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 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 ASTOR LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 
 
 MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 IN HONOR OF THE LATE 
 
 DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS, 
 
 APRIL 25, 1913 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1913 
 
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 ASTOR LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 
 
 MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 IN HONOR OF THE LATE 
 
 DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS, 
 
 APRIL 25, 1913 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1913 
 

Doctor John Shaw Billings 
 
 director of the new york public library 
 
 1896-1913 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Open Knowledge Commons 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/memorialmeetingiOOnewy 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF THE LATE 
 DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS, APRIL 25, 1913 
 
 As a tribute to the place in the world of letters and science held by 
 the late Dr. John S. Billings, Director of The New York Public Library 
 from 1896 until his death on March 11, 1913, the Trustees of the Library 
 invited several hundred of his friends to meet with them on the afternoon 
 of Friday, April 25, 1913, to listen to addresses by certain of his friends and 
 co-workers. 
 
 The meeting was called to order at 4 o'clock in the Stuart gallery of 
 the central building by John L. Cadwalader, president of the Board of 
 Trustees. With him on the platform sat the following persons : 
 
 The Right Rev. David H. Greer, bishop of New York, Dr. S. Weir 
 Mitchell, Sir William Osier, Dr. William H. Welch, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 
 Mr. Richard R. Bowker; Messrs. William W. Appleton, Cleveland H. 
 Dodge, Frederic R. Halsey, John Henry Hammond, Morgan J. O'Brien, 
 Stephen H. Olin, William Barclay Parsons, George L. Rives, Charles 
 Howland Russell, Edward W. Sheldon, George W. Smith, Frederick 
 Sturges, and Henry W. Taf t of the Board of Trustees ; The Rev. Joseph 
 H. McMahon and Mr. D. Phoenix Ingraham of the Committee on circula- 
 tion; Mr. Edward G. Kennedy of the Advisory committee on prints; 
 Major Henry Lee Higginson, and Mr. Edwin H. Anderson, acting 
 Director of the Library. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: We are met to commemorate the life and 
 services of Dr. John Shaw Billings. Certain friends and co-workers with 
 Dr. Billings will speak of him in the various walks of life in which they 
 and he have been engaged, and these gentlemen will speak in the order, 
 so to speak, of seniority, in that Dr. Mitchell will speak concerning his 
 services in the Army and others as to various works in which they and 
 he have been co-workers. 
 
 We will first ask the Bishop of New York to offer prayer. 
 
 PRAYER BY THE RIGHT REVEREND DAVID H. GREER 
 BISHOP OF NEW YORK 
 
 Let US pray. Almighty God and Heavenly Father, from Whom 
 cometh every good and perfect gift, we adore and magnify Thy Name for 
 all the great things which Thou hast done for us in this favored land; 
 
 [3] 
 
4 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 for the civil and religious privileges which we enjoy ; for the opportunities 
 of human development and enlightenment, and all the means whereby 
 we may grow in wisdom and in the knowledge of the truth. Especially 
 do we remember today the labors of Thy servant whose unselfish devotion 
 to this institution has done so much to make it a source of light and lead- 
 ing to the people of this City ; to shield and protect them from ignorance 
 and error; to instruct them in the ways of righteousness and virtue; to 
 illuminate their minds; to purify their hearts; to give them a clear dis- 
 cernment of the bright elements in their daily lives, so that in all their 
 social and civic fellowships, they might mingle together on the high level 
 of their better selves, and thus more and more to liberate and free them 
 with the freedom of the truth. For all that he has done and contributed to 
 this end, whose memory today we cherish, we would make our grateful 
 acknowledgment to Thee in Whom all human creatures live and from 
 Whom they receive their wisdom and their power to serve their fellow- 
 men and praying that what for us Thou hast done through him, we may 
 show our thankfulness not only with our lips but in better and nobler 
 lives, we ask it in the Name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I have the honor to present to you one of the 
 oldest and closest friends of Dr. Billings, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell of 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 ADDRESS BY DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL 
 
 We are met here to-day to do honor to a man whose modesty pre-« 
 vented the general public from ever understanding how remarkable 
 was the personality of John Shaw Billings. It is in itself a tribute to 
 him that it becomes necessary to divide the grateful office of praise 
 and to invite several persons to commemorate on this notable occasion 
 the various forms of usefulness which characterized his life of laborious 
 days. We praise those who through years of work attain a high level 
 of achievement in any one direction. But this friend of whom I speak, 
 a person of many competencies, lavished on his way through life oppor- 
 tunities for wealth and fame, any one of which would have tempted a 
 man more eager than he for riches or more avid of renown. 
 
 There are those here who will speak of my friend and what he did 
 after he gave up the varied service of army life. To me is left — and 
 had been better left to some brother surgeon — the story of his career 
 of remarkable distinction in the army. To enable you to realize how 
 early was the development of qualities which made him great, I must 
 go back to his youth. The whole story has unusual interest, and lika 
 the rest of this wonderful life should be told at length in a biography, 
 which would be brilliant with examples of how to overcome obstacles. 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 5 
 
 Without some knowledge of that you have not the whole of John Billings. 
 It falls to me to condense this as a necessary prelude to what I have to say 
 of his surgical career. 
 
 The man that was to be is revealed in the boy who at fifteen from his 
 scant savings bought a Latin dictionary and grammar and resolutely 
 taught himself that tongue, in order that he might make out Latin quota- 
 tions he came upon in reading, which already was beginning to be 
 extensive. With small means, by acting as a tutor in the summers, he 
 passed through Miami University, receiving the A.B. degree in 1857. 
 In his last year at college he added to his resources in a rather singular 
 way. A man who was exhibiting pictures on a screen was so evidently 
 embarrassed by the need to explain them, that Billings offered to assist 
 him, and during the summer went with this showman from place to 
 place lecturing on whatever scenes were exhibited. In this way he 
 acquired enough to carry him through his academic work and to enter 
 the Medical College of Ohio, whence he was graduated in 1860. Dur- 
 ing the period of medical study he was enabled to pay his way by taking 
 care of the dissecting rooms and by living in the college. Of these 
 years of privation he spoke to me once or twice, with assurance of his 
 belief that he never recovered from the effect of one winter in which he 
 lived on seventy-five cents a week, subsisting chiefly on milk and eggs. 
 
 After completing his course in medicine in 1860, he became more 
 at ease when for two years he acted as a paid demonstrator of anatomy, 
 and also served in two hospitals. There is a pleasant little personal 
 story of those days of training illustrative thus early of his winning 
 ways. The nursing being conducted by Rornan Catholic Sisters, his 
 gentle gravity, the look of mild melancholy — never quite lost in after 
 days, the lambent blue eyes and a certain sweetness of expression, 
 caused him to be spoken of now and then by these ladies as the "St. 
 John of the Hospital," which certainly would have amused him, but 
 which was a tribute of admiration not to be won by mere looks alone. 
 
 When the war broke out, he had been offered the certainties of an 
 assistantship to a leading surgeon in Cincinnati. He felt, however, so 
 earnestly that the country needed his services, that he declined civil 
 practice, and after an examination in Washington before a board of 
 army surgeons, passing first of his class, was commissioned as assistant- 
 surgeon in the regular army in April, 1862. To sum up briefly his official 
 positions: He became captain by promotion in 1866, major and surgeon 
 in December 1876, lieutenant-colonel and deputy surgeon-general in 
 June 1894, and was retired from active service in October 1895. He 
 received brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meri- 
 torious service. 
 
6 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 He was twenty-four years old when he entered the army. His 
 first duty, while waiting for his commission, was to serve under the 
 president of the examining board at the Union Hospital, Georgetown. 
 At once his extraordinary manual skill and boldness in dealing with 
 difficult cases attracted the attention of the surgeon-general, who put 
 him in charge of the Cliffborne Hospital near Georgetown. This hos- 
 pital, once a barrack, as I understand it, he altered and rebuilt, and 
 there dealt with many of the wounded from the seven days' fight about 
 Richmond, having numberless Union and Confederate soldiers under 
 his care. Here as elsewhere he did nearly all of the operative work. 
 Then followed a series of distinguished appointments. The first took 
 him to the West Philadelphia Satterlee Hospital, where were some 
 thousands of beds filled with sick or wounded soldiers. In March, 1863, 
 he reported for duty to the Army of the Potomac. In anticipation of 
 the fight at Chancellorsville, he located the hospital of the second divi- 
 sion of the Fifth Corps. It was, however, so near the firing line that it 
 was shattered by a shell, and he fell back several hundred yards. Here 
 for hours the wounded were treated, Billings performing many of what 
 we call major operations, until he was obliged to remove his wounded 
 to the Chancellorsville House. This position also coming under artillery 
 fire was evacuated, and one of his assistants. Dr. Hichborne, was killed. 
 Another hospital was improvised six hundred yards back. During these 
 changes, besides the time given to operations and the dressing of wounds. 
 Dr. Billings had the terrible problem of moving again and again the 
 wounded of a retreating army, and how he dealt with those dangerous 
 situations in a wonderfully efficient manner he tells very modestly in 
 one of his numberless contributions to the ''Medical History of the 
 War of the Rebellion." 
 
 At Gettysburg, being attached to the Seventh Infantry, he estab- 
 lished his hospital in a stone house and barn back of Round Top. As he 
 rode up to take possession, he was for a time under heavy fire from the 
 enemy. During one entire day and all night he and the other medical 
 officers were afoot doing operations and caring for seven hundred and 
 fifty wounded men. On the following morning this hospital was evacu- 
 ated under fire. Concerning the few days which followed the victory 
 we have his own account of his resourceful way of organizing hospital 
 service, foraging for his patients, dressing wounds, and in between times 
 doing the gravest operations, until even with his amazing capital of 
 energy he was utterly exhausted. His account of this service as told 
 in the medical annals of the war would be worth republication. The 
 terrible nature of the work here and elsewhere so affected his health, 
 that he had to ask for thirty days' sick leave. Thenceforward his ser- 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS J 
 
 vice was chiefly in hospitals at various places. He was also called upon 
 to collate statistics and data relative to the medical service of the Army 
 of the Potomac for the great medical history of the war. 
 
 In December 1864, Dr. Billings was ordered to the Surgeon- 
 General's Office. War service in the field was now over for him, and 
 with a record of efficiency, resourcefulness and competence of head 
 and hand, in the field and in hospitals, he was in a position to have 
 entered into practice as a great surgeon in any one of our large cities 
 and to have won distinction and fortune. He seems, however, to have 
 been attached to the army, and to have been so immediately understood 
 that in the office of the Surgeon-General he had charge of matters per- 
 taining to all contract physicians, the organization of the Veteran 
 Reserve Corps, the enormous accounts of hospitals which were disburs- 
 ing thousands of dollars, and other minor duties. He had, too, the care 
 of the pathological museum created by Surgeon-General Hammond and 
 by Dr. Billings' friend Surgeon John H. Brinton. The want of books 
 for consultation was felt at once by this eager scholar. Fortunately, at 
 the close of the war in 1865, the hospitals turned in to the Surgeon- 
 General's Office something like eighty-five thousand dollars of their sav- 
 ings, and this he was allowed to use for the library, which then began to 
 grow under his fostering care, until it attained unlooked for dimensions 
 and made necessary the time-saving catalogue, of which others will speak, 
 but which led him long afterwards to be called to the distinguished posi- 
 tion which has left in these halls memories of efficiency and varied 
 usefulness, and I trust will be remembered among you as an example for 
 those who follow him. 
 
 What is most striking in this career is simply its unfailing industry 
 and singular variety of competence. Of this I could not speak fitly with- 
 out mention of the various lines of work which followed his success 
 in Washington. Suffice it to say that this man was not only a person 
 of very great intellect, with a mind having the natural history quality 
 of capacity for classification, but also the power to combine when in 
 command here and elsewhere the strictest discipline with the utmost 
 kindness. I rise from the contemplation of this much loved man with 
 a feeling that what made him so capable was not only originative genius, 
 with talent for the most industrious application of his many mental 
 resources, but above all that group of qualities which we sum up in the 
 word character and which stands out clearly in many great lives as a 
 generous encouragement to men who feel they are not so productively 
 great as others. 
 
 I may be pardoned a personal word. My love and admiration for 
 this man began early in the war, when my brother, a young surgeon, 
 fell ill, and finally died. He was cared for with the utmost tenderness 
 
8 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 by the man whose death we now regret. This was the beginning of a 
 friendship which lasted without the slightest disturbance and with much 
 mutual benefit up to the time of his death. I find pleasant to recall a 
 few words he said to me not many weeks before he died. I had been 
 asking him how many degrees he had received, and when we began 
 to count the LL.D.s and the D.C.L.s, he laughed and said, with his 
 note of humor, "Yes, that is my principal title to be considered a man of 
 letters." Then he paused a little and added, "There is one thing I value 
 far more than these, because as life went on the honors which fell to my 
 share seemed to me unimportant compared to the friendships which 
 I have been so happy as to gather on the way." I gladly recall, but 
 cannot venture to repeat, his words of kindly remembrance, and how he 
 ended by saying how warm was his affection for some of the men whose 
 presence here to-day forbids me to mention their names. 
 
 It has been hard for me to say these few words while omitting a great 
 deal that was personal and interesting. It is proper and fitting, however, 
 as I close, to say how much thought John Billings gave to you of the 
 library staff who aided him in his triumphal management of his final task, 
 and how deeply he resented any failure to recognize the loyal support 
 which you gave him. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I have the pleasure to present to you Sir 
 William Osier, Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford University, a 
 friend of Dr. Billings, and a friend of all good learning. 
 
 ADDRESS BY SIR WILLIAM OSLER 
 
 I speak of Dr. Billings with the reverence inspired by a friendship 
 of nearly thirty years, and I bring officially the appreciative recognition 
 of his great work of the Bibliographical Society of Great Britain of which 
 he was a much esteemed honorary member and of which I happen to be 
 President. 
 
 Of only one aspect of Dr. Billings' work I can speak with full knowl- 
 edge. As a medical bibliographer he occupies a unique position. There 
 have been great students of medical literature since Conrad Gesner, the 
 Swiss Pliny, wrote his famous Bibliotheca Universalis — Haller, Plouc- 
 quet, Haeser, Young, Eloy, Boyle, Forbes, and Watt — but their labors 
 are Lilliputian in comparison with the Gargantuan undertaking which 
 occupied the spare moments in some thirty years of Dr. Billings' life. 
 It is interesting that the conception of a great bibliography should 
 have come to him while a young man. In a paper on early reminiscences 
 he speaks of an aspiration "to establish for the use of American physicians 
 a fairly complete medical library, and in connection with this to prepare 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 9 
 
 a comprehensive catalogue and index which should spare medical 
 teachers and writers the drudgery of consulting ten thousand or more 
 different indexes or turning over the leaves of as many volumes to find 
 a dozen or so references of which they might be in search." 
 
 The opportunity came in 1864 when he was assigned to duty in the 
 Surgeon General's Office. There had been a few volumes connected 
 with the Office since the days of Surgeon General Lovell in 1836, and 
 during the war additions were made by Surgeon General Hammond 
 and by Doctors Otis and Woodward — names memorable in the history 
 of American medicine; but supported ably in his efforts by successive 
 Surgeons General and liberal grants from Congress Dr. Billings was 
 able in a few years to collect one of the largest and most complete 
 medical libraries in the world. In 1895 when he retired there were 308,445 
 volumes and pamphlets and 4,335 portraits; and at the present time 
 the library is the largest of its kind in the world, containing upwards of 
 half a million volumes and more than 5,000 portraits. 
 
 A single volume catalogue was issued in 1872, a three volume one 
 in 1873-74, and in 1876 his big plan took shape in a 'specimen fasciculus' 
 of a new catalogue. After four years of hard work in which he was 
 greatly helped by Dr. Robert Fletcher volume I of the "Index Catalogue" 
 was issued and thereafter year by year volumes appeared with extraor- 
 dinary regularity, and in 1895 series I was completed — fifteen great 
 volumes each of nearly 1,000 pages. No undertaking in bibliography of 
 the same magnitude dealing with a special subject had ever been issued, 
 and its extraordinary value was at once appreciated all over the world. 
 The second series followed the first and is now rapidly approaching 
 completion. 
 
 While the Catalogue only represents the contents of the Surgeon 
 General's Library it really is an exhaustive index of medical literature. 
 So general were Dr. Billings' interests that all departments of medicine 
 are represented, and there is not a subject, as there is scarcely an author 
 of note ancient or modern not in the catalogue. 
 
 For example, a few years ago Dr. Aldis Wright of Cambridge asked 
 me if I could help him in certain references to obscure medical writers 
 referred to in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, of which he could find 
 no trace in British libraries, the references in which he was tracking to 
 their sources. I took the list to Dr. Fletcher. Every one was in the 
 Library. 
 
 The catalogue has in high degree the two essentials of a good bibli- 
 ography — comprehensiveness and accuracy. Taking the two series for 
 reference purposes there has never been issued a work so generally 
 useful to the profession. Take any subject you wish from Dreams 
 
10 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 to Dizziness from Coprolalia to Suicide the literature is given in a full 
 and systematic manner. If you desire to look up the biography of any 
 man in medicine or in science from Hippocrates to Koch, the dates are 
 there and the necessary information. The marvellous accuracy has 
 always been a wonder to me. In the many thousands of references I 
 have made to the volumes I do not think I have noted more than one or 
 two mistakes. A curious one, by the way, was that which has sent 
 our beloved Nestor, Dr. Weir Mitchell, down the ages with a wrong 
 prenomen. 
 
 In 1879 a monthly supplement to the "Index Catalogue" was begun 
 as the "Index Medicus," a publication of the greatest value to students, 
 which is now continued by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 
 There is no better float through posterity than to be the author of a 
 good bibliography. Scores know Conrad Gesner by the "Bibliotheca" 
 who never saw the "Historia Animalium." A hundred consult Haller's 
 bibliographies for one that looks at his other works, and years after the 
 iniquity of oblivion has covered Dr. Billings' work in the army, as an 
 organizer in connection with hospitals, and even his relation to the great 
 Library, the great Index will remain an enduring monument to his fame. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I have the honor to present to you Dr. 
 William H. Welch, of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, long a 
 co-worker and friend of Dr. Billings. 
 
 ADDRESS BY DR. WILLIAM H. WELCH 
 
 The extraordinary extent and variety of Dr. Billings' activities make 
 it impossible on this occasion even to enumerate, still more so adequately 
 to characterize his important services. 
 
 From Dr. Mitchell's interesting sketch, which you have just heard, 
 of Dr. Billings' remarkable services in the Civil war — a phase of his 
 career so overshadowed by later achievements as to have been in danger 
 of oblivion, had it not thus been rescued for us — it is evident that even 
 as a young army surgeon, Dr. Billings had begun to manifest those qual- 
 ities of skillfulness, efficiency and resourcefulness exemplified so 
 strikingly in his more familiar, later work. 
 
 Dr. Osier has spoken of the central and greatest achievements of 
 Dr. Billings' life, which will perpetuate his fame for all time — the build- 
 ing up and development of the great library of the Surgeon-General's 
 Office in Washington and his monumental contributions to medical bib- 
 liography. This work, to which he devoted thirty years of almost 
 unparalleled energy and labor, constitutes probably the most original 
 and distinctive contribution of America to the medicine of the world. 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS H 
 
 It is remarkable and hardly to be expected that work of this highly 
 specialized, bibliographical character should have been produced in a 
 new country and by an army surgeon. 
 
 Speakers who are to follow will pay tribute to Dr. Billings as Chair- 
 man of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
 and especially as the librarian of The New York Public Library, in which 
 capacity since 1896 he has done on a larger scale a great, con- 
 structive work rivalling in importance that previously accomplished in 
 Washington. 
 
 It remains for me to call your attention briefly to certain other 
 aspects of Dr. Billings' career, which, although in a sense incidental to 
 the main work of his life, are nevertheless important. One of these is his 
 work in connection with the construction and organization of hospitals — 
 a field in which he became our leading authority and acquired interna- 
 tional reputation. 
 
 Dr. Billings' interest in hospital construction can be traced to his 
 experiences as a surgeon in our Civil war, in the course of which 
 there was developed a new style of building hospitals, consisting in 
 a central administrative building with barrack-like pavilions, either 
 detached or connected by corridors. In the promulgation, if not in the 
 origination, of this method of hospital construction, known in Europe 
 as "the American system," Dr. Billings had the largest share through 
 his valuable report on "Barracks and Hospitals," published in 1870 and 
 through his work in planning and describing hospitals, especially the 
 Johns Hopkins Hospital. 
 
 Dr. Billings was one of the five eminent physicians selected by the 
 Trustees to prepare essays regarding the best plans to be adopted in the 
 construction and organization of the hospital for which Johns Hopkins 
 had provided the largest gift of money which had been made up to that 
 time for such a purpose. His essay was chosen as the best, and from 
 1876 to the opening of the hospital in 1889 he acted as the highly efficient 
 medical adviser of the trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, whose 
 confidence he enjoyed in the highest degree. 
 
 The building of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, with its admirable 
 arrangements for heating, ventilation, isolation, sanitary cleanliness and 
 nursing, and especially those "for joining hands with the University," 
 as Dr. Billings expressed it, in the work of medical education and dis- 
 covery, marked a new era in hospital construction, for which Dr. 
 Billings deserves the chief credit. When one considers the influence of 
 this hospital upon the construction of other hospitals and the valuable 
 contributions made by Dr. Billings to the solution of various hospital prob- 
 lems, when one also regards the uses which have been made of this hospi- 
 tal in the care and treatment of the sick, in the training of students and 
 
12 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 physicians and the promotion of knowledge, it is evident that Dr. Billings' 
 services in the field we are now considering were of large and enduring 
 significance. I esteem it a privilege on this occasion in behalf of my 
 colleagues and of the trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Univer- 
 sity to express our sense of indebtedness and gratitude to Dr. Billings 
 for his pioneer work in preparing the soil without which the seed could 
 not have been planted and ripened. 
 
 For many years there was scarcely an important hospital in this 
 country to be constructed or remodelled concerning which Dr. Billings' 
 advice and often active assistance were not sought. His work in this 
 connection, added to his experiences as an army surgeon, early drew his 
 attention to the science and art of sanitation, in which he became a writer 
 and authority of eminence, being in certain directions our leading sani- 
 tarian during the quarter of a century from 1870 onward. 
 
 His publications in this field related naturally at first to military 
 hygiene, and later were concerned with "Principles of Ventilation and 
 Heating," municipal hygiene, mortality and vital statistics and other 
 sanitary subjects. Dr. Billings was vice-president of the short-lived 
 National Board of Health, established by the Government in 1879. The 
 withdrawal by Congress of support of this highly promising service of 
 the government set back, we may believe, for many years the advancement 
 of the public health interests of this country. 
 
 Of fundamental importance to public sanitation was Dr. Billings' 
 work in the collection and analysis of the vital and social statistics of 
 the tenth and eleventh censuses in 1880 and 1890 — a contribution which 
 made him our foremost vital statistician. 
 
 When Dr. Billings upon his own application retired after over thirty 
 years service from the Army it was to assume the professorship of 
 hygiene and directorship of the new laboratory of hygiene in the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania. Although he was so soon withdrawn from this 
 position to The New York Public Library that this period is hardly more 
 than an episode in his career, yet he remained long enough to demon- 
 strate that his conception of the organization of the new department 
 was along broad lines and gave promise of successful results. 
 
 Dr. Billings was not only the greatest of medical bibliographers, 
 he was also a noteworthy contributor to medical history and lexicog- 
 raphy. He delivered a course of Lowell lectures on the history of 
 medicine and he was for several years lecturer on the history of medi- 
 cine in the Johns Hopkins University, where before the opening of the 
 hospital, he had been lecturer on hygiene. His elaborate article on the 
 history of surgery in the "System of Surgery," edited by himself and Dr. 
 Dennis, is probably the most valuable contribution to the subject in the 
 English language. 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 13 
 
 A final word as to Dr. Billings' influence upon the medical profes- 
 sion. He was a leader of the profession. His name and that of his 
 intimate friend of many years, Dr. Weir Mitchell, whom we still delight 
 to honor as the chief ornament of American medicine, were of all the 
 ^physicians of this country the two best known in Europe. Dr. Billings was 
 the one most frequently sought for and chosen to represent this country in 
 international medical congresses and public occasions of importance. 
 His leadership was based upon intellectual power and above all upon 
 strength and integrity of character. He was a singularly wise man, 
 combining with far-sighted vision critical judgment, the gift of persua- 
 sion, and practical good sense. To an incredible capacity for work he 
 joined a high sense of duty and a just appreciation and sympathy which 
 secured the loyal devotion of his co-workers. His perspective was true, 
 removed as far as possible from all narrowness of view. 
 
 In certain of his general addresses, notably those at the Centennial 
 Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, at the International Medical Con- 
 gress in London in 1881 and before the British Medical Association in 
 1886, Dr. Billings' estimates and criticisms of the achievements of 
 American medicine, while entirely fair and by no means lacking in appre- 
 ciation, were so frankly free from any spirit of provincialism or 
 chauvinism, that they gave offence in certain quarters of this country, 
 but he said what at the time needed to be said, and the influence was 
 salutary. 
 
 The name of Dr. Billings will always hold a place of honor in our 
 profession. As I see in this audience many of my colleagues of the 
 medical profession, I know that they will desire me to express in their 
 behalf and in behalf of the entire medical profession of this country, the 
 large indebtedness which we owe to the life and work of this man of 
 large achievement, of high character, of enduring, beneficial influence 
 upon this country. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I have the pleasure to present to you a gen- 
 tleman who needs no eulogy. I present to you Mr. Andrew Carnegie. 
 
 ADDRESS BY MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 Life and death, the twin mysteries of all forms, from the blade of 
 grass to the human brain are ever crowding upon us; ever remaining 
 unsolved. We can only bow in silence to the inevitable. Better so; 
 better so. 
 
 When one of our circle, possessed of unusual gifts and master of 
 great agencies of progress, passes away and is lost apparently forever, 
 we murmur "Why, oh why?" — no answer comes. We gather today 
 
14 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 upon such an occasion and bowing our heads and hearts we murmur 
 acquiescence to the stern decree of laws beyond our ken, which it were 
 folly to question. We bow to the inevitable and taking up again the 
 duties of life which lie before us we labor in the path of duty awaiting 
 our summons hence. May we follow the example of the friend whose 
 loss we mourn today. His was a long and arduous task resolutely per- 
 formed from beginning to end for man's elevation and advancement. 
 
 Beginning in 1857 by graduating in Miami University, then receiv- 
 ing his degree in medicine in 1860, he entered the army and rose from 
 station to station as medical officer until called to Washington in 1864. 
 He was placed in charge of various important works, each performed 
 in succession with such masterly skill as to lead to other appointments 
 until Dr. Billings stood foremost in his wide domain, his crowning ser- 
 vice being rendered to this magnificent and unequaled library in which 
 we now stand and which must ever be associated with his genius; than 
 genius we can use no word less awe-inspiring. 
 
 Directorship in this library, his crowning work, brought me into 
 close contact with him whose loss we mourn and so deeply did his talents 
 and ability impress us we ventured to ask his advice upon founding the 
 institution of research at Washington which has been referred to here, 
 and here we found him also master as if he had studied the problem for 
 years. To him we v/ere indebted for its successful start with Professor 
 Oilman in command. Upon his resignation a successor, the present head, 
 was found and recommended by Doctor Billings, then Chairman of the 
 Board of Trustees, and Professor Woodward has fully fulfilled our most 
 sanguine expectations. Knowledge is said to consist of two elements — 
 What you yourself already know, and what you know how and where to 
 obtain — of both departments our dear lost friend was master. Apart from 
 his wonderful powers of the brain, his heart was tender, and many a 
 tired o'er-labored employe feels today he has lost a loving, tender friend. 
 He was always just, always considerate. A man of both head and heart. 
 
 Friends, during his long, useful, pure and unwearied life he set 
 all privileged to know him an example we shall do well to treasure and 
 follow; for of him it can be truly said, he lived a kindly pure life above 
 reproach, and by faithful administration of great tasks committed to 
 him, surrounded by troops of friends, he left the world a little better than 
 he found it. If the highest worship of God be service to man, there he 
 stands ; his service to man has been testified to by the leading authorities 
 in different positions today. When shall we look upon his like again? 
 We his sorrowing friends assembled here today to honor his memory 
 have never known one of whom it can more safely be predicted: 
 
 "If there's another world he lives in bliss, 
 If there be none he made the best of this." 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 15 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I feel that among the letters I have received 
 I must read a single letter, one from Mr. Root long a co-worker and 
 intimate friend of Dr. Billings. 
 
 LETTER FROM SENATOR ELIHU ROOT 
 
 United States Senate, 
 Washington. 
 
 April 23, 1913, 
 
 Dear Mr. Cadwalader: 
 
 I regret very much that imperative duties in Washington will 
 prevent my attending the meeting in honor of Doctor Billings. I wish 
 I could be present to express in some degree the high honor in which I 
 hold him. During many years of acquaintance and observation of his 
 work, and especially through eleven years of association in the Executive 
 Committee of the Carnegie Research Institution of Washington, I came 
 to have great admiration for his qualities and a warm personal regard 
 for him. The breadth and variety of his learning, the definite certainty 
 of his knowledge, the catholicity of his interest in all matters coming 
 within the field of science, made his opinion of the greatest value. His 
 service was devoted and untiring. He had intellectual as well as moral 
 integrity, and a rugged independence of character which commanded 
 recognition and respect. He came as near as any man I ever knew to 
 absolute independence of judgment, and he was so simple and natural 
 and unhesitating in his expression that his positive differences of opinion 
 created no irritation. No project or expenditure could pass his scrutiny 
 by easy or indolent acquiescence but only as it approved itself to his 
 experience and reason. Yet he was essentially constructive and progres- 
 sive in his views and wishes, and he was simple, modest, unassuming, 
 without pride of opinion or personal bias. He never advertised himself or 
 vaunted himself, and only a few who had the good fortune to know him 
 well could appreciate what a great, strong, devoted and useful citizen 
 he was. 
 
 Fewer still remember that fifty years ago he was serving in the field 
 in the Civil War as a medical officer in the Union Army; that he was 
 breveted Captain, Major, and Lieutenant-Colonel for faithful and meri- 
 torious service during the war; that he began the career of a great 
 librarian by being Medical Inspector in charge of the library of the Sur- 
 geon General's office, and was virtually the creator of the Army Medical 
 Library in Washington and the founder of the system of medical educa- 
 tion in the American Army. It was this system of education which led 
 to such high credit for our country and such blessings to mankind through 
 
16 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 the work of the Medical Corps in Cuba in extirpating yellow fever and 
 through the sanitation of the Isthmus, making the building of the Panama 
 Canal possible. He has filled no great space in the newspapers nor prob- 
 ably will in history, and I think he would not care about that. But I am 
 sure that the high estimate set upon his character and service and the 
 affectionate remembrance in which he is held by those who knew him, 
 who knew what he was and what he did, would be most grateful to him. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Elihu Root. 
 John L. Cadwalader, Esq., 
 
 New York. 
 
 Mr. Cadwalader: I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mr. 
 Richard R. Bowker, editor of the"Library Journal." 
 
 ; ADDRESS BY MR. RICHARD R. BOWKER 
 
 We come not to bury a great man, but to praise him, to declare that 
 his spirit cannot be buried in the grave. I bring to the memory of John 
 Shaw Billings, though sadly yet with rejoicing, on behalf of the American 
 Library Association of which he was a past president, of the New York 
 State Library Association, of the New York Library Club, of which also he 
 had been president, the homage of the library profession and as a trustee of 
 the sister library system in Brooklyn, the tribute of all who are interested 
 in library work. Sadly I say, because his great personality is shrouded 
 from our mortal sight beyond the mists and mystery of death, yet with 
 rejoicing because from the years that are told there will be abiding and 
 eternal influence through the years that are to come. Dr. Billings was 
 a great librarian because he was a great man. He was a member of the 
 executive profession, whose members — it may be a great banker, a 
 great merchant, a great manufacturer, a great lawyer, a great bishop, a 
 great president, a great librarian, — are always leaders, commanders of 
 men and of affairs. He did many things well ; he could have done almost 
 anything well. He had an instinct for books, the keen eye and the sure 
 touch for the value of them ; and this brought him into that part of his 
 life work of which I have to speak. 
 
 Years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, describing a visit of Dr. Billings 
 to his private library in Cambridge, told how he came into the room, 
 looked around, darted at a book, which was the most valuable volume 
 on the shelves, examined it, replaced it, took another survey and made 
 tracks for a second book, which was the second most valuable book in 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 17 
 
 the collection; and Dr. Holmes twinkled, "Why, sir, Dr. Billings is a 
 bibliophile of such eminence that I regard him as a positive danger to 
 the owner of a library, if he is ever let loose in it alone." But Dr. Billings' 
 probity would stand even that test. 
 
 With this instinct for books, when toward the close of the war, at 
 27, he came to the Surgeon-General's Office, he had the vision of 
 the growth of the few hundred books of that day into the great medical 
 library which is now one of his monuments, the greatest in the world, 
 with its round half-million books and pamphlets. From this came the 
 great subject catalogue which is his triumph in bibliography and from 
 this in turn came, in association with that other bibliographical enthusiast, 
 Frederick Leypoldt, the Index Medicus, so that at one time he had going 
 on three enterprises which would each in itself tax the strength of any 
 one strong man. Our library friend MacAlister of London tells of how 
 after the close of a long and arduous official day he once found Dr. 
 Billings "resting," on his couch, with a monument of medical periodicals 
 on the right which was slowly diminishing while he carefully marked 
 the indexing of the periodical of the moment in whatever language it 
 might be, and made it part of the increasing monument on the left. This 
 was an example of his untiring "rest." It was the same library friend to 
 whom he said once, when MacAlister was wondering at the extent of his 
 work, "I will let you into the secret. There is nothing really difficult if 
 you only begin. Some people contemplate a task until it looms so big 
 it seems impossible. But I just begin, and it gets done somehow. There 
 would be no coral islands if the first bug sat down and began to wonder 
 how the job was to be done." This is pleasant illustration both of the 
 doctor's method and of the genial humor of which many knew little. 
 
 After his thirty years' work in the Surgeon General's Office and his 
 retirement from the army, he took up, as you have heard, what he thought 
 was the final work of his life, in connection with the professorship of 
 hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania. But a new and final chapter, 
 perhaps the greatest chapter in his life, was to open. For in 1895 he was 
 called to the directorship of The New York Public Library, on the Astor, 
 Lenox and Tilden Foundations. It is the business of a board of trustees, 
 whether library or other, to find the right executive for their work and 
 then to support him. That the trustees of this library did in finding Dr. 
 Billings, and we have here the monument of the seventeen years of growth 
 which have come so largely from their wise decision. "Si monumentum 
 videre circumspice." 
 
 He came to this work at the age of fifty-eight, when most men begin 
 to think of resting from their labors. He found the Astor Library, and 
 the Lenox Library as well, in archaic condition, with books shelved in 
 
18 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 fixed location, with incomplete and incongruous catalogues, a staff of 
 only forty persons, and short hours and short shrift for the public. Not 
 satisfied with either of the standard classifications for a large library, 
 he worked out an individual system of classification and arrangement, 
 brought together, standardized, completed, and unified catalogues for 
 both libraries, and made corresponding development everywhere. . 
 
 The first thought of the trustees was for an adequate central build- 
 ing, and in 1897 Dr. Billings roughed out a post card plan for this library, 
 which will remain among its most treasured possessions, embodying as 
 it does, the essential features of this great building, with its remarkable 
 co-ordination in location of the many special libraries which it comprises. 
 
 He saw the need of a wide branch system and planned the consolida- 
 tion into the system of the eleven branches of the free circulating library ; 
 and now, thanks to the splendid donation of $5,200,000 for which the city 
 has to thank Mr. Carnegie's confidence in Dr. Billings as his library 
 advisor, there are now forty branches, bringing together into a central- 
 ized system nearly all of the lesser libraries previously existent. At last, 
 two years ago, his work was crowned by the completion of this magnificent 
 building, and the remarkable removal to it of the million volumes now 
 housed here, with a staff of nearly a thousand people here and through- 
 out the branches, serving the public during every working hour of the 
 day, and with such facilities of public service as almost to realize the 
 dream of the ideal library. 
 
 Throughout all this his was the master mind. He worked with 
 such ease that it scarcely seemed work to others and only his associates, 
 and those who were nearest to him, knew fully the largeness, the fore- 
 sight, the kindness, and the sympathy of this great librarian. 
 
 It will perhaps especially surprise you to know how intimately he 
 related himself with the children's work, being the wisest and most 
 sympathetic counselor which the department had. In fact, all through his 
 life he made it his business to know about children's books for the sake 
 of the smaller people of his household, reading even the Elsie books with 
 them in mind. He was so interested in the "story telling hour," that 
 when the National Academy of Sciences met in this city, he begged the 
 head of the children's department to arrange a story-telling hour for 
 their benefit, and so "Old Mr. Kangaroo," "Why the sea is salt" and 
 other examples of evolutionary folk-lore delighted the wiseacres who 
 came to New York. 
 
 All through his library work he showed the most exact and com- 
 prehensive knowledge of affairs, large and in detail, and he went beyond 
 this library to co-ordinate other libraries here and ever5rwhere. I recall 
 that when the libraries of the United Engineering Societies were ready 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 19 
 
 to be unified in the Carnegie building, the engineers somehow had the 
 impression that the public library authorities were rather offish. I 
 arranged to bring the chairman of the engineers' committee to a con- 
 ference with Dr. Billings and almost the first thing that the doctor said 
 was, "Well, tell us what you want to do and we will do the other things," 
 out of that came the harmonious co-operation which makes the great 
 engineering library across the street virtually a part of this great library 
 and both of mutual benefit to all American engineers. He was con- 
 sulted about the choice of a librarian for that library, and when Mr. 
 Cutter's name was mentioned, it was most interesting to note how much 
 he knew of the details of Mr. Cutter's life and work, and how thoroughly 
 he approved of the suggestion. 
 
 Throughout the seventeen years he kept everyone in mind. Some- 
 times he did the work of an official or of a department to know what 
 details that official or department was doing and when there was to be 
 a promotion he would in passing through the library, stop at a desk and 
 say "Your work has been well done, and there will be a little change in 
 your salary and you will have this or that position," and he left his hearer 
 with the genial glow in his heart. Not many knew how many of these 
 human qualities the dear doctor had, nor can those of us who knew him 
 well communicate this knowledge to others. He was human and nothing 
 that was dear to man was foreign to him. 
 
 We shall not look upon his like again — because there is always 
 the new man for the new work, but the new man in the library field must 
 always be inspired by the example of the splendid work which Dr. 
 Billings has left to the profession. Happily he was honored in his life : 
 universities and medical societies all over the world from Miami to 
 Buda-Pesth honored him. He had perhaps more degrees than almost 
 any other man, except possibly Ambassador Bryce and the Rector of 
 Saint Andrews, who enjoys the unique and supreme degree of the 
 Carnegie Self-Education Institute, the parent of all the Carnegie 
 Institutions. 
 
 Dr. Billings was first and foremost the soldier, if by a true soldier, 
 we mean fortitude, valor, courage, persistence and all those qualities 
 which go to make the highest man. But he was a soldier for the common 
 good, a soldier of peace, rather than of war. He fought three great 
 campaigns, one for the public health, one for public enlightenment, one 
 that closer personal fight with disease and threatening Death that tested 
 his fortitude to the utmost. He suffered in hospital more wounds than 
 most soldiers in the fiercest war. Twice he underwent operations for 
 cancer, concealing even from his wife the seriousness of his malady by 
 saying that he was taking a hospital vacation. In the latter years of his 
 life, he was probably seldom without pain, and sleep was to great extent 
 
20 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 denied him ; yet all this never seemed to interfere with his work, and he 
 still read a novel or two after the day's work as "the best of soporifics." 
 He had planned to retire this very month, but after all, he died, as 
 he desired, in the harness, working up to the last week. He went to his 
 death unflinchingly for though he still maintained with his associates his 
 fearless equipoise, he confessed to a friend his inward fears of the gravity 
 of the last operation. Part of his discipline he got in the army, but after 
 all the discipline of his life was not in the army but in the ordeals of peace. 
 And when we hear that war is necessary as the only school for those great 
 qualities, let us have the faith to believe that soldiers like Billings, those 
 of peace rather than of war, are the men who are to stand in the making 
 of the future as these great libraries become the arsenals of progress and 
 the library systems of which this is the most splendid example, become 
 the great schools for the future of men. 
 
 CLOSING REMARKS BY MR. CADWALADER 
 
 We have heard from various co-workers and friends of Dr. Billings 
 as to the various fields of activity in which our friend was engaged. 
 
 Perhaps, in closing these proceedings, you may permit me to say a single 
 word as to the relation of Dr. Billings toward ourselves; I refer to 
 The New York Public Library. 
 
 I first made Dr. Billings' acquaintance in 1895, when the various 
 arrangements were in progress for the consolidation of the three libraries 
 which ultimately became The New York Public Library. At that time 
 Dr. Billings was occupying the position to which reference has been made, 
 and was gently reposing, holding a single office only, a professor of 
 hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania, a distinguished office, but at 
 the same time no single place was at all sufficient for the energy of Dr. 
 Billings. The general scheme of consolidation had been worked out. 
 The various and complicated legal and other steps were in progress, and 
 the construction of the building was contemplated upon this present site. 
 We possessed large resources, unlimited law and architecture, private 
 interest, sympathy, and public support, and competent workers in the 
 Board of Trustees and otherwise to make the scheme successful. 
 
 What we required was a man, a man of unusual breadth of mind, of 
 character and capacity, around whom, as a leading figure, all interests 
 could gather, and whose unselfish power and skill could fuse these invalu- 
 able elements, for the public good. 
 
 As happens in American life, that man was found. He had retired 
 from the army, and was reposing in a professorship which he held in the 
 University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 "The idle spear and shield were hung up high." 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 21 
 
 Dr. Billings saw at once the possibilities of the position, and his 
 whole intelligence leaped into activity the moment the University of 
 Pennsylvania, with great liberality, released him from its service. 
 
 This stalwart, grave and somewhat distant man — stalwart in mind 
 as he was in body — found at last the opportunity of concentrating his 
 energy, learning and experience upon his final and perhaps his most 
 attractive task in life. 
 
 How well he performed that office we well know. To attempt 
 here to enumerate the successive steps is quite impossible. It is enough to 
 say that he prepared the competition for the exterior, and with his own 
 hands the plans of the interior arrangement of this building as it now 
 exists. He organized the system by which the reference library was 
 enlarged, catalogued and classified. He surrounded himself with a 
 devoted staff, and he himself became the active living head. We caught 
 the infection of his energy, and he would have been a poor soul who made 
 no effort to trot on in the rear as he strode forward with gigantic steps. 
 
 With clear foresight, he saw that reference work alone would not 
 sufficiently attract or satisfy the public eye and purse, and that a circu- 
 lation system must be added to reach all classes. 
 
 On making his plan public, every agency, including every faith and 
 sect engaged in the circulation of books with the aid of public funds, 
 stepped aside and permitted this library to assume its burden and its 
 duties. 
 
 By the generosity of Mr. Carnegie, made effective by the liberality 
 and constant support of the City of New York, the broadest, most com- 
 prehensive and most effective library system in the world, quietly and 
 almost unheralded, assumed its place and entered on its usefulness. 
 But power and learning alone would never have achieved full success. 
 Dr. Billings, however, possessed the capacity of binding his co-workers 
 to him, trustees and staff; of satisfying all, not only that he was unhesi- 
 tatingly and without qualification to be trusted, but that he possessed a 
 capacity for friendship and affection, and that all who desired could 
 find in him a sympathetic friend. 
 
 As for myself, I buried in his grave at Arlington one of a rapidly 
 narrowing circle of my dearest friends. 
 
 He had no enemies ; he could have none in the atmosphere in which 
 he moved. He had no enmities, although he did not "suffer fools 
 gladly," and regarded with amused contempt humbugs and pretenders 
 who posed before the public. 
 
 In fact, I fear the learned Doctor at times, and perhaps often, regarded 
 boards of trustees, committees, architects and such like as obstacles cun- 
 ningly interposed to retard his progress on the path of life. 
 
22 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 It is a happiness to us to know that after a life of almost romantic 
 achievements he was allowed to witness the completion of his final task 
 in the establishment and successful administration of this system. 
 
 With all his varied powers and capacities we certainly shall not look 
 upon his like again. 
 
 Within these walls and in this assemblage, surely it is true that 
 "He is not dead who giveth life to knowledge." 
 
 What lesson may we learn from simple life and patient death, from 
 courage and capacity, from devotion to one's fellow man? 
 
 A great teacher has taught us what our duty is : 
 
 " * * * Yet I argue not 
 
 Against Heav'n's Hand or Will, nor 'bate a jot 
 Of Heart or Hope; but still bear up and steer 
 Right Onward * * *" 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, these proceedings have now come to a close. 
 It remains solely to thank these distinguished gentlemen who have done 
 us the honor to testify to the life and services of Dr. Billings, and to 
 thank you all for your attendance. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Many letters of regret and appreciation were received from friends of 
 Doctor Billings who were invited to be present at the meeting but were 
 unable to accept. These letters were too numerous to be read at the 
 meeting or to be printed here. The selections printed below give, 
 however, an indication of their tenor and spirit : 
 
 FROM HIS EMINENCE, JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY 
 ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK 
 
 I am glad to avail myself of this opportunity to tell you how pleased 
 I am that this mark of respect is to be given to the memory of one whom 
 I have known long and in a measure intimately. 
 
 My respect and regard for Dr. Billings grew as the years went on, 
 and the news of his death came to me as that of a dear friend. Our 
 acquaintance began before I became associated with the Public Library 
 and even then I learned to admire his gentle and courtly character, not 
 less than his love and remarkable knowledge of books and their makers. 
 Everything I saw in Dr. Billings since I became a member of the Board 
 of Trustees went to increase my first impressions of him. 
 
 FROM SIR HENRY BURDETT, K.C.B,, K.C.V.O. 
 
 It is a matter of deep regret to myself that it is impossible for me to 
 be present at the Memorial Meeting for the late Dr. John Shaw Billings 
 on the 25th instant. I have only received the notice by this (Saturday) 
 morning's post. 
 
 Few men in our generation have done better or more useful service to 
 science, to medicine, to the sick and to all who are associated with illness, 
 or to the uplifting and betterment of the health of the peoples of the 
 world. I have been associated with Dr. Billings for quite forty years in 
 hearty co-operation and lifelong friendship and sympathy. 
 
 I enclose a memoir which records my experience of the fruits of his 
 work from actual knowledge. Anything that I can do in any way to help 
 the Trustees to make the commemoration of the life and work of John 
 Shaw Billings take a form which will prove a permanent living force for 
 those who come after will be gratefully and thoroughly done to the utmost 
 of my powers. 
 
 Kindly express my deep and heartfelt regret that it should be 
 
 impossible for me to be present and take part in the proceedings on the 
 
 25th instant. 
 
 [23] 
 
24 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 FROM DR. E. C. RICHARDSON, LIBRARIAN OF 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
 
 The few librarians that we have known who have actually made a 
 distinctive mark in modern library history have differed very widely in 
 the character of their contributions. Dr. Billings belongs among those 
 who have sketched out big propositions in a broad way rather than to 
 those whose chief interest is the perfecting of the details of organization 
 or service to users, but in many particulars, and I fancy in every line where 
 time permitted, his attention to the utmost last minute detail was quite 
 as extraordinary as the breadth of his sketching, and indeed the catalogue 
 is a monument to both these aspects, in which his capacity and perform- 
 ance must be described as genius. 
 
 FROM MISS HELEN E. HAINES, FORMERLY ASSISTANT 
 EDITOR OF "THE LIBRARY JOURNAL" 
 
 It was kind of you to include me among those invited to the Com- 
 memorative service for Dr. Billings, and I am sure you know how deeply 
 I regret my inability to share in this expression of affection and admira- 
 tion. Ever since 1897, when I first came to know him. Dr. Billings was 
 one of my best and most helpful friends, and I went to him again and again 
 (and never in vain) for counsel in some perplexity about library affairs — 
 ever with a deepening sense of his wisdom, the wonderful range and 
 precision of his mind, and the essential sweetness and kindliness that were 
 woven into the fabric of his nature. During the last five years especially, 
 his warm, encouraging sympathy was a constant help through many dark 
 hours, and I came to feel a deep affection for him that will always be a 
 happy memory. 
 
 In the library world his work seems to me to stand alone, quite 
 unparalleled, greater and more far-reaching during the last fifteen years 
 of his life alone than Panizzi's during his whole career. Those of us who 
 remember vividly what the public library situation was in New York 
 when the problem was placed in his hands — the diverse tangled threads 
 of the many little libraries, unrelated, inadequate and ill-supported; and 
 the resistant warp of the two great reference foundations, indurated by 
 years of isolation from vital public contact — know well that it was the 
 achievement of the impossible that crowns his lifework, in the wonderful 
 Public Library system of to-day. Somehow his results seemed to be 
 obtained almost imperceptibly ; nothing was ever heralded, no whirlwinds 
 of preparation ever shook the air, but little by little every part seemed to 
 slip into its place in the whole. 
 
MEMORIAL MEETING IN HONOR OF DR. JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 25 
 
 Year after year behind the green baize doors in the dingy old Astor 
 one found him at any hour of the day, almost always a listener, silent or 
 laconic, with now and then a gleam of blue lightning from under his 
 drooped eyelids or a slowly uttered dryly whimsical sentence. In the last 
 letter I had from him, written not long before his death, he said : — "Do 
 you remember a little poem by Moira O'Neill, called 'The Ould Lad'?" — 
 
 "Ye see me now an ould man, his work near done, 
 Sure the hair upon me head's gone white; 
 But the things meself consated 'or the time that I could nm, 
 They're the nearest to me heart this night." 
 
 We all know how great the things were that he "consated" and that his 
 work of service to the world will never end. 
 
 FROM CRESSY L. WILBUR, CHIEF STATISTICIAN, 
 BUREAU OF THE CENSUS 
 
 Vital Statistics was a subject very near to Doctor Billings's heart. In 
 my work of promoting adequate registration of vital statistics for this 
 country I have deeply realized the fundamental service that Doctor 
 Billings rendered to the cause while in charge of the mortality statistics 
 of the Tenth and Eleventh Censuses. Although he had long withdrawn 
 his personal attention from this work, all of us still in the field had a 
 feeling of his kindly and interested supervision, and I most sincerely 
 regret that circumstances prevent my attendance as a representative of 
 the special work of the Census to which he gave so much attention, and 
 in which his labors constitute a lasting memorial. 
 
MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY 
 
 ASSOCIATION AT ITS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 
 
 AT KAATERSKILL, NEW YORK, JUNE 25, 1913 
 
 JOHN SHAW BILLINGS 
 
 April 12, 1838 -March 11, 1913 
 
 A member of the American Library Association 1881-1913 
 
 Its President, 1901-02. 
 
 It is seldom that the death of an individual removes from two pro- 
 fessions a unit of singular power in each. But such was the loss in the 
 recent death of John Shaw Billings : a scientist in a department of science 
 intensive and exacting, a librarian rigorously scientific in a profession 
 broadly humane. To the former he made original contributions which 
 constituted him an authority within special fields; but also, in his great 
 Index-Catalogue of Medical Literature, one which assured certainty and 
 promoted advance in every field, — and left the entire medical profession 
 his debtor. As a librarian, having first brought to preeminence the profes- 
 sional library entrusted to him, he was called to the organization into a 
 single system of isolated funds and institutions; achieved that organiza- 
 tion; and lived to see it, under his charge, develop into the largest 
 general library system in the world, with a possible influence upon our 
 greatest metropolis of incalculable importance to it, and, through it, to the 
 welfare of our entire country. 
 
 The qualities which enabled him to accomplish all this included not 
 merely certain native abilities — among them, penetration, concentration, 
 vigor, tenacity of purpose and directness of method, — but others devel- 
 oped by self-denial, self-discipline, and a complete dedication to the work 
 in hand. It was through these that he earned his education and his scien- 
 tific training; and they hardened into habits which attended him to the 
 end of his days, when he concluded in toil that shirked no detail a life 
 begun in toil and devoted to detail. 
 
 Such habits, a keen faculty of analysis, and a scientific training kept 
 him aloof alike from hasty generalizations and from the impulses of mere 
 emotion ; while his military training induced in him three characteristics 
 which marked alike his treatment of measures and his dealings with men : 
 incisiveness, a distaste for the superfluous and the redundant, and an 
 insistence upon the suitable subordination of the part to the whole. In this 
 
 [26] 
 
MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 27 
 
 combination, and in the knowledge o£, and power over, men which accom- 
 panied it, he was unique among librarians; in his complete lack of 
 ostentation he was unusual among men. His mind was ever on the sub- 
 stance, indifferent to the form. A power in two professions, to have 
 termed him the "ornament" of either would have affronted him ; for he was 
 consistently impatient of the merely ornamental. Any personal ostenta- 
 tion was actually repugnant to him; and he avoided it as completely in 
 what he suffered as in what he achieved: bearing, with a reticence that 
 asked no allowances, physical anguish in which most men would have 
 found ample excuse from every care. 
 
 If such a combination of traits assured his remarkable efficiency, 
 it might not have seemed calculated to promote warm personal or social 
 attachments. Yet there was in him also a singular capacity for friend- 
 ship : — not indeed for impulsive and indiscriminate intimacies, but for 
 those selective, deep, steady, and lasting friendships which are proof of 
 the fundamental natures of men. And however terse, austere, and even 
 abrupt, his manner in casual relations, where a really human interest 
 was at stake he might be relied upon for sympathies both warm and con- 
 siderate, and the more effective because consistently just and inevitably 
 sincere. 
 
 The testimonies to these qualities in his character, to these powers, 
 and to his varied achievements, have already been many and impressive. 
 The American Library Association wishes to add its own, with a special 
 recognition not merely of the value to the community of the things 
 which he accomplished, but of the value to the individuals in the example 
 of a character and abilities so resolutely developed and so resolutely 
 applied to the service of science and the service of men. 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the 
 expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, 
 as provided by the rules of the Library or by special ar- 
 rangement with the Librarian in charge. 
 
 DATE BORROWED 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 DATE BORROWED 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , :"':, '3' 
 
 ■.„'•.■-,- 
 
 
 
 " ■' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '• 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 C2e(23B)MtOO 
 
 
 
 
R154.B49 N48 
 
 New York (City) Public library. 
 LlemoriaLmejeting: in honor of the 
 
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