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 ADDBESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 "(Utility* of fjjptktt^ aitfr ^urgjeans/' 
 
 ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 
 
 JVCcuTGh 14t7i f 1867. 
 
 BY 
 
 HE^RT W. BELLOWS, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION 
 
 Published by Bequest of the Faculty of the College. \ 
 
 8 
 
 & NEW YORK : 
 
 Jv JOHN F. TROW & CO., PRINTERS, 
 
 <*& 50 GREEXE STREET. Lb 
 
A-IDIDIE^IESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 U 
 
 dalltgt of Itpttians ano burgeons/' 
 
 AT THEIR 
 
 ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 
 
 BY 
 
 SLEEKY W. BELLOWS, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION. 
 
 Published by Bequest of the Faculty of the College. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 JOHN F. TROW & CO., PRINTERS, 
 
 50 GREENE STREET. 
 1867. 
 

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ADDRESS. 
 
 Me. President and Gentlemen : 
 
 I eeel myself much honored in being permitted to 
 address, on this distinguished occasion, the College of 
 Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York. It 
 is a privilege as well as a duty, for the learned professions 
 whenever opportunity offers to interchange expressions 
 of sympathy and good-fellowship in the presence of the 
 public ; to testify to the esteem in which they hold each 
 other, and to unite more closely in resisting the flood of 
 suspicion or depreciation, which in the very nature of 
 things ever threatens the more recondite studies and 
 occult interests of society. 
 
 Around the bed of the sick or dying man, stand three 
 indispensable officials — the physician to save his life, or 
 alleviate the sufferings that must carry him to his grave ; 
 the lawyer to enable him to express and make sure of the 
 execution of that last will and testament by which he 
 provides for his family, pays his just debts, or makes 
 society in some of its important institutions, the heir of 
 his fortune ; and the clergyman, who supports his sinking 
 heart, purges his conscience, strengthens and clarifies his 
 faith, commends to him the promises and consolations 
 of God's Word, or gives voice to his penitence, his aspira- 
 tions and his hopes of forgiveness and acceptance in the 
 last day. And these three professions, thus meeting and 
 culminating at the acme of human extremity, and equally 
 important in their bearings on the safety of life, property 
 
and spirit, are learned professions, requiring a special and 
 erudite training for their proper exercise — a training that 
 cannot be fully understood by those who do not pursue 
 them, and which is always in danger of being undervalued 
 by society at large. 
 
 For it is not with the learned professions — using that 
 phrase in its now venerable significance — as it is with the 
 other vocations which by universal experience are con- 
 ceded to involve a technical knowledge and skill wholly 
 beyond the reach of any but their life-long apprentices. 
 The products of the useful arts, the workmanship of the 
 trades, nay, to a certain extent even the fruits of the 
 studio, are things which appeal to the senses and the 
 common judgment of men ; their utility, in some sense, is 
 obvious; their relative merit, measurable. Nobody, 
 unless driven by distress, undertakes to be his own car- 
 penter or plumber; his own watch-maker or engine- 
 builder, his own optician, or practical chemist, or makes 
 his own logarithms and rules of navigation. And those 
 amateurs who hang up their own paintings or erect their 
 own sculptures, or even build their own houses, commonly 
 discover sooner by that proceES than any other, that both 
 native genius and an exclusive devotion to the Fine Arts, 
 are essential even to a tolerable success. People will not 
 go to sea in ships built by any but professional ship- 
 builders, nor buy at any price textures or fabrics that 
 come from any but experts at the business. 
 
 But it is not so with the learned professions. These 
 do not find a natural, experienced and competent jury to 
 try their merits, in the public at large. The lawyer 
 draws his papers, not to satisfy the public, but to satisfy 
 the Court and his brother lawyers. The theologian 
 knows that the people at large are no fit judges of the 
 value of patristic literature, or exegetical criticism, or 
 comparison of Uncial MSS., or of the laws that govern 
 
the tradition of distant events ; much less of the subtle 
 value of ecclesiastical institutions and sacred symbols. 
 The physician cannot fully explain to unprofessional 
 persons the grounds of his hopes and fears, or the reasons 
 of his treatment ; far less the nature and bearing of his 
 chemical, physiological and remoter studies upon his dia- 
 gnosis or his therapeutics. He knows very well that he is 
 continually guided by considerations and the knowledge 
 of laws and facts wholly hidden from unprofessional eyes, 
 and even perhaps the very reverse of what is popularly 
 believed or is apparent to the senses. And all the profes- 
 sions, in their own studies and in their intercourse each 
 with its own sons, use a vocabulary, scholastic, technical, 
 popularly unintelligible and commonly enough supposed 
 to be pedantic and affected — designed more to cover up 
 ignorance, excite awe, or play off professional airs, than 
 for any better purpose. " Why," is the popular cry of our 
 own day, " why don't the lawyers write their legal papers 
 out in plain, ordinary English ; why don't the Doctors 
 make their prescriptions in the vernacular, and why don't 
 they call the organs and muscles and functions of the 
 body by the titles that everybody else uses ? Why do the 
 theologians and ministers continue to use the musty 
 phrases of the Schoolmen, or even the antiquated language 
 of the Apostles, — or to maintain the traditions of the 
 elders, and keep up the pretension that a minister is any 
 thing more than a man talking about Religion with other 
 men ? " Now we do not hear this kind of superficial talk 
 about engineering, or mining, or architecture, or music, 
 or any of the useful or ornamental arts. People know that 
 they are not competent judges of the methods used there, 
 while they are pretty competent judges of the results. 
 They know a good pail, without the least ability to make 
 one ; or a good razor, or a good wagon. And nobody 
 expects to depreciate the trades or vocations that devote 
 
their lives to learning these arts. But in our day, most 
 laymen think themselves competent theologians,— often 
 much better indeed than the professional ones, fair lawyers, 
 and, specially, good doctors ! How often have I heard it 
 said, " The man who is not his own Doctor, by forty years of 
 age, don't deserve to live any longer ! " And certainly in re- 
 gard to the two other professions, the legal and the clerical, 
 the feeling is on the increase, that Society has paid too much 
 respect to their assumptions and technical learning ; that 
 a great deal of pretension has been covered up under their 
 forms and ceremonies, and that good ordinary sense is 
 quite adequate to judge of what is legal and right in the 
 law, and what is true and important in theology. Proba- 
 bly in our country, for a time, this feeling will increase. 
 It has doubtless much apology for itself in the necessity 
 which will continue to exist in a progressive world, inha- 
 bited by a slowly advancing people, of every now and then 
 pulling up the moorings and finding a new anchorage. It 
 would never answer to allow the professions to escape 
 wholly the criticism of common sense, or the spirit of the 
 age ; and they may have had, or probably have had, at 
 certain times, an overweening importance, of which they 
 took advantage to go to sleep. But, founded as they are 
 in the interest of a continuous humanity — not based on 
 the experience of a single generation — bringing v n 
 the past, and handing it over with the present to the fu- 
 ture, they are permanent and profoundly important inter- 
 ests of Society, and must maintain a criticism of what is 
 called common sense, as well as submit to one ; must 
 shape the present out of the past, as well as be modified 
 in shape ; must stand for deeper things, less intelligible 
 and less appreciable things, than those which engage the 
 senses, the thoughts, or the experience of the present ; and 
 in the times when scholastic learning, or recondite studies, 
 or science in its least practical forms, or philosophy in its 
 
more subtile speculations, are undervalued and overlooked, 
 or perhaps sneered at and set aside, — must stand by their 
 culture ; assert the dignity and importance of their pur- 
 suits, and join hands with the inner circle of those profes- 
 sional men who guard the sacred altar of learning from 
 the popular storms that would extinguish its flame, and 
 the winds that would mix its fragrant ashes with the com- 
 mon dust of the world. 
 
 I freely confess that in our day both the legal and the 
 clerical professions seem to me to a certain extent respon- 
 sible for the decline of their own dignity. They have both 
 of them let down the upper bars of their enclosures, and 
 made it very easy for low steps and short statures to enter 
 them. Many of my own profession, in especial, are aid- 
 ing to degrade it by shortening or popularizing the studies 
 and the preparation essential to make scholars and theo- 
 logians. It is a short-sighted policy, whatever necessity 
 may seem to excuse it ; and so is that other concession to 
 popular ignorance, which, by making our Judges elective, 
 takes from the Bar the inducement to study upwards to 
 the Bench, and enables audacity, glibness and tact to sup- 
 plant learning in the courts. "We shall pay dear for this 
 shallow demagoguism. We are paying dear now, when, 
 with a Congress full of lawyers, we find so little compe- 
 tent learning and wisdom, prudently, and with a due re- 
 gard to past experience, to guide our legislation, and are 
 obliged to notice the subjection of the whole country to 
 merely popular sweeps and caprices of opinion — as if 
 all the landmarks were disappearing, and the past had no 
 instruction and no value. 
 
 The medical profession, I am glad to acknowledge, is. 
 in my humble judgment, the rising profession of the day. 
 It is in a greener and more flourishing condition than either 
 of the others ; draws into its ranks more of the genius and 
 intellectual power of the up-springing generation ; is more 
 
favored by the spirit of the age, which is marked by a 
 preference for physical and practical science, and has less 
 to contend with from the radical and democratic temper 
 of the times. The scientific philosophy and inquiry of 
 our age, which threatens Theology so seriously, favors 
 Medicine in the same ratio. That very materialism which 
 alarms the clergy, gives a new importance to the subjects 
 and the methods of the physicians. "While physical philos- 
 ophy, striving to shut man up within the visible universe, 
 and, with its scientific positivism, ignoring all ontology, 
 and reasoning little to final causes, produces a terrible 
 feeling in the clerical profession of the decay of spiritual 
 faith, and the temporary paralysis of those nobler instincts 
 on which Religion builds its holy structure, physics and 
 medicine — leaving metaphysics and Divinity to make 
 what they can out of their own dismay and their clouded 
 weather — rejoice in the harvest which invites their sharp 
 and shining sickles — find matter gaining most that mind 
 has lost, the physical rising as the metaphysical subsides, 
 and their own pursuits, investigations and inquiries en- 
 larged by just as much as their opposites have shrunk. It 
 is not too much to say that so much real metaphysics, 
 and so much genuine spirituality, were never applied to 
 medicine as in our own day. Never so much as in our own 
 day, when no distinction is possible to any but specialists, 
 was so much general culture, and wide and many-sided 
 thought and study applied to the science of medicine. For 
 specialists rise to their eminence like mountains, by the 
 breadth of their bases ; and there is no rich and fine 
 fruit to be expected from any branch of medicine which 
 does not grow out of a well-nourished trunk, rooted in 
 the richest and most cultured soil of universal thought 
 and wide-minded and open-eyed observation. 
 
 While the political, philosophical and commercial 
 aspects of the age have damped the ardor of gifted young 
 
men for law and theology, they have increased the zeal 
 for all the physical sciences and arts. Engineering, min- 
 ing and medicine, have lately drained our colleges of 
 their best talent. This then is your great day, ye men of 
 healing, and well have yon improved it ! It is propitious 
 to all the learned professions, when any one of them is 
 prosperous and honored, for in the end their fortunes are 
 inseparable, and the victories and attainments of each will 
 inure to the general advancement of learning and truth 
 on which all depend. It is not without reason and neces- 
 sity, that physics and medicine have the pas in our day. 
 Speculations and assumptions, prejudices and prescrip- 
 tions — the wind-falls, not the ripe fruits of metaphysical 
 and theological studies — had no doubt gone on unchecked 
 long enough. "What distinguishes the age is the return 
 to facts.~ And of course the most visible and palpable 
 facts will have the first attention. But already the realm 
 of fact is found to be considerably wider than the realm 
 of the senses. Physics itself is not identical with what 
 can be seen, or measured, or weighed. The imponderables 
 are doing the work of the world ; electricity, magnetism, 
 chemistry, and physiology are discovering that the dy- 
 namic forces are not only mysterious, but, if not strictly 
 spiritual, so near it, that nobody can tell the precise dif- 
 ference. It is the mission of medicine and physics to 
 do away the absurd idea, that Matter and Mind are nat- 
 ural opposites and enemies ; to demonstrate that the 
 Maker of the universe — the author of nature and man — 
 dwells unprofanely in the material as well as in the im- 
 material spheres ; and that metaphysical science is insep- 
 arable from physical, or faith from knowledge, or God 
 from man. 
 
 In a new country, the medical profession represents, 
 practically, the whole interest of science, both theoretical 
 and applied. A large part of all our naturalists, physi- 
 
10 
 
 cists, geologists, and chemists, have been educated in our 
 Medical Colleges ; and in the newer parts of the country, 
 if science is to find any representatives, it must be in its 
 practising physicians. oSTow if there be anything which 
 is needed- to balance the intense activity of the American 
 mind, tending everywhere to hasty and dangerous con- 
 clusions, it is scientific habits of thought and exact knowl- 
 edge. There is a universal aptitude for thought, and a 
 universal habit of expression in this country, but as uni- 
 versal a distaste for patient investigation, careful consid- 
 eration and cautious conclusions. We lack a drill and 
 discipline of mind, proportioned to its tremendous free- 
 dom, volume and force. In other countries the masses 
 do not feel themselves entitled to opinions ; much less to 
 ofl>hind judgments upon the most important subjects; 
 and consequently their credulity, rashness and shallow- 
 ness do not get any public expression. But here, one 
 man's opinion, is, in his own judgment, as good as an- 
 other's, and no question is so hidden, difficult and pro 
 found, that he is not likely to give an opinion upon it, or 
 lacking his own, to listen to any body's else opinion, and 
 accept it according to its plausibility. The country is 
 flooded with trashy and idle notions, taking on philosoph- 
 ical names, which owe their contagious spread to 
 the fact that the widest interest in truth and the mcst 
 active-minded curiosity exists in America, and is the 
 prey of its own unscientific education, and of the 
 pretenders, enthusiasts and fanatics, that live by pan- 
 dering to it, or are themselves spawned in its marshes 
 of rank fertility. E"ow, it is only medical men, who 
 have much power to correct this perilous tendency, by 
 their influence over popular education, their acquaintance 
 with the sources of credulity, and the causes of mental 
 epidemics, and their own rooted habits of cautious and 
 precise investigation, and slow and measured inference. 
 
11 
 
 Let the people be taught by medical men the unreli- 
 ableness of their own senses out of the immediate sphere 
 in which they are wont to use them ; let them under- 
 stand the tricks of their own nerves, and all the delu- 
 sions short of insanity which the imagination plays on 
 unscientific humanity ; let them know that the juggler 
 who tells them he is going to deceive them and does so — 
 and the quack, intellectual, moral or medical, who tells 
 them he is incapable of deceiving them, and then pro- 
 ceeds to do it, work by the same legerdemain, or rather 
 sleight-of-mind, and that their methods are both founded 
 on well-understood arts of thimble-rigging either the at- 
 tention of the mind or of the senses; — and, just as far as 
 they will labor and strive to disseminate these facts, the 
 reality and force of which none but medical men fully 
 appreciate and understand — may we hope to free our 
 country from the bad reputation, and the evil effects, of 
 the grossest medical superstitions and the most ruinous 
 mental and moral epidemics. 
 
 It would be ungrateful to me to close this address with- 
 out a distinct expression of the gratitude due from the 
 country to the medical profession for its great and glori- 
 ous services through the war. The clerical and the medi- 
 cal professions went shoulder to shoulder through that 
 great struggle, having perhaps even a more direct call 
 to earnest work or bold expression, than the representa- 
 tives of the Bar. The whole medical force of the coun- 
 try, it may be justly said, threw itself without reserve 
 into the field ; and if army surgeons deserved any reproach, 
 it came either on account of those who had been too long in 
 the service in time of peace not to have lost the real temper 
 of the profession, or from those half-fiedged medical vol- 
 unteers whom the exigencies of the case threw upon the 
 camps and hospitals. As a rule, I can testify, after as- 
 extensive opportunities of general acquaintance with the 
 
12 
 
 facts as most men, to the zeal, faithfulness, humanity and 
 patriotism of the medical profession, throughout the war ; 
 and I suspect the country is only very imperfectly ac- 
 quainted with the hardships and the sacrifices of the army 
 Surgeons, and the claims to gratitude which as a class they 
 possess. But after all, the chief reward which the medical 
 profession will continue to derive from their noble and de- 
 voted labors during the war, is that priceless impulse and op- 
 portunity, which so vast a war gave the science, the ob- 
 servation, and the practical skill of the medical profession. 
 Never was a whole profession, for so long a time, under 
 such quickening circumstances, at so costly or so instructive 
 a school ! It will take a half century to realize all the fruits 
 of its experience or to expend the force of the impulse 
 it has thus received. 
 
 And now forgive me, in closing, for seizing this occasion 
 to express to the medical profession the pride and joy I 
 have personally felt in being most intimately associated 
 for six years past with distinguished representatives of 
 their calling — passing far the largest portion of my 
 leisure in their society, and finding myself sometimes half 
 in doubt to which profession I belonged, the medical or 
 the clerical. I should have been a dull scholar indeed 
 not to have learned something from such men ; and I say 
 with all sincerity, that from my medical associates I have 
 received new conceptions of human culture, new respect 
 for manly honor and self-sacrifice, and new happiness in 
 precious and undying friendships. 
 
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