of us have become silverites in the 
 process of time and regard the ratio of sixteen to one as very moderate. A 
 few are in position to follow the example of a friend of mine, who has 
 discarded a brush and comb from his toilet set and claims that all he needs to 
 do in the morning is to dust off the top of his head. A few, happily but 
 few, of our early collaborators have fallen by the wayside and are no longer 
 with us today to enjoy the full consummation of their efforts. I cannot 
 mention them all; you know them — the impetuous, high-minded Bowditch, 
 the beneficent Shattuck, the quiet, persistent Ellis, the sturdy Buckingham, 
 the erudite Fifield, that dazzling genius Bigelow, and among the younger men, 
 the scholarly Curtis, the wise Hooper, the wholehearted, witty Wiggles- 
 worth. 
 
 Last to be mentioned, but first in all your minds today, is he who lent us 
 the prestige of his name at the inception of our undertaking — Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, our first president, litterateur, poet, wit, and for thii-ty-five years 
 professor of anatomy at the Harvard Medical School. Our debt to him can 
 never be paid, but we intend to keep it alive in our memory by dedicating 
 to him our principal reading room, to be known through all time as Holmes 
 Hall. His bust in bronze, a replica of that made by R. E. Brooks for the
 
 8 ADDRESS. 
 
 Boston Public Library, looks down upon iis from over the mantlepiece at 
 one end, his portrait by Billings at the other. We have many mementoes 
 of him scattered through the hall ; tlie latch of the house in which he was 
 born ; the earliest known portrait of him, a daguerrotype taken by Whipple 
 & Hawes about 1845 ; his fist cast in bronze for me by the sculptor, T. H. 
 Bartlett, with regard to which the latter tells an amusing and characteristic 
 story. When Dr. Holmes was asked if he would hold a pen while the mould 
 was being made, he said, " No," doubling up his fist like a prizefighter's. 
 " Take it that way, which does not show the wrinkles of old age, does it?" 
 His medical library of nearly 1,000 volumes, including many superb tomes 
 of anatomical plates in which he took the keenest delight, will there find a 
 suitable abiding place in accordance with his dying bequest in 1894. 
 In his poem " To the Portrait of a Lady " he says : 
 
 " I love sweet features; I will own 
 
 That I should like myself 
 To see my portrait on a wall, 
 
 Or bust upon a shelf ; 
 But Nature sometimes makes us up 
 
 Of such sad odds and ends, 
 It really might be quite as well 
 
 Hushed up among one's friends." 
 
 His wish is gratified by us, his friends. 
 
 Happily, some of us, men of '75, survive to enjoy the pleasure of this 
 moment, when we welcome you to the regal abode which your bounty has 
 provided, in recognition of the library which our labors have brought to- 
 gether. 
 
 " The longest life " is said to be " a parcel of moments," so the largest 
 library is but an aggregation of individual books. Exclusive of duplicates 
 for home circulation, we have today upon our shelves about 33,000 volumes 
 and 30,000 pamphlets ; yet these figures give but a partial idea of our 
 resources. To make this more clear I must brino^ to vour minds the change 
 which time has brought about in the literature of medicine. Without dwelling 
 upon the ponderous tomes in which was buried the medical lore of the early
 
 JAMES R. CHAD WICK. y 
 
 centuries after the discovery of printing, which your orator and president of 
 twenty-two years ago dilated upon so learnedly and so wittily, I would ask 
 you to come with me for a moment into the market place of Venice in the 
 early part of the sixteenth centui'y to scan a document, written in a legible 
 hand, posted there and elsewhere in the city, for the perusal of those merchants 
 who chose to pay a gazzetta for the privilege. You would find that it gave 
 the news brought back to Venice by some one of its adventurous captains, 
 who had strayed beyond the limits defined in his rude chart, and made 
 another land discov^y in the far West or the far South. " The arrival of 
 the ship in the Adriatic, the contents of its cargo, the price of commodities 
 abroad, together with some account of a newly discovered island, its wonder- 
 ful people and marvellous products would form the staple of the news-sheet of 
 the hour." 
 
 When in 1536 the Venetian possessions in the East were attacked by the 
 Turks, the first regular monthly journal was established by the government 
 to supply news from the fleet, and men were paid to read the particulars at 
 the principal points of the city, but no sheets were issued except such as were 
 sanctioned by the Doge and his council. The officials were so jealous of the 
 printing press, however, that it was nearly fifty years after this time that the 
 first printed newspaper was published in the city and dispersed every month 
 into most parts of Christendom. 
 
 It is probably true, as claimed by the Germans, that their nation was the 
 first to actually jiublish a printed newspaper, a certain Relation, which 
 appeared in Strassburg, fifty-two numbers of which, dating from the year 
 1609, are preserved in Heidelberg. The Frankfurt Journal was not published 
 until 1615 ; the first English paper, the Weekly News, in 1623 ; the first 
 French journal in 1630. 
 
 Be that as it may, the now universal Gazette is seen to have come from 
 the small coin originally paid for the perusal of its manuscript predecessor. 
 From this modest beginning has developed the enormous mass of periodicals 
 which characterize the literature of medicine and most other branches of 
 science at the present day. In medicine the greater part of this change has 
 taken place in the nineteenth century.
 
 10 ADDRESS. 
 
 NVhcii six of us young men met on December 21, 1874, to discuss the 
 possibility of founding this library, and when we actually did found it on 
 August 20, 1875, we were fully cognizant of this change that was rapidly 
 taking place in the character of medical literature ; we knew that the era of 
 theories and systems in medicine was being pulverized into nothingness by 
 the accumulation of crude facts and that these facts were to be found chiefly 
 in periodical literature. Periodicals were then increasing at so rapid a rate 
 that few private individuals could afford to obtain, or even give, them shelf 
 room. 
 
 "We did not at that time foresee that this difficulty was to be increased 
 a hundredfold, not merely by the multiplication of individual periodicals — 
 great as that might become — but by the publication of a colossal index to 
 all previous medical literature, including every article in every one of the 
 numerous periodicals. 
 
 In 1879 the library of the Surgeon-General's Office in Washington, under 
 the charge of an army surgeon. Dr. John S. Billings (whose presence here 
 today is a fresh manifestation of his warm interest in our library), began the 
 publication of an index catalogue of its collections, which comprised practically 
 all medical literature up to that date. The first series of sixteen volumes, 
 quarto, was completed in 1895 ; the new series, comprising accessions since 
 the publication of the first series, has already reached the fifth volume. 
 
 Its value to medical scholars is inestimable, superseding, as it does, all 
 the time-wasting labor that used to be expended in bibliographical research. 
 By its aid we obtain a reference to every rare case that has been recorded 
 since printing was discovered in A. D. 1450. But by indexing the articles 
 and reports of cases in every periodical, past and present, obscure and famous, 
 this catalogue has immensely extended the scope of medical research and 
 created a demand for an array of books, and especially of periodicals, that 
 is simply appalling. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on this peculiarity of the medical literature 
 of the present day that you might understand why it has been the constant 
 aim of your librarian, during the past twenty-five years, to complete the files 
 of all the important periodicals. His efforts have been attended with such
 
 JAMES E. CHADWICK. 11 
 
 success, despite the small funds at his disposal, that more than half of the 
 volumes upon our shelves belong to that category. We are able to supply 
 about seven-eighths of all the references to current literature demanded by 
 our readers, even though they avail themselves of this great universal 
 index. 
 
 It may pertinently be asked how our association, with practically no 
 invested funds, has been able to achieve such results in the accumulation of 
 books ; for the table of. curves suspended above me shows that in twenty-five 
 years we have been able to outstrip many of the libraries which antedate 
 us by many years in their foundation. Our library is already the fourth in 
 size in the country, being exceeded only by that of the Surgeon-General's 
 Office in Washington, that of the College of Physicians in Philadeljjhia, 
 and that of the Academy of Medicine in New^ York. 
 
 I wUl tell you briefly. In the first place, we were fortunate enough to 
 secure, at the onset, the custodianship of the libraries of all the societies 
 pre-existing in the city. In the second place, most liberal contributions were 
 made to us by many private individuals. In the third place, the complete- 
 ness of our files of journals and transactions I attribute largely to the existence 
 of the volume which I hold in my hand, my " want book," wherein, upon 
 the left-hand page, is entered every periodical of which we have any part, 
 while on the opposite i^age is entered every volume or number needed to com- 
 plete the file of that particular journal. By invariably carrying this with me 
 upon my travels in this country and Europe, I have been able gradually, at 
 a trifling expenditure of money, to complete the files of all the leading peri- 
 odicals of the world. I submit this to your special attention if you wish to 
 know how to build up a medical library with practically no funds for the 
 purchase of books. 
 
 So much for our accomplishment in the chief purpose for which we were 
 brought into being. In some other ways we are making ourselves of use 
 to the profession and to the community. For over twenty years we have 
 been conducting a Directory for Nurses, which has been of immense value in 
 putting, at the shortest possible notice, the nurses of the State into communi- 
 cation with the physicians and their patients who wish to secure their ser-
 
 12 ADDRESS. 
 
 vices. Incidentally we have been able to raise the standard of nursing by 
 putting a premium upon competence and training. 
 
 We have added to the amenities of professional life by supplying suitable 
 halls for the meetings of the various medical societies and by hanging upon 
 our walls the portraits of past worthies. 
 
 Within the past month we have received from Dr. Horatio R. Storer, 
 of Newport, R. I., formerly of Boston, the gift of a most remarkable col- 
 lection of medical medals, numbering 2,300 pieces. Only two other collec- 
 tions exist in the world at all commensurate with this, that of Dr. Joseph 
 Brettaur, of Trieste, and that belonging to the library of the Surgeon- 
 General's Othce in Washington. Of the six other great collections that 
 have been formed during the past two centuries, all have been scattered 
 except that of Rueppelli, which was bequeathed to the Sankenbergische 
 Gesellschaft of Frankfort. Considered either from its historic interest, its 
 esthetic merits, or its pecuniary value, I consider this gift as the most note- 
 worthy that this association has thus far received. It is to be known as the 
 Storer Collection of Medical Medals in memory of Dr. D. Humphreys 
 Storer, the father of the donor, and is to be in charge of a son of the donor, 
 Dr. Malcolm Storer, an accomplished numismatist. 
 
 We have a collection of many thousand autograph letters of past and 
 present medical writers and practitioners, only awaiting the appearance of a 
 custodian with time and enthusiasm to classify them and thus make them 
 available to students of history at its original sources. 
 
 To recapitulate briefly : We started in, twenty-five years ago, with the 
 one purpose of supplying the needs of the medical profession in the way of 
 literature properly catalogued and otherwise made available to all students. 
 The gift of this spacious building from the profession of this city is the best 
 evidence that we have achieved our purpose. Shall we rest contented with 
 the laurels which we have won ? I venture to hope not. I think that we 
 acted wisely in limiting the expenditure of our energies and of our money 
 to the one purpose of building up a library, so long as that was the one 
 thing most needed in the city. Now that we have secured the library and the 
 best equipped building in the country in which to store it, we may properly
 
 JAMES E. CHAD WICK. 13 
 
 consider whether the time has not come to enlarge the scope of our functions 
 by assuming the role of a society in addition to that of a library. 
 
 A rich merchant of Athens gave the use of his house and gardens 
 on the outskirts of that city to several philosophic friends for the site of their 
 reunions. There Plato instructed his numerous disciples. This place was 
 called " Academy " from the name of the owner, Academus. Cicero gave the 
 same name to his country place near the lake of Avernus and devoted it to 
 the same purpose. Now that we have a similar spacious domicile, surrounded 
 by gardens, which we owe to the munificence of the city, I would propose 
 that we follow the example of our remote ancestors and invite our philosophic 
 brethren to hold their reunions in our halls, not as guests merely, but as 
 integral parts of our association, and that we assume the name as well as 
 the obligations of an academy. 
 
 It is not merely on account of the archeological parallel, over which my 
 fancy thus plays, that I make this proposition to extend so radically the 
 sphere of our activity. I have watched for many years the careers of similar 
 institutions in other cities and have come to believe that the conjunction of 
 the double attributes of a library and a society much more than doubles 
 the usefulness of the institution. The authority and prestige enjoyed in their 
 respective cities by the Academy of Medicine in New York, and the College 
 of Physicians in Philadelphia, have no analogue in Boston. I remember 
 being greatly impressed with this lack of an authoritative body of medical 
 men in our midst when I was reading many years ago of the spread of a 
 yellow-fever epidemic. The question of a quarantine against it was under 
 discussion in Philadelphia by the State and city authorities, who referred the 
 whole subject to the College of Physicians, which appointed from its numbers 
 a committee of experts whose report was accepted by ihe government as final 
 and its recommendations carried out. I could not help thinking at the time 
 that had our State and City Boards of Health, in which we take justifiable 
 pride, needed guidance, or even the support of popular opinion, in such an 
 emergency, they would not have known to what body of medical men they 
 could ap^ieal with the assurance that the public would recognize that body 
 as authoritative. Apart from this important role, which we have a chance
 
 14 ADDRESS. 
 
 to fill, our new building will enable us to develop the social side of the physi- 
 cian's life. We may become to a fuller extent than heretofore the centre of 
 all activity among the medical men of the State. 
 
 But this subject requires more study and deeper consideration than it 
 can receive on such an occasion as this, and it needs moreover the enthusiasm 
 of youth to bring it to a happy issue. It is time that we, men of '75, stepped 
 down from our official positions and laid upon more stalwart shoulders the 
 burden of accomplishing the latter part of our dream. 
 
 " And ye who fill the places we once filled, 
 And follow in the furrows we once tilled, 
 Young men whose generous hearts are beating high, 
 We who are old and are about to die, 
 Salute you ; hail you ; take your hands ia ours, 
 And crown you with our welcome as with flowers ! 
 
 " How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams 
 With illusions, aspirations, dreams! 
 Book of Beginnings, story without end. 
 Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend ! 
 Aladdin's Lamp and Fortunatus' Purse, 
 That holds the treasures of the Universe ! 
 All possibilities are in its hands. 
 No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; 
 In its sublime audacity of faith, 
 ' Be thou removed! ' it to the mountain saith, 
 And with audacious feet, secure and proud, 
 Ascends the- ladder leaning on the cloud! "
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 President Cheever : We hope to make this biiikling the permanent 
 home of tke Massachusetts Medical Society. The cohesive and conservative 
 force of our parent organization is well represented in its president — the 
 medico-legal pathologist, may I not say, of New England. 
 
 REMARKS BY F. W. DRAPER, M.D., 
 
 President of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
 It is a congenial official duty, Mr. President, and an enviable personal 
 honor, to respond to your call, and, in the name of the Massachusetts Medical 
 Society, to swell the chorus of congratulations which this occasion inspii'es. 
 To one who has watched the evolution of this INIedical Library from its 
 beginning to its present moment, this jubilee is as appropriate as it is spon- 
 taneous. I recall the modest but hopeful way in which the library began its 
 housekeeping in Hamilton Place. I remember in what an incredibly short 
 time it burst its bounds, becoming so megalocheirous that all books in sight 
 were gathered in ; the result of this benevolent assimilation, this rapid expan- 
 sion, was its removal to other and larger premises. How it has grown and 
 prospered there, how it has faithfully fulfilled its mission, under somewhat 
 trying conditions, while in that diverticulum of hidden dangers, that Bohe- 
 mian midway pleasance, Boylston Place, you can all remember. 
 
 And now, following the westward example of every correct imperial 
 course, it has made its second migration and has come here to what we mav 
 believe is its permanent home. And when we contemplate that home, its 
 faultless architecture, its picturesque and dignified environment, its ample
 
 16 EEMARKS. 
 
 appointments, it is easy to join in expressions of gratification and to congratu- 
 late the library corporation upon this auspicious and most satisfactory 
 achievement. Here the many thousand books which comprise this library 
 have a fitting domicile, and one can almost hear them say, one to another, as 
 they settle themselves contentedly in their permanent and harmonious 
 places on the shelves, "Isn't this restful? Isn't this comfort?" Here the 
 busy man in active practice can quickly find just the help he wants to take 
 him over his clinical difficulties. Here the scliolarly lover of good books can 
 browse at his leisure in the well-tilled, overproductive fields of medical litera- 
 ture. Here the diligent seeker for facts finds in the files of current medical 
 journals, gathered in this storehouse from all parts of the world, the latest 
 record of research and observation. Here the ambitious undergraduate stu- 
 dent of medicine, eager for knowledge, satisfies his longing. 
 
 And, then, there is another way in which this library meets the 
 needs of medical men and appeals to their gratitude. I know of nothing 
 quite so depressing in the experience of a sensitive physician as the abso- 
 lutely heartless way in which his tried and trusted friends, the books in his 
 medical library, are hustled and forced to the rear by new and strenuous 
 candidates for favor. These older familiar guides and counsellors of his, 
 whom he has loved and in whom he has confided, must be pushed aside to 
 make room for the latest publication ; senile obsolescence claims them as its 
 victims while they are yet young. Something of the same sort is seen in the 
 rapidly moving procession of new and revised editions of the standard works. 
 You begin to get accustomed to Dr. Osier's classic volume when his second 
 edition knocks at the door and seeks admission, and this has hardly settled 
 in its place and become acquainted with its neighbors when the third edition 
 is announced. And so it goes with all the writers whom we recognize as the 
 leading authorities. The demand for new editions is good proof of the ad- 
 vance of medicine, but it requires an alert brain and a plethoric purse to do 
 it justice. Thus it happens that most private libraries of medical books, 
 belonging to physicians in middle life, contain many volumes too old to be 
 usefully modern and not old enough to be valuable on that account. And 
 it is here that the Medical Library in this building will help us ; because, for
 
 F. W. DRAPER. 17 
 
 the modest annual assessment, every member can have the benefit of the 
 latest thing in medical literature, either in original works or in new edi- 
 tions. And this is a very obvious advantage. 
 
 The reasons why the Massachusetts Medical Society should take special 
 interest in the Medical Library are plain. In all its century and more of 
 organized life, our venerable but ever vigorous State medical fellowship has 
 been the consistent patron of sound medical literature, the zealous advocate 
 of the best in medical .education, the cordial exponent of medical progress ; 
 and in all these relatfons it is in closest sympathy with the fundamental 
 spirit and purpose of this library. I would remind you, too, that the mem- 
 bership of this institution is largely composed of Fellows of the Massachusetts 
 Medical Society ; that its entire administration has been in their hands, 
 and that the successful development and nurture of it have been under their 
 guidance and control. It is not surprising, then, that the Massachusetts 
 Medical Society takes an interest in this consummation of an enterprise 
 which you, sir, and your associates have accomplished. And it is entirely 
 proper that it should add its laurel wreath of special appreciation as a 
 tribute to the man whom Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once described as the 
 " untiring, imperturbable, tenacious, irrepressible, all-subduing agitator, who 
 neither rested nor let others rest until the success of the library project 
 was assured." The description fits Dr. Chadwick today as accurately as it 
 did in 1878. 
 
 I must not forget to allude to another and very intimate relationship 
 which the librarj^ sustains towards the society, the relationship of landlord 
 and tenant, continuing under this roof an association which has been mutually 
 satisfactory for many years ; and I am glad to have this opportunity to make 
 public acknowledgment of the liberal and altogether acce2)table manner in 
 which the tenant's needs have been met. As time goes by, these large and 
 attractive halls will be the scene of meetings and of conferences representing 
 the best thought of the medical men of this community. More than that — 
 here will be found the very centre and focus of our highest medical interests, 
 the home of our medical sodality, where the rust of exclusiveness and 
 reserve will be rubbed away by social contact with our fellows, and where we
 
 18 REMARKS. 
 
 may cultivate mutual respect and courtesy, taking counsel together and stand- 
 ing together for the highest good of our profession. 
 
 These are some of the considerations, Mr. President, which not only 
 inspire gratitude and congratulation, but awaken the most cordial hope that 
 the library will have increasing prosperity through all its future ; that it will 
 be an important factor in promoting the progress of medicine in this city, 
 there is not a shadow of doubt.
 
 WILLIAM OSLER. 19 
 
 President Cheever : The professor of medicine of Johns Hopkins 
 University is himself one of the best examples of the scientific progress of our 
 profession. As a clear and forceful writer, as a sound, and not too progres- 
 sive, practitioner, as a;.lucid expounder in the clinic, he is well recognized in 
 our United States. He has honored us hj his presence and has promised to 
 address us'. 
 
 REMARKS 2 BY WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., LL.D , F.R.S., 
 
 Professor of Medicine in the Johns Hoplcins University. 
 
 Those of us from other cities who briug- consratulatious this eveninfj can 
 hardly escape the tingliugs of envy when we see this noble treasure house ; 
 but in my own case the bitter waters of jealousy which rise in my soul are at 
 once diverted by two strong sensations. In the first place I have a feeling 
 of lively gratitude towards this library. In 1876 as a youngster interested 
 in certain clinical subjects to which I could find no reference in our library 
 at McGill, I came to Boston, and I here found what I wanted, and I found 
 moreover a cordial welcome and many friends. It was a small matter I was 
 seeking, but I wished to make it as complete as possible, and I have always 
 felt that this library helped me to a good start. It has always been such 
 a pleasure in recurring visits to the library to find Dr. Brigham in charge, 
 with the same kindly interest in visitors that he showed a quarter of a 
 century ago. But the feeling which absorbs all others is one of deep satis- 
 faction that our friend. Dr. Cliadwick, has at last seen fulfilled the desire of 
 his eyes. To few is given the tenacity of will which enables a man to 
 pursue a cherished purpose through a quarter of a century — " Ohne Hast, 
 aber ohne Rast " ( 'tis his favorite quotation) ; to fewer still is the fruition 
 granted. Too often the readier is not the sower. Too often the fate of those 
 
 2 Books and Men.
 
 20 REMARKS. 
 
 who labor at some object for the public good is to see their work pass 
 into other hands, and to have others get the credit for enterprises which 
 they have initiated and made possible. It has not been so with our friend, 
 and it intensifies a thousandfold the pleasure of this occasion to feel the fit- 
 ness, in every way, of the felicitations which have been offered to him. 
 
 It is hard for me to speak of the value of libraries in terms which would 
 not seem exaggerated. Books have been my delight these thirty years, 
 and from them I have received incalculable benefits. To study the phe- 
 nomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study 
 books without patients is not to go to sea at all. Only a maker of books can 
 appreciate the labors of others at their true value. Those of us who have 
 brought forth fat volumes should offer hecatombs at these shrines of Minerva 
 Medica. What exsuccous, attenuated offspring they would have been but 
 for the pabulum furnished through the placental circulation of a library. 
 How often can it be said of us with truth, '^'^Das heste loas er ist verdankt er 
 Andern ! " 
 
 For the teacher and the worker a great library such as this is indispensa- 
 ble. They must know the world's best work and know it at once. They 
 mint and make current coin the ore so widely scattered in journals, transac- 
 tions and monographs. The splendid collections which now exist in five or 
 six of our cities and the unique opportunities of the Surgeon-General's 
 Library have done much to give to American medicine its thoroughly eclectic 
 character. 
 
 But when one considers the unending making of books, who does not 
 sigh for the happy days of that thrice happy Sir William Browne whose 
 pocket library sufficed for his life's needs ; drawing from a Greek testa- 
 ment his divinity, from the aphorisms of Hippocrates his medicine, and from 
 an Elzevir Horace his good sense and vivacity. There should be in connec- 
 tion with every library a corps of instructors in the art of reading, who would, 
 as a labor of love, teach the young idea how to read. An old writer says 
 that there are four sorts of readers : " Sponges which attract all without dis- 
 tinguishing; Howre-glasses which receive and powre out as fast; Bagges 
 which only retain the dregges of the spices and let the wine escape, and Sives
 
 WILLIAM OSLER. 21 
 
 which retaine the best onely." A man wastes a great many years before he 
 reaches the ' sive ' stage. 
 
 For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correc- 
 tives of the premature senility which is so apt to overtake him. Self-centred, 
 self-taught, he leads a solitary life, and unless his every-day experience is con- 
 trolled by careful reading or by the attrition of a medical society it soon ceases 
 to be of the slightest value and becomes a mere accretion of isolated facts, 
 without correlation. It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can 
 practise medicine, but *t is not astonishing how badly he may do it. Not three 
 months ago a physician living within an hour's ride of the Surgeon-General's 
 Library brought his little girl, aged twelve, to me. The diagnosis of infantile 
 myxedema required only half a glance. In placid contentment he had been 
 practising twenty years in " Sleepy Hollow " and not even when his own flesh 
 and blood was touched did he rouse from an apathy deep as Rip Van Winkle's 
 sleep. In reply to questions : No, he had never seen anything in the journals 
 about the thyroid gland ; he had seen no pictures of cretinism or myxedema ; 
 in fact his mind was a blank on the whole subject. He had not been a reader, 
 he said, but he was a practical man with very little time. I could not help 
 thinking of John Bunyan's remarks on the elements of success in the practice 
 of medicine. "Physicians," he says, "get neither name nor fame by the 
 pricking of wheals or the picking out thistles, or by laying of plaisters to the 
 scratch of a pin ; every old woman can do this. But if they would have a 
 name and a fame, if they will have it quickly, they must do some great and 
 desperate cures. Let them fetch one to life that was dead, let them recover 
 one to his wits that was mad, let them make one that was born blind to see, 
 or let them give ripe wits to a fool — these are notable cures, and he that can 
 do thus, if he doth thus first, he shall have the name and fame he deserves ; 
 he may lie abed till noon." Had my doctor friend been a reader he might 
 have done a great and notable cure and even have given ripe wits to a fool ! 
 It is in utilizing the fresh knowledge of the journals that the young physician 
 may attain quickly to the name and fame he desires. 
 
 There is a third class of men in the profession to whom books are dearer 
 than to teachers or practitioners — a small, a silent band, but in reality the
 
 22 KEMARKS. 
 
 leaven of the whole lump. The profane call them bibliomaniacs, and in truth 
 they are at times irresponsible and do not always know the difference between 
 meum and tuum. In the presence of Dr. Billings or of Dr. Chadwick I dare 
 not further characterize tliem. Loving books partly for their contents, partly 
 for the sake of the authors, they not alone keep alive the sentiment of histori- 
 cal continuity in the profession, but they are the men who make possible such 
 gatherings as the one we are enjoying this evening. We need more men of 
 their class, particularly in this country, where every one carries in his pocket 
 the tape-measure of utility. Along two lines their work is valuable. By the 
 historical method alone can many problems in medicine be approached profit- 
 ably. For example, the student who dates his knowledge of tuberculosis from 
 Koch may have a very correct, but he has a very incomplete, appreciation of 
 the subject. Within a quarter of a century our libraries will have certain 
 alcoves devoted to the historical consideration of the great diseases, which will 
 give to the student that mental perspective which is so valuable an equipment 
 in life. The past is a good nurse, as Lowell remarks, particularly for the 
 weanlinjjs of the fold. 
 
 " 'Tis man's worst deed 
 To let the things that have been run to waste 
 And in the unmeaning Present sink the Past." 
 
 But in a more excellent way these laudatores temporis acti render a royal 
 service. For each one of us today, as in Plato's time, there is a higher as 
 well as a lower education. The very marrow and fatness of books may not 
 suffice to save a man from becoming a poor, mean-spirited devil, without a 
 spark of fine professional feeling, and without a thought above the sordid 
 issues of the day. The men I speak of keep alive in us an interest in the 
 great men of the past and not alone in their works, which they cherish, but in 
 their lives, which they emulate. They would remind us continually that in 
 the records of no other profession is there to be found so large a number of 
 men who have combined intellectual pre-eminence with nobility of character. 
 This higher education so much needed today is not given in the schools, is not 
 to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of 
 us for himself ; it is the silent influence of character on character and in no
 
 WILLIAM OSLER. 23 
 
 way more potently than in the contemplation of the lives of the great and 
 good of the past, in no way more than in " the touch divine of noble natures 
 gone." 
 
 I should like to see in each library a select company of the Immortals set 
 apart for special adoration. Each country might have its representatives in a 
 sort of alcove of Fame, in which the great medical classics were gathered. 
 Not necessarily books, more often the epoch-making contributions to be found 
 in ephemeral journals. . It is too early, perhaps, to make a selection of Ameri- 
 can medical classics, but it might be worth while to gather suffrages on the 
 contributions which should go upon the Roll of Honor. I did a few years 
 ago make out a list of those I thought the most worthy to 1850, and it has a 
 certain interest for us this evening. The native modesty of the Boston physi- 
 cian is well known, but in certain circles there has always been associated 
 with it a curious psychical phenomenon, a conviction of the utter worthless- 
 ness of the status prcesens in New England, as compared with conditions 
 existing elsewhere. There is a variety today of the Back Bay Brahmin who 
 delights in cherishing the belief that medically things are everywhere better 
 than in Boston, and who is always ready to predict '• an Asiatic removal of 
 candlesticks," to borrow a phrase from Cotton Mather. Strange indeed 
 would it have been had not such a plastic profes=iion as ours felt the influences 
 which moulded New England into the intellectual centre of the New AVorld. 
 In reality, nowhere in the country has the profession been adorned more 
 plentifully with men of culture and of character and, happily, not voluminous 
 w^riters or exploiters of the products of other men's brains — they would man- 
 age to get a full share on the Roll of Fame which I have suggested. To 
 1850, I have counted some twenty contributions of the first rank, contribu- 
 tions which for one reason or another deserve to be called American medical 
 classics. New England takes ten. But in medicine the men she has given to 
 the other parts of the country have been better than books. Men like 
 Nathan R. Smith, Austin Flint, "Willard Parker, Alonzo Clark, Elisha Bart- 
 lett, John C. Dalton and others carried away from their New England homes 
 a love of truth, a love of learning and above all a proper estimate of the per- 
 sonal character of the physician.
 
 24 REMARKS. 
 
 Dr. Johnson shrewdly remarked that ambition was usually proportionate 
 to capacity, which is as true of a profession as it is of a man. What we have 
 seen tonight reflects credit not less on your ambition than on your capacity. 
 A lil)rai*y after all is a great catalyser, accelerating the nutrition and rate of 
 progress in a profession, and I am sure you will find yourselves the better for 
 the sacrifice you have made in securing this home for your books, this work- 
 shop for your members.
 
 J. S. BILLINGS. 25 
 
 President Cheeyer : The librarian of the New York Public Library 
 represents the largest collections of our land next to the Congressional Li- 
 brary. Fortunate for us and for medicine that he has given some of the best 
 years of his life to our interests, and that in the Surgeon-General's Office and 
 in the Army Museum ^nd Library he has indexed the medical universe. 
 
 REMARKS BY J. S. BILLINGS, M.D., LL.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Librarian of the Neiv York Public Library. 
 
 No doubt we have all heard " platform figureheads " — of advanced 
 years and much experience — commence their remarks on occasions like this 
 by saying that one of the privileges of old age is the perspective, restrospec- 
 tive view which it gives of institutions, society and the world in general. I 
 used to suppose that this was an excuse for, and explanation of, the attitude 
 of sage and prophet assumed by the speaker, and that he enjoyed solid com- 
 fort in giving advice ; but I am now beginning to appreciate how those old 
 gentlemen really felt when they announced this important discovery. Most 
 of them, I think, did not feel as wise as they looked, nor as certain and free 
 from doubt as they did in their youth, but circumstance compelled them to 
 speak, and this was a way to begin. 
 
 As I look back to the ceremonies of opening the then new building for 
 this library in Boylston Place in 1878, I find that of the speakers on that 
 occasion, I am the only one now present. President Eliot is still very much 
 alive, although not here tonight ; but Holmes, YAVis, Lyman, Smith, Henry I. 
 Bowditch and Justin AYinsor have passed an-ay, and their biographies have 
 been written. Fortunately, the results of thcnr work remain and are enlarg- 
 ing, and one of these results we have before us tonight. 
 
 The medical prospect has changed somewhat within the last twenty-two 
 years ; there is a new literature, a new pathology, a new surgery, and new 
 names for some very old things, — Christian Science, for example, — but the
 
 20 REMARKS. 
 
 old records have not lost all interest, and the special value of the library is 
 that it contains both the old and the new. In his memorable address twenty- 
 two years ago, Dr. Holmes rightly insisted that a library like this must 
 exercise the largest hospitality, but this applies to gifts rather than to pur- 
 chases. The funds for conducting a library-, medical or other, are always 
 insufficient, and the librarian, or library committee, must therefore exclude 
 from the purchase lists manj^ works which might be welcome additions if 
 obtainable from other sources. The selection is sometimes difficult, and in 
 making it, the work of other reference libraries in the vicinity, such as the 
 public library, the university library, and some special libraries, must be 
 considered. Even gifts must be scrutinized with reference to available space, 
 and to their relative utility in other neighboring institutions. This library 
 does not want a set of United States public documents, or of Massachusetts 
 documents, although in each of these series there are a few things which it 
 should secure. Curious things may be found in public documents. How 
 many of you, I wonder, have ever heard of Herkimer Sternberg, and his great 
 medical discovery, which is vaguely indicated in the following extract from 
 Document No. 15 of the Assembly of the State of New York, dated January 
 15, 1859, being a report of the Committee on Medical Societies and Colleges, 
 relative to the petition of Herkimer Sternberg for aid in publishing his manu- 
 script of a proposed work. The committee reports '• that they have had under 
 their serious consideration the subject referred to them and have become 
 satisfied if the prayer of the petitioner be granted, that the result of the 
 scheme proposed by this Herkimer Sternberg, if successful, will be the an- 
 nihilation of the medical profession, and thus the five or six thousand doctors 
 of our State will be turned out upon the cold charities of an unfeeling world ; 
 that it will introduce the millenium several years before its proper advent 
 in the regular order of business ; that it will dislocate every joint in the 
 system of the moral universe . . . and, therefore, the committee ask to be 
 discharged from its further consideration." 
 
 In cities where there is no medical library, it is clearly the duty of the 
 public library to provide some of the best medical books and periodicals for 
 the use of the physicians of the city, as well as for the direct benefit of the
 
 J. S. BILLINGS. 27 
 
 public. It, is however, a matter of common experience that some- lay readers 
 are rather injured than benefited by reading medicine, and that it is best to 
 restrict the use of certain classes of medical books. It simplifies the problems 
 of the librarian of the public library when he knows that there is in the 
 city a special medical library available for the use of physicians, and that he 
 need only obtain those books which, if not exactly suitable for public use, are 
 not calculated to do nmch harm. He will usually be glad to send to such a 
 medical library the medical books of the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth 
 century, old medical journals, miscellaneous medical pamphlets, theses, reports, 
 etc., and to. retain in the public library only those which have some interest in 
 local history, or in other subjects besides medicine. 
 
 There are certain duties and responsibilities which rest upon a few large 
 reference libraries which do not pertain to the great majority of city public 
 libraries. For example, the average city library should collect and preserve 
 all the reports of hospitals in its own city as a matter of local history, but 
 it should not waste time or energy over the reports of hospitals in other cities, 
 but should send those that come in either to a medical library or to one of 
 the great reference libraries of the country like the Boston Public, the New 
 York Public, or the Congressional Library. These great libraries must 
 collect and preserve such reports as a part of their collections relating to 
 charities — private and public — an important branch of sociology, but they 
 are only useful in this way when the collections are very large and permit 
 of comparisons ot' methods and results from a wide area and for considerable 
 periods of time. 
 
 The field of medicine is very broad, and the special medical library 
 might properly include not only general biology with its general subdivisions 
 of morphology, physiology, psychology and anthropology, but also much 
 of the literature of botany, zoology, chemistry, jjhysics, municipal engineer- 
 ing, building and other applied sciences — and in fact the great medical 
 libraries of London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Washington do include 
 many of these subjects. But this requires more space and money than most 
 medical libraries can alford to give, and liencc it is usually best to leave most 
 of these subjects to other special libraries.
 
 28 REMARKS. 
 
 The department of first imjiortance in a library like this is that which 
 contains its files of periodicals, not only because they contain the original 
 records from which textbooks and monographs are made up, but they repre- 
 sent the feelings, views and wants of the great mass of the profession, and 
 are the great sources for the medical history of the nineteenth century. 
 Medicine is now the most cosmopolitan and international of all the arts 
 and professions, and this is largely due to its periodicals. Moreover, its 
 periodical literature is now more accessible than that of any other profession 
 because of the indexes upon which Dr. Holmes so much insisted. All this 
 has been fully recognized by your librarian, and you are very rich in this 
 class of literature. Thanks to the efforts of the medical profession of 
 Boston (aided by those of some other parts of the country). Congress was 
 induced to order the printing of the Index Catalogue of the Washington 
 Collection which was under consideration twenty-two years ago, and which I 
 then thought might make six volumes. This Index Catalogue is not yet 
 finished, only twenty volumes having been published ; but it can give con- 
 siderable employment to the bibliographical student even now, and has prob- 
 ably added to the practical utility of this library, but perhaps not always to 
 the perfect joy and content of its readers. 
 
 The fact that the physicians of Boston have another library besides this 
 one to care for, as shown by their action with regard to the Index Catalogue, 
 is one that I venture to remind you of because the needs of your National 
 Medical Library are liable to be overlooked. Just now it is in urgent need 
 of shelving for its additions, some of which are being stored in window sills 
 or on the floor, which is bad for the books and for the readers. 
 
 Requests for funds to provide this shelving have been presented at the 
 last two sessions of Congress, but received no attention. An estimate is 
 before the present Congress for $9,000 to supply this shelving, and if the 
 Massachusetts representatives and senators hear from their medical consti- 
 tuents that this is a matter in which they are interested, there is no doubt 
 that it will be done. Your Washington Medical Library now contains 136,000 
 volumes and 230,000 pamphlets — decidedly the largest and best library of 
 its kind in the world — and ought to be kept up to date in good shape.
 
 J. S. BILLINGS. 29 
 
 When I tried to say something on the occasion of the opening of this 
 library in the Boylston Place Building, I well remember that I was very 
 much embarrassed and not a little afraid, and would have been very glad to 
 have been merely a listener. 
 
 On the present occasion, while I am in trouble to fiud the right words 
 in which to express my thoughts and feelings, I am very glad indeed to have 
 the opportunity to congratulate you upon the result of the work of the Boston 
 Medical Library Association during the last twenty-five years, and I do con- 
 gratulate j'ou most heartily and sincerely. The collection of books, of por- 
 traits, of medals, the building in its plan, structure and furnishings, are all 
 things of which you have good right to be proud, and with which you may 
 rest satisfied for several weeks to come. 
 
 As you all know, these results are largely due to the fact that one man 
 having abundance of energy and public spirit, with much knowledge and an 
 insatiable thirst for more, and with a fairly definite idea of what he wanted, 
 has been working incessantly for the last quarter of a century towards this 
 end. I congratulate you upon your wisdom in letting him thus work, and 
 in helping him to carry out this plan. His power for good has not been 
 limited to Boston, for by way of recreation he has devoted some of his time 
 to stirring up and stimulating other librarians like myself, when he thought 
 they needed it, or when he had some superfluous energy to dispose of, which 
 was often. In this and other ways, he has given material and valuable assist- 
 ance to other libraries, more than any of you are aware of, and it is not my 
 personal affection for him, great as that is, but a sense of what is just and 
 right, which leads me to say to you that, while the Boston Medical Library 
 has been his special pet, for which no trouble was too great to take, and no 
 sacrifice too great to make, all other medical libraries in this country are 
 more or less indebted for their progress and prosperity to your librarian, Dr. 
 James R. Chadwick.
 
 30 REMARKS. 
 
 President Cheever : The genial professor of therapeutics from Phila- 
 delphia will now address us. He is also a professor of nervous diseases, but 
 he will omit that branch on this occasion. As representing the oldest medical 
 centre in America, and still among the most modern, I take especial pleasure 
 in introducing him to you. 
 
 REMARKS BY H. C. WOOD, M.D., LL.D., 
 
 College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Professor of Nervous Diseases and Therapeutics, Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen who have assisted in the crea- 
 tion OF THE Boston Medical Library. — It is with a high sense of the 
 honor conferred upon me that I bring greetings and congratulations in this, 
 the opening of the twentieth century, to you, the fruit of whose labors is 
 seen in the substantial edifice and the loaded bookshelves which surround 
 us ; greetings and congratulations from the College of Physicians of Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 In doing this I desire to exjiress most warmly my appreciation of the 
 great work which has been done largely through the efforts of a few men 
 among you, and in a comparatively brief period. It may well be questioned 
 whether so rapidly a successful effort has been equalled upon the American 
 Continent, and I trust that it will be understood that what I have to say 
 in regard to the institution which I represent is said in no sjairit of egotism, 
 but simply as the effort of age, perhaps senile and garrulous, to read lessons 
 to the young through its own experience. 
 
 The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was born January 2, 1787, 
 amidst surroundings most primitive, and has grown with the growth of 
 American civilization. That the founders of the college had very clear ideas 
 as to the necessity of a medical library for the increase of medical knowledge,
 
 H. C. WOOD. 31 
 
 and for the perfection of medical units, is shown by the fact that during the 
 first year of its existence the college discussed the subject, and a few weeks 
 later, namely, on March 3, 1788, by the formal acceptance of the gift from 
 Dr. John Morgan of 24 volumes, by the approval of a regular plan for a 
 library, and by the appropriation of fifty pounds — Colonial — for the pur- 
 chase of books, laid the foundation of that collection of medical books which 
 is today the most valuable of its kind in the United States, save only the 
 one in Washington belonging to the Federal Government. In the library of 
 the college at Philadelphia there are at present 61,359, or including dupli- 
 cates, 65,499 volumes, besides unbound pamphlets; there is also an especial 
 fund of $50,000 for the purchase of new books. 
 
 It has seemed to me, in thinking over what I know of the profession in 
 Boston, that possibly it might be well for the association of physicians which 
 has been successful in the creation of the library about us to widen the scope 
 of its operations, and thereby do great good and indirectly assist the library 
 itself. So far as can be seen, if the founders of the College of Physicians 
 had made the creation of the library their sole object, the library would have 
 soon perished as one born out of due time. It has been the cohesive in- 
 fluence of aims other than those purely scholastic which has bound together 
 successive generations of medical practitioners in Philadelphia so firmly as to 
 make possible the gathering together of medical books ; an object which was 
 perhaps secondary in the minds of the founders, and besides which in their 
 acts is clearly foreshadowed a threefold intent. 
 
 Plainly first among the results which it was hoped to attain was by foster- 
 ing intercourse amongst fellows of the college to increase that personal friend- 
 ship and amity which restrains far more powerfully tendencies to professional 
 jealousy and undue rivalry than can any written law of ethics or any incul- 
 cation of precepts of professional conduct even during the educational period 
 of life ; the result has been that there are few members of the college who 
 do not value the friendship and esteem of their fellows as their choicest posses- 
 sions, and that the relations between members of the profession in Philadel- 
 phia are among the most perfect in the world. 
 
 The second object, for the attainment of which the college was seemingly
 
 32 REMARKS. 
 
 organized, was for the stimulation in its members of professional zeal in study 
 and in doing what they could for the enlargement of the boundaries of medical 
 Jiuowledge. Even if time allowed, it would be scarcely becoming in me to 
 show how successful the years have been in this respect, nor yet is it needful ; 
 the history of medicine in Philadelphia must be sufficiently known to you to 
 I'ecognize that in no other centre in the United States have there been more 
 men of national or international fame, or more success either in actually 
 increasing knowledge or in preparing it as brain food for the rank and file 
 of the profession. 
 
 The third intent, which was early manifested in the acts of the college, 
 was to afford a body of physicians, the conjoint local reputation of whose 
 members would be sufficient to give overwhelming weight to any deliberate 
 expression of opinion made by the assembly upon matters medical in which 
 the general public was concerned. 
 
 A few months after the foundation of the library, namely, in Apiul, 
 1789, the influence of the college was first brought to bear upon the public 
 authorities. The old records show that at the time there was a widespread 
 epidemic of influenza in Philadelphia ; that the President of the United 
 States was to visit the city on his way from Mt. Vernon to New York, where 
 he was to be inaugurated ; and that among other ceremonies a general illumi- 
 nation was proposed ; but that on the representation of the college that the 
 late night exposure in the month of April would undoubtedly increase the 
 number of victims of the prevailing disease, the proposed illumination was 
 abandoned. The action of the college and its results may after all have been 
 matters of no great importance, but they were drifting straws, showing the 
 set of the current of public opinion ; a current which later in the same year 
 led the Legislature of Pennsylvania to formally apply to the college for 
 assistance in the emendation of the State laws for the prevention of the 
 introduction of infectious diseases. 
 
 To make further citations of similar instances of correlation between the 
 College of Physicians and the governmental authorities of the State or of 
 the city would require simply a going over the records of the history of the 
 college, but I have been sternly warned not to overpass ten minutes of time,
 
 H. C. AYOOD. 33 
 
 so I forbear ; only calling attention to the fact that the College of Physicians 
 has frequently taken part in governmental procedures, and that the degree of 
 attentiveness of the governmental ear to its voice has usually been a fair 
 measure of the wisdom and the honesty of the governmental brain. As 
 politics in the modern sense of the word has grown among us to be more and 
 more of a special business, so has the governmental ear been dulled ; as citj' 
 or State governments have risen or ebbed in the standard of their purity, so 
 have the admonitions of the college been listened to or neglected ; and usually 
 has the community reaped the reward or paid the penalty for such action, 
 since in most cases the decisions of the college have been correct. 
 
 Such, gentlemen, is the brief lesson which I would read to you from the 
 long and successful history of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; 
 led by it, I venture to urge that for the continuing success of your library, 
 for the internal benefit of the profession in Boston, for the advancement of 
 medical knowledge within your bounds, for the general good of the community 
 in which you dwell, the association should broaden its scope, so that it should 
 become not simply a library association but a veritable collegium, whose 
 fellows pass through life hand in hand, in all fidelity inciting each other to 
 good works. 
 
 May 1 further add that the history of the Philadelphia College indicates 
 that in such broadening certain matters must be attended to. It seems to be 
 primarily essential that all school fellowships and affiliations be laid aside in 
 the membership. Alumni associations are well, but they have here no place. 
 The graduate of Harvard must for the time being forget his Alma Mater 
 in a wider brotherhood, so that whether a man be a Boston graduate or come 
 from the far-off University of Tokyo, or from the school of Gottingen, he 
 shall be equally available for membership in the association and for honors 
 in its body politic. On the other hand, almost equally essential is it that no 
 attempt be made to interfere with what may be considered the normal political 
 aggregation of physicians in the United States, namely, the county medical 
 societies, growing upward to the State societies, and then to the general 
 association in the United States. In the county medical societies every legal- 
 ized physician, who is willing to be honest and upright in his profession,
 
 34 KEMAKKS. 
 
 should have the right to take part, but in the proposed organization the 
 standard of membersliip shouki be higher ; so that membership in the associa- 
 tion shoukl be looked upon as an honor, because it stands not only for high 
 professional purity and ethicality, but also for high professional zeal and 
 culture. It is given to but few to be professional leaders, but many can be 
 honest medical gentlemen, highly cultured students, and thoroughly con- 
 scientious physicians ; of such and of such only should be the membership in 
 the suggested College of Physicians of Boston.
 
 HENRY P. WALCOTT. 35 
 
 President Cheever : It is a good omen for us that a doctor of med- 
 icine is even a temporary ruler of Harvard University. Medicine and our 
 Medical Library are well represented in the corporation. But in the acting 
 president we have a coffspicuous example of sanitary, professional and execu- 
 tive ability. 
 
 REMARKS BY HENRY P. WALCOTT, M.D., 
 
 j Acting President of Harvard University . 
 
 The opening of a library devoted to the general purposes of literature, 
 history and art would compel the representative of a great teaching body to 
 say sometliing about the appeal which such collections make to the cultivated 
 and intelligent members of the community. We cannot, however, say that 
 this collection of books will ever appeal to us in the higher sense in which 
 the masters of literature have swayed their worlds. 
 
 You shall find no author here who has made a fisfment of his imagina- 
 tion as real as an actual personage of liistory. 
 
 The diseases of the human race, and I may add, too, those of the 
 domesticated animals, have an interest that needs no play of the imagination 
 and not even the graces of style. The description, however, must have scien- 
 tific accuracy, and that implies competent authority. 
 
 We read in vain the matchless pages of Thucydides to discover the 
 real nature of the plague at Athens ; the great historian could not adequately 
 describe a disease which he not only saw, but from which he had himself 
 suffered. Our pious ancestors resolved that " good learning should not perish 
 from among us," and so founded the schools at Cambridge. The first sub- 
 stantial help was given by John Plarvard, but little less precious than his be- 
 quest in money was the legacy of his books. It is well, then, that we 
 should here cherish books, and it may be interesting to consider for a mo- 
 ment how Harvard College has used its libraries.
 
 36 REMARKS. 
 
 In my own college clays the librarians were little more than watch dogs 
 of the collections under their charge. Beyond the volumes of Reis's Cyclo- 
 paedia, the North American Review and some of the English quarterlies, stu- 
 dents were rarely allowed access to the actual presence of the books ; twice a 
 week we were allowed to take out books for use in our rooms. The result was 
 that the faithful officers turned over to their successors the unused and well 
 preserved contents of the shelves. A generation has passed away and I can 
 now read in the latest report of the college librarian this statement : 
 
 " The number of books but continues to increase at a fairly steady rate. 
 Borrowing has doubtless been encouraged by the large number of attractive 
 books, both old and new, that are constantly kept on open shelves in the 
 delivery room, where every one who comes into the library is tempted to 
 look them over." 
 
 The whole number of students in Cambridge is 3,151 : number taking 
 books, 2,488. The collection is open both daytime and evening through the 
 week and also on the afternoon of Sunday. The University Library is credited 
 with the possession of 548,000 books ; of these, however, only 379,000 are de- 
 posited in the general collection in Grove Hall. The rest are in the various 
 departments and laboratory libraries ; the Law School has 50,000 volumes ; 
 the Museum of Zoology, 34,000; the Divinity School, 30,000; the Astro- 
 nomical Observatory, 9,000 ; the Gray Herbarium, 7,500, and last, and in this 
 case least, the Medical School is said to have 2,240. 
 
 Beyond this system of department libraines there is another and more 
 extensive system of laboratory and classroom libraries, twenty-four in number, 
 varying in size from the Library of History, Political Economy and Sociology 
 of 4,500 volumes, down to the Preachers' Library in Wadsworth House of less 
 than 100 volume?. 
 
 In this enumeration, the striking fact is the absolute poverty of the Medi- 
 cal Library as compared with the collection with which a comparison may be 
 justly sought — the Zoological Library built up under the fostering care of its 
 great and generous curator ; a working library only, which is annually turn- 
 ing back into the great receptacle in Grove Hall such books as have become 
 of historical interest only.
 
 HENRY P. WALCOTT. 37 
 
 The explanation of this seeming lack of care on the part of the univer- 
 sity for her Medical School, in which she takes a just pride, is undoubtedly to 
 be found in the fact that the resources of this library have been most freely 
 given to the teachers and students of the school. The authorities of the uni- 
 versity may well consider whether some equitable arrangement may not be 
 possible for giving to the library an equivalent for the valuable and necessary 
 assistance so freely and generously bestowed.
 
 LETTER. 
 
 President Cheever : We had hoped to have with us tonight the 
 Holmes of Philadelphia, himself both a lover and an author of books, a valued 
 contributor to medical and to general literature, a master of style in prose and 
 in verse. I ask Dr. Chadwick to read a letter from Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. 
 
 LETTER FROM S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 29, 1900. 
 
 Nothing, my dear Chadwick, except engagements, not to be broken, 
 keeps me from being among those who in person congratulate the pro- 
 fession on the opening of your new library. To you more than to any other 
 I send my gratulations, for to this end you have given costly days out of a 
 busy life. 
 
 I see as I grow old, or may I say older, how few are the young medical 
 men whose tastes are scholarly, and who, like Holmes and our own lamented 
 Da Costa, are familiar with the fathers and find pleasure in the old books — 
 the quaint books, the sense and the vagaries of the past. AVithout a great 
 library few can afford these intellectual playgrounds, or, indeed, acquire the 
 material for such indulgence. 
 
 May your new building and growing wealth of books tempt many into 
 paths where some of us have found unlooked for treasuries of interest and 
 even of practical value ; for indeed the dying century did not invent com- 
 mon sense, and genius is of every age. 
 
 I often remember with regret the great waste of time in my younger 
 days when there were no great libraries, and when John Billings had not 
 indexed the medical thought of all the centuries. The enormous labor then
 
 S. WEIE, IVnTCHELL. 39 
 
 involved in any mere literary research as to facts no one can imagine 
 today. A great library of medicine is truly a labor-saving machine, and over 
 your library and over its new home you should rejoice because a great 
 library, well managed, practically lengthens life by saving time. 
 
 My thin thread of New England blood seems to be tingling with friendly 
 pride as I reflect on what the profession has here accomplished. I send 
 you my greeting from the city I love best to that I love next best, and wish 
 you all, and the newly ^instituted library, long, useful and honored days. 
 
 As I pause to assure you how truly I am yours I am conscious that 
 I really hate more and better things to say ; but as like as not others will 
 have said them, and I leave therefore to the eloquence of suggestive imagi- 
 nation all the fine things which I am tempted to say and will not. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Chadwick, always and in all ways, 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 S. Weir Mitchell.
 
 EDITORIAL. 
 
 THE BOSTON MEDICAL LTBRARY.i 
 
 The formal opening of the new building of the Boston Medical Library 
 which took place Saturday evening, January 12th, was an event the full sig- 
 nificance of which we are as yet not fully able to appreciate. Boston has for 
 many years struggled to maintain a creditable library in a building which had 
 become wholly inadequate and in a situation whose character had so changed 
 as to justify its being not inaptly described by one of the speakers of the 
 evening as a " diverticulum of hidden dangers, a Bohemian midway pleasance." 
 To be suddenly transferred from this unfortunate position to its present loca- 
 tion on one of the city's most attractive streets, commanding a view of excep- 
 tional beauty, is a transformation which the most sanguine believer in the 
 fitness of things could contemplate only with satisfaction tempered by sur- 
 prise. How this was accomplished was told in detail at the exercises attend- 
 ing the opening of the new building, the full report of which is given in other 
 columns of this issue. We will only emphasize here the good fortune of the 
 building committee in being able to command the devoted services of a medi- 
 cal colleague. Dr. Farrar Cobb, with large experience in the details of the 
 construction of buildings for medical institutions ; he, in great measure, 
 wrought the miracle of providing an architectural product at less than esti- 
 mated cost. 
 
 As was to be expected, the attendance at these exercises was large and 
 
 representative ; it is perhaps more worthy of comment that the various 
 
 addresses and remarks made by the chosen speakers were most admirably 
 
 suited to the occasion, and did not once lapse into the commonplace. They 
 
 ' Editorial from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, January 17, 1901.
 
 BOSTON MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL. 41 
 
 were throughout dignified, at times humorous, but never tiresome, Dr, 
 Wood, of Philadelphia, was the only absentee, but we have fortunately not 
 thereby lost his address. The exercises were held in the large upper hall, as 
 yet unfinished ; its bare walls and girders were a mute but eloquent appeal to 
 the assembled audience to provide at no distant time for the proper adorn- 
 ment of this important room, for which the modest sum of $5,000 is required. 
 
 In striking contrast to this commodious but as yet incomplete hall is the 
 main reading room, whioli is to be known as Holmes Hall, in honor of the 
 steadfast friend and first president of the library. No doubt many deserve 
 the credit for this room, but to whomsoever credit is due, there can be no 
 question that it is a success from every point of view. Dr, Holmes is evi- 
 dently the presiding genius, for his portrait looks down from one end and his 
 bust from the other, while everywhere are further reminders of Boston's 
 literary doctor — many of them due to the fostering foresight of Dr, Chad- 
 wi<.-k. It was hard to believe that this room had not been in use for years, so 
 assiduously had its shelves been filled with books, and its various decorations 
 completed. The recently acquired collection of medical medals presented by 
 Dr, Storer will when finally in place afford a unique object of interest to 
 Holmes Hall, 
 
 The skilful arrangement of the smaller rooms to be used for various pur- 
 poses connected with the library — among them Sprague Hall, for the smaller 
 meetings of medical societies — reflects equal credit upon the designers of the 
 building. It is, in fact, hard to see how the most ambitious among us could 
 demand a more elaborate and complete receptacle for our books and medical 
 treasures of all sorts, or a more satisfactory literary workshop. Even Dr, 
 Billings, who knows whereof he speaks, comforted us with the assurance that 
 we " may rest satisfied for several weeks to come," 
 
 True as all this is, and justifiable as are self- congratulations at this time 
 on what has been so successfully accomplished, the fact must not for a moment 
 be lost sight of that much more remains to be done ; that with new privileges 
 come new responsibilities of a very definite sort. The library must be sup- 
 ported as never before ; it must continually have new books, and widen ita 
 scope of usefulness in every possible direction. To this end a renewed inter-
 
 42 EDITORIAL. 
 
 est must be taken in its affairs by every one, whether remotely or intimately 
 connected with it, an interest which, no doubt, the new building will do much 
 to stinuilate. 
 
 A suggestion in this line was made both by Dr. Wood, speaking for the 
 College of Physicians of IMiiladelphia, and by Dr. Chadwick, Librarian of the 
 Boston Library. Both of these gentlemen urged the desirability of widening 
 the scope of the library with the view of establishing ultimately an association 
 of physicians, whose voice would have weight in other matters than those per- 
 taining merely to books. This means a very distinct expansion over the 
 organization which at present exists. Dr. Chadwick urged that the library 
 henceforth invite men working in allied fields to form a part of the proposed 
 larger association, which then might properly assume the name and the obliga- 
 tions of an academy. The library should thereby become the real centre of 
 the medical activity of the entire State, or we might go still further and say, 
 of New ICngland. It is clear, as Dr. Chadwick said, that the subject is a 
 large one, demanding careful consideration and active enthusiasm before such 
 a general plan may become an accomplished fact. In the meantime it be- 
 hooves us to recognize our new responsibilities and by all ways in our power 
 to enhance the usefulness of the library merely as a library, and also by 
 broadening the present organization lay at least the foundation of an institu- 
 tion which shall represent the widest medical interests. We are confident 
 that such a consummation is both possible and desirable.
 
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