COLUMBIA UBRARIES OFFSjTE 
 
 HEALTH SCIENCES STANDAHD 
 
 HX64072533 
 I RK66H731919 The claims oldenlis 
 
 HOIIvlES 
 The Claims of Dentistry 
 
f ?KU 
 
 hl2 
 
 I ^/1 
 
 Columbia (Hnitier^ttp 
 
 intljeCttpofMrttigork 
 
 College of ^ftpisicians anb ^urgeong 
 Hifararp 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Open Knowledge Commons 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/claimsofdentistrOOholm 
 

 The Claims of Dentistry 
 
 An Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises 
 
 of the Dental Department in Harvard University 
 
 February 14, 1872, by 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, M. D. 
 
 Parkman Professor of Analorrxy 
 
 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Harriet 
 
 Newell Lowell Society for Dental Research 
 
 1918-1919 
 
KKt^ 
 
 p 
 
 nn 
 
THE CLAIMS OF DENTISTRY. 
 
 An Address delivered at the Commencement Exercises of the Dental 
 
 Department in Harvard University, February 14, 1872, by 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, M. D. 
 
 Parkman Professor of Anatomy 
 
 We have met, under the auspices of Harvard University, to recognize 
 by formal ceremonies the entrance of a class of students in dentistry upon 
 the exercise of their profession. We give to this occasion the time- 
 hallowed name of Commencement. Here ends the period of pupilage ; here 
 begins the life of applied knowledge and skill. 
 
 "Commencement" is not a word to conjure with, as it was a century 
 ago, when it paralyzed for the day the commerce of the neighboring town, 
 and emptied all the villages in a circle of fifty miles of their black-coated 
 and white-wigged clergymen. It is not the grand pageant as I remember it, 
 when the Governor made his entrance to the academic precincts with a 
 troop of horse and a cavalcade of white-f rocked truckmen ; when the Com- 
 mon was covered with tents, as if an army had encamped upon it, and the 
 trafficking and the revelries of Bartholomew Fair were enacted on the 
 provincial scale upon the green consecrated to the quiet pursuits of learning. 
 
 But this Commencement of the Dental School has a real significance, 
 though it makes little show, and does not appeal to any vulgar interest. It 
 publishes the fact that a new pursuit has been assigned its place among 
 those chosen professions which a fully-organized educational institution 
 may fitly take in hand, and provide for teaching. And you may be assured, 
 that, before our old university would take such a step, its governing boards 
 had satisfied themselves that the time was fully ripe for it. The dental 
 profession had achieved its success, and had won its place in the estimate 
 of the intelligent public, before its teachers were asked to share the labors 
 and the dignities which belong to the faculties of this great institution. 
 
 The occasion must naturally bring together many who have no other 
 special knowledge of dentistry than such as they have gained while sitting 
 in one of those magic chairs which fit alike the giant and the dwarf, which 
 would accommodate the visitors of Procrustes, and suit itself to all the 
 transformations of Proteus. Were this an assemblage of dentists and dental 
 students only, who would dare to open his mouth for speech before the 
 members of a profession in whose presence kings are silent, at whose com- 
 mand eloquence is struck dumb, and even the irresistible and irrepressible 
 voice of woman is hushed into a brief interval of repose? Even if this 
 first fear were overcome, a speaker might well hesitate to address an audi- 
 ence of experts, who know all that he is like to tell them, and a great deal 
 more. But this hour does not belong only to our friends of the dental 
 profession; and they can bear to listen to much that is familiar to them 
 
 1 
 
for the sake of their visitors, whose knowledge is Hmited to what they have 
 acquired after the manner of poets, of whom Shelley says, — 
 
 "•They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 A few generalities are all that can be attempted in a discourse like this ; 
 enough to give some little idea of what the dental profession has grown 
 out of, and what it has grown to ; a few hints to make us feel more keenly 
 its importance; a picture or two of old superstitions and fancies and bar- 
 barisms to contrast with the enlightened knowledge of our own time ; a brief 
 mention of some of the leading modern improvements in the. scientific and 
 practical departments relating to the teeth; an explanation of the causes 
 which have kept the dental profession from receiving the recognition it 
 has a right to claim; and a vindication of its title to the regard of the com- 
 munity, and to a fair representation of its teachings at the great seats of 
 learning. I mention some of the points I shall touch upon rather than 
 discuss, not under formal headings, and with strict adhesion to the order in 
 which I have mentioned them, but as they appear to present themselves 
 most naturally 
 
 The greatest difficulty in handling the subject is the extent of its 
 literature, and the infinite detail of ingenuity which has gone to the bring- 
 ing about of the perfection of its mechanical processes. The value of the 
 teeth to human beings is so prodigious, that, as soon as attention was fairly 
 turned to their proper management and the methods of repairing their 
 losses, inventive talent precipitated itself, so to speak, upon the new depart- 
 ment of human industry. There is no pearl in any royal crown for which 
 a young queen would give one of her front incisors. And those who know 
 what a perfect organ each one of the teeth is, as shown by the more recent 
 revelations of minute anatomy, what pains Nature has taken with its com- 
 plex organization, will not wonder at the estimate set upon it. 
 
 The teeth, in their relation to the beauty of the human countenance, 
 have figured in poetry from the earliest times. "Thy teeth are -like a flock 
 of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof 
 every one bear twins, and none is barren among them," says the imaginative 
 author of the "Song of Songs." Their whiteness has been compared to 
 that of snow, of Parian marble, and of pearls, until verse is tired of the 
 images. The ancient poets and satirists are full of allusions to the beauty 
 and deformity depending on the conditions of the teeth. The ladies who 
 made it their business to please, on Bentham's principle of procuring the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number, had recourse to every kind of 
 artifice to disguise their defects, and commend their charms. Here is one 
 of these tricks as given by Athenseus, in a passage not cited by Duval in his 
 large collection of classical quotations relating to this subject. I give a 
 part of it in English: — 
 
 "They whose teeth are elegant force themselves to smile even against 
 
their inclination, so that the beauty of their mouths may be seen by their 
 visitors; but, if their smile is not so pleasant a sight, they hold a sprig of 
 myrtle in their mouths, so that it will cover their teeth when they open their 
 lips, on purpose or otherwise." 
 
 As for the unfortunates whose teeth were discolored, or had suffered 
 some of the common changes that age brings about, the satirists scoffed at 
 them in such coarse language, that their phrases are quite unbearable to 
 modem ears. Even such a personal remark as that of the graceful Catullus 
 would be considered inadmissible in our time : "Your mouth is full of teeth 
 half a yard long, and your gums are like an old wagon-box." The first cir- 
 cumstance — the seeming inordinate length of the teeth — is a well-known 
 effect of age, which produces a shrinking of the gums. The Frenchmen 
 talk of dents dechanssees, unshod teeth; and I remember that Thackeray, 
 in one of his stories, speaks of certain ladies, not very young ones, as "long 
 in the tooth," among other by no means flattering peculiarities. 
 
 We have grown more civil than the Romans ; but we know the beauty 
 of a fine set of teeth, and the deformity of its opposite, as well as they did. 
 It is true that men can often conceal the imperfection of their dental ar- 
 rangements by letting the eaves of a heavy mustache overshadow their 
 mouths. But to women, to hide whose smile would be to take away half 
 the sunshine of life, and to whom Nature has kindly refused the growth 
 that would deprive us of it, there is no element of her wondrous beauty 
 which can take the place of white, even, well-shaped teeth. And as beauty 
 is not a mere plaything, but a great force, like gravity or electricity, the art 
 which keeps it, mends it, and, to some extent, makes it, is of corresponding 
 importance. 
 
 But we must add to this the consideration, that speech is so largely 
 dependent on the perfection of the teeth, that our language, we might 
 almost say, loses a letter with every tooth that falls. What can be more 
 painful to witness than the efforts of a hapless friend to bite his consonants 
 out of the alphabet when he is reduced to the condition of the infant, whose 
 boneless gums are unfit for any task but the caressing pressure of the 
 maternal mouthful ! 
 
 And then the humbler, but still necessary function of mastica- 
 tion, — how much depends on the ease and perfection with which this is 
 performed ! You can tell the state of a village by going to the mill. If 
 it has enough to grind, and grinds it well and cheaply, you will find good 
 farms and well-fed people : so, if you see a good square jaw, filled with 
 good sound teeth, and moved by a set of muscles that mean business, and 
 do it, you will find, in all probability, that they nourish a sound frame in 
 man or woman. I have never forgotten the complaint of poor Walter 
 Savage Landor, — a sadder one than any of the Preacher's, it seems to me. 
 I quote it from memory. "I have lost my mind," he said ; "that I do not 
 
care so much about: but I have lost my teeth, and I cannot eat." It has 
 been my custom for many years, when lecturing upon this part of anatomy, 
 to bring forward the skull of a large turtle, in order that its jaws might be 
 compared with those of the human being in very advanced years. The 
 sharpened edges of the alveolar border in the old man show the retrograde 
 process by which he returns to the quasi-embryonic condition, reminding 
 us of that earlier period when he passed through the scale of being, upward, 
 to reach the supremacy of which age is constantly trying to deprive him. 
 
 It is no wonder, then, that the teeth have been particular objects of 
 attention from the earliest period. The Egyptians, who made specialties 
 of every thing, had professional dentists; and it is asserted that artificial 
 teeth of ivory or wood, some of them on gold plates, have been found in the 
 jaws of mummies. The teeth of mummies are said also to have been found 
 filled with gold. I do not find any distinct notice of a dental profession 
 from the time of the Egyptians to that of Galen. You will permit me to 
 quote, in the original, a passage which I have unearthed in one of his 
 treatises, because it makes use of an adjective which will be found in our 
 catalogues and diplomas, where it was admitted after some discussion : — 
 
 "Omnes tamen istos communi nomine medicos appellant, perinde ut 
 eos, puto, qui a quibusdam membris, quorum praecipue curam gerunt, voci- 
 tantur: hos namque ocularios, auricularios, dentarios (ita dicere liceat) 
 medicos nominant." 
 
 It is a long interval from Galen to the middle of the seventeenth 
 century ; but I have not found any other traces of a special dental pro- 
 fession until I came upon the following, which looks very much as if it 
 referred to such specialists. In the Diary of the Rev. John Ward, vicar 
 of Stratford on Avon from 1648 to 1679, — the book rendered famous by a 
 reminiscence of Shakspeare, for which the poet would not have thanked 
 him, — is the following : — 
 
 "Uppon a signe about Fleet Bridg this is written, 
 
 'Here lives Peter de la Roch and George Goslin, both which, and no 
 other, are sworn operators to the King's teeth.' " 
 
 Whether these operators had any other calling than this august office 
 does not appear. Early in the next century, the practice of dentistry 
 seems to have been in the hands of silversmiths and jewellers. I think 
 many of us can recall the name of a fellow-citizen,-^originally, I think, a 
 watchmaker — who branched off, without any special training, into the 
 business of a dentist, and who acquired a considerable name for filling 
 teeth with skill and success, taking time enough about it, and receiving very 
 handsome pay for his services. 
 
 Dentistry as a profession may be safely said to have come into existence 
 during the present century. In this country, its growth has been of won- 
 derful rapidity. One would have thought that Cadmus had sown a new 
 
furrow full of teeth, and that they had sprung up dentists. In 1820, it 
 has been computed that there were not more than a hundred dentists in 
 the United States: in 1858, there were four thousand. I presume they 
 have increased in as rapid a ratio since that time ; and, in the mean while, 
 works on dentistry, journals devoted to it, institutions for teaching it, 
 have become so numerous, that it is recognized as one of the great callings 
 of hfe. 
 
 If we would know what we have gained by the elevation of dentistry 
 into an honorable special branch of medical practice, we must go back to 
 the time when ignorance, superstition, and bungling awkwardness, reigned 
 over the whole province of art, now so fully illuminated by science, and in 
 which such admirable mechanical skill has developed itself in every form 
 to relieve suffering, to supply deficiencies, to add in all possible ways to 
 comfort and comeliness. 
 
 It is simply amusing to look back two or three centuries, and see what 
 men were capable of believing. You will find in Ambroise Pare various 
 forms of words in use in his time to cure the toothache. The notion that 
 this pain was caused by a worm, which Shakspeare refers to, is at least as 
 old as Avicenna. Strange significance was attached to an anomaly which 
 an old friend of mine told me happened in his own person : I mean the same 
 fact that Richard the Third boasts of, namely, that he was born with teeth. 
 "A girl was born at Picenum with six teeth," says Polydore Virgil ; "and 
 at that time the Turks began to capture our towns far and wide." But 
 nothing quite equals the story of the miller's little son, whose second molar 
 on the left-hand side of the lower jaw was a golden one, — as good, they 
 said, as if a goldsmith had made it. Some pretended having seen the letters 
 CSC legibly inscribed upon it. I have before me a most exact statement 
 of the facts of the case, authenticated by a number of eminently respectable 
 personages ; and I find in Haller's "Bibliotheca Anatomica" various notices 
 of the storm of controversy excited by the story of this Silesian boy with 
 the golden tooth. "What it portends," says Laurence Scholtzius, "I do 
 not hesitate to declare is known to God alone." It is to this most famous 
 case that Sir Thomas Browne refers, when he says, speaking of the pre- 
 tended difference of posture in which drowned men and women float, "But 
 hereof we cease to discourse, lest we undertake to afford a reason of the 
 golden tooth ; that is. to invent or assign a cause when we remain un- 
 satisfied or unassured of the event." And in the margin, "Of the cause 
 whereof much dispute was made, and at last proved an imposture." All 
 this was a good while ago ; but I am myself old enough to remember several 
 curious notions about the teeth, which had a considerable currency, and 
 came near enough to being believed to be told prett>' seriously. If one had 
 a tooth extracted, it must be burned, because, if a dog got it and swallowed 
 it, one would have a dog's tooth come in its place. I recollect a story told 
 
 5 
 
me of a somewhat noted public character, whose smile, or other attractions, 
 had made him dangerous to the sex formerly called the weaker one, — a 
 personage too well known to the scandal of his time, — who was said to 
 have had his teeth, or some of them, extracted and replaced by those of a 
 living animal, — a calf or a sheep. This story was told seriously; and the 
 hero of it I have seen with my own eyes, when age had disanned him of 
 the fatal fascinations of his earlier days. There is a common notion 
 enough, still prevalent, that some persons have a complete set of double 
 teeth, as they are called, — a jaw full of molars. I never saw one, and I 
 doubt if anybody ever did; but the teeth of Indians and sailors, ground 
 down by the attrition of hard grains or sea-biscuit, might be mistaken for 
 such a maleformation. 
 
 It is only since the year 1835 that the anatomy of the teeth, out of 
 which necessarily arose new views of their physiology and pathology, can 
 be said to have been fairly understood. It is true that old Leeuwenhoeck 
 had described the "pipes," as he called them, of the dentine so long ago as 
 the year 1678; but his discoveries were so much ahead of his time, that 
 they had to wait some generations, like the seven sleepers, before they 
 woke up, to find themselves confirmed. An article in "The British and 
 Foreign Medical Review," for the year 1839, brought before the profession 
 in England and America, in a connected way, and with illustrative figures, 
 a series of discoveries which had changed the whole aspect of dental 
 anatomy. We owe all these discoveries, or rediscoveries, to the invention 
 of the achromatic microscope, which enables any of us to show the student 
 the beautiful intricate structure of the teeth as plainly as he can see the 
 anatomy of the skeleton with the naked eye. You have all studied the 
 exquisite tubular arrangement of the dentine; have speculated on the 
 nature of the contents of the tubes, first demonstrated by Owen in the ele- 
 phant; have examined the prisms of enamel, and the stellate cells of the 
 cementum ; you have seen the vascular systems of the pulp, and around the 
 fang, and how they run into each other; the tooth is for you a delicately 
 organized living structure, carrying on nutritive functions through the 
 greater portion of its substance, and capable, to a certain extent, of repair- 
 ing its injuries. To those who studied Bell's or Meckel's Anatomy, who read 
 the works of Hunter or Fox on the teeth, all this is a revelation which only 
 those can fully appreciate who were born in the benighted days of dental 
 heathenism. 
 
 While the scientific basis of dental art has made these great advances 
 in modem days, the practice of the art itself has undergone the most 
 wonderful transformation. The work of filling teeth has been carried to 
 such perfection, that not only is decay arrested, and a tooth which seemed 
 destined to rapid destruction so repaired that it will last a lifetime, but, 
 where the greater portion of a tooth was gone, it has been built up, so that 
 
the miracle of the boy of Silesia is wrought every day by mortal hands; and 
 we see a golden tooth in a living mouth without fearing an invasion of 
 the Turks, or a war with England. I suppose that the improvements in 
 this particular department of dentistry, the invention and perfecting of 
 mineral teeth, their insertion on plates retained by atmospheric pressure, 
 the substitution of the improved forceps for the clavis, and the application 
 of anaesthesia to extraction, would be considered the greatest achievements 
 of modern dentistry. 
 
 What a change since the time when teeth were allowed to decay as if 
 they were not worth the gold it took to fill them ! What a change from the 
 time of those ghastly rateliers, as the French call them, carved in ivory, 
 and supported by springs that creaked with every motion of the jaws, like 
 the thorough-braces of an old-fashioned stage-coach ! Could any thing be 
 less inviting to social intercourse? Could any thing be more appaling to 
 tender infancy than the sight of one of those dancing-sets of artificial teeth, 
 looking as if they were ready to jump from their owners mouths, and 
 fasten upon one, as they used to say a turtle's head would do after it was 
 cut off? iVIr. Greenwood of New York, you may remember, carved a set 
 for the Father of his Country ; and one can hardly fail to see how the 
 flattened and compressed lips were in a perpetual struggle with those loose- 
 fitting arches and rebellious spirals. Yet this was considered a master- 
 piece of dental workmanship ; and I have no doubt that pilgrimages have 
 been made to Mount Vernon by artificers in that line of business, who left 
 with a tear in one eye at the sight of Washington's majestic countenance, 
 and a twinkle of satisfaction in the other at the triumph achieved by Mr. 
 Greenwood. 
 
 Contrast this state of things with the manufacture of artificial mineral 
 teeth as carried on in this country, where it has been brought to its greatest 
 perfection. More than ten years ago, there were nine factories engaged 
 in their fabrication, and more than two million teeth were made in a year. 
 To-day, I suppose they must be made and sold by the bushel, like the cereal 
 grains; and, if the great factories required elevators to handle their pro- 
 ducts, it would hardly surprise us. Compare the delicately-tinted, ex- 
 quisitely-shaped porcelain incisors with those frightful ivory palisades that 
 used to play up and down like a portcullis in a manner to terrify all be- 
 holders. In fact, the perfection of artificial teeth is carried almost too far. 
 They have come to be for the inside of the head what the wig was for its 
 outside in the days of our ancestors. It was so much more convenient to 
 have a head of hair that one could whisk on and ofif in a moment; one that 
 never grew gray ; one that was just the shade the owner fancied, that was 
 always in curl, that could be laid aside in hot weather to let the cool breeze 
 play over the naked scalp (a luxury which Adam never knew in Paradise, 
 and coming about as near to "sitting in one's bones" as is practicable while 
 
we are in the flesh), — all this was so much more convenient and comfort- 
 able than the arrangement provided by Nature, that the wig reigned undis- 
 puted for generations, and will, not very improbably, return to bless man- 
 kind before our children's children are bald and gray. So with the artificial 
 teeth of this dental millennium in which it is our good fortune to live. They 
 are comely; they never ache; they are contented with their situation, and 
 keep their place, which is more than we can say of most of our living 
 servants; they undergo no changes in the mouth; they admit of the nicest 
 personal proprieties ; they serve perfectly for articulation ; and though one 
 can hardly crack a peachstone with them, as some can with their native 
 molars, or use them for biting off the heads of iron nails, as used to be told 
 of Ethan Allen, they can do good service in the respectable and responsible 
 duties of mastication. The consequence of all this is, that people are only 
 too ready to have their natural teeth shelled from their gums like so many 
 grains of Indian-corn from the cob, and a complete mouthful of artificial 
 make inserted in their place. You miss your friend for a little time : he is 
 in his chamber, with his jaws tied up, perusing "Zimmermann on Solitude" 
 for a few days: suffering from toothache is the figurative language in 
 which his condition is announced. When he returns to society, he has re- 
 covered his youth like Aeson in the hands of Medea ; and his smile is a 
 glittering welcome, a mineral benediction, which it is a joy forever to have 
 been blest with. Think, again, what that preliminary process of edentation 
 would have been in the days when the rustic patient complained that he 
 had to pay as much as his neighbor, who had been dragged three times 
 round the loom before the tooth came out. There never was a claw on 
 bird or beast that was the cause of such anguish of apprehension, such 
 howls of agony, as that diabolical instrument, looking like a vulture's talon, 
 but known by the name of the key. It was a key indeed : it may have 
 opened the door of heaven to the sufiferer in due time; but, while the bolt 
 was turning, the victim thought he was in that other place, where the man 
 must be who invented the instrument of torture. No7v a patient comes in ; 
 takes a few whiffs of an anaesthetic; has a dozen or more teeth submitted 
 to the embrace of the gentlemanly forceps, which lift them from their 
 sockets as one takes out the pegs of a solitaire-board, — say, rather, as a 
 father lifts his first-born infant, — comes to; stares about him; asks when 
 they are going to begin; is told that it is all over; bursts into tears of 
 hysteric gratitude; kisses the smiling dentist; wants to hug all mankind, 
 and make the human race happy at once ; sobers down presently, ties up his 
 face, and takes to retirement and Zimmermann for a season, as before 
 mentioned. 
 
 I have seen something, as, probably, most of us have, of the practical 
 skill of dentists ; but, in alluding to some of the more important recent ad- 
 vances of the dental profession, I was unwilling to trust my own fortunately 
 
limited experience, and have consulted my friends, Dr. Moffatt of this city, 
 and Dr. McQuillen of Philadelphia, the late editor of the journal known 
 as "The Dental Cosmos," both of whom have kindly favored me with their 
 own independent opinions as to late improvements. 
 
 The use of the mallet in filling teeth, every blow of which instrument 
 is a fractional knock on the head to the patient equal to about one hun- 
 dredth of that which a slayer of cattle gives to a full-grown ox to finish 
 him, but which, being taken in divided doses, allows the sufferer to escape 
 with life, — the use of the mallet, automatic or other, far from agreeable 
 as it is, is considered a vast accession to the art of dentistry. Every man 
 must be anvil or sledge, says Goethe ; and it is quite plain that our friends 
 the dentists have settled it so far as they and we are concerned. 
 
 Nothing has excited my admiration more than the wonderful drills, 
 moved by the foot, or any other power which may be preferred, finding 
 their way into every corner of the mouth with a sinuous grace of movement 
 such as the serpent displayed for the fascination of our unfortunate first 
 parent, and making their way into the solid dental substance with a rapidity 
 from which the engineers of the Hoosac Tunnel might borrow a most 
 significant lesson. 
 
 The employment of sponge gold for certain purposes, and the use of 
 heat to develop the cohesive properties of the metal, have enabled the 
 dentist to perform those remarkable feats of building up a tooth from its 
 ruins, to which I have before referred. 
 
 The public seems hardly to appreciate the very great value of the 
 cement fillings, — both the oxide of zinc and the gutta-percha, — either of 
 which is capable of preserving for long use a tooth too infirm to bear fiilling 
 with gold. 
 
 The use of sheet India-rubber to protect a tooth from moisture while 
 being filled is another most valuable innovation. 
 
 I learn that even exposed pulps may be protected by artificial means, 
 and thus a tooth saved as a living organ from an almost hopeless condition. 
 
 Important as are these mechanical inventions, the growth of dental 
 associations, educational institutions and journals, mark a still more general 
 advance of the profession. I have known something of the teachers of 
 the art, of their zeal, their capacity, their disinterested desire for the eleva- 
 tion of their calling. I have for years been a frequent reader of "The 
 Dental Cosmos," and I can bear testimony to the great intelligence with 
 which it has been edited. I have found in its pages much information, of 
 interest and value, that I have never met with elsewhere ; and I have seen 
 a great many medical journals with a broader titlepage and a vastly nar- 
 rower table of contents. Yet this is but one of five dental journals pub- 
 lished in the United States; and at least as many are published in other 
 countries. It is from a living and wide-awake profession, then, that the 
 
new faculty is invited to share with us the honorable task of teaching; 
 and we cannot doubt that the community will encourage, and it may be 
 hoped in due time liberally endow, the infant offspring of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, now cutting its first teeth with every promise of health and vigor. 
 
 The picture of old age drawn in Ecclesiastes is wonderfully impres- 
 sive, — all the more so in consequence of the obscurity of some of its images. 
 But we all know what the Preacher means when he speaks of the drawing- 
 nigh of the years when we shall say there is no pleasure in them, and of 
 the day when the grinders shall cease because they are few, and those 
 that look out of the window shall be darkened. There were no dentists 
 in those days to rejuvenate the old man with a third dentition. There were 
 no opticians to supply his failing vision with the second eyes of old age. 
 The aged people seem to have been in a most forlorn condition at a time 
 when the men of today not rarely have a good deal of vitality left, and 
 enjoy life, and help to make others enjoy it. To us who remember the 
 late Josiah Quincy and Dr. James Jackson long after they were eighty 
 years old, who knew something, by report, of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord 
 Brougham in their later years, it seems strange to hear Barzillai say to 
 King David, "I am this day fourscore years old ; and can I discern between 
 good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I 
 hear the voice of singing men and singing women?" 
 
 But what would old age be to a great number of persons without the 
 aid of the dentist and the optician? The worn-out laboring man, unused 
 to books, and with limited capacity for social intercourse, may get along 
 well enough, perhaps, with his pipe, and his seat in the sunshine or by the 
 fireside. Father Abraham may not have felt the need of spectacles : he 
 went to bed early, no doubt ; there was no daily newspaper to read ; and he 
 did not shave. But what would become of the scholar, or of persons of 
 any cultivation in our days, who at fifty or sixty should find themselves 
 cut off from reading, and, not improbably, rendered unpresentable, or at 
 least miserably uncomfortable, in society, in consequence of imperfect 
 articulation? The care of the eyes is therefore recognized as one of the 
 most important specialties in medicine, and the study of ophthalmology has 
 engaged some of the most distinguished professional talent in this country 
 as well as in Europe. The province of dentistry is only second in im- 
 portance to the other domain of medical science and art, and rivals it in the 
 intelligence and activity of those who teach and practise it. In one respect, 
 it is of greater public interest than the other branch : most children's and 
 young persons' teeth require positive attention; whereas their eyes, in the 
 great majority of cases, take tolerable care of themselves. I think there are 
 twelve times as many dentists in this city as there arCiOculists. If every 
 one had twenty eyes in the early part of his life, and thirty-two when full 
 grown, the number of oculists and dentists might be more nearly equal. 
 
 10 
 
The branch of the medical profession to which this graduating class 
 has devoted itself has not taken its proper position until within a compara- 
 tively recent period; but, in this respect, it has been no worse off than 
 other branches in former times, or than the entire profession at some periods 
 of its history. The Romans contrived to live without doctors for some 
 five hundred years : when they got them at last, they were slaves, — Greeks, 
 for the most part, — and kept as appendages of a great man's establishment, 
 as he kept a cook or other servant. 
 
 The worthy vicar of Stratford fin Avon, to whom I have before re- 
 ferred, gives us some very curious information as to the state of the medical 
 profession in England in his own time and before it. A few paragraphs 
 are worth quoting: — 
 
 "The Saxons had their blood-letters, but under the Normans physick 
 begunne in England ; 300 years agoe it was not a distinct profession by 
 itself, but practisd by men in orders, witness Nicholas de Ternham, the 
 chief English physitian and Bishop of Durham; Hugh of Evesham, a 
 physician and cardinal ; Grysant physician and pope ; John Chambers 
 Doctor of Physick, was the first Bishop of Peterborough; Paul Bush, a 
 bachelor of divinitie in Oxford was well read in physick as well as divin- 
 itie, hee was the first Bishop of Bristol." "In King Richard the Second's 
 time physitians and divines were not distinct professions ; for one Tydeman, 
 Bishop of Landaph and Worcester, was physician to King Richard the 
 Second." And again : "Edmund, Earl of Derby, who dyed in Queen 
 Elizabeth's days, was famous for chirurgerie, bonesetting and hospitalitie." 
 
 We may be sure that all this meant a very low condition of medical 
 knowledge. And this opinion is confirmed by what is found in the same 
 Diary a few pages farther on. 
 
 "Dr. Sydenham is writing a book which will bring physicians about 
 his ears, to decrie the usefulness of natural philosophic, and to maintaine 
 the necessitie of knowledg in anatomic in subordination to physick. 
 
 "Physick, says Sydenham, is not to be learned by going to Universities, 
 but hee is for taking apprentices ; and says one had as good send a man to 
 Oxford to learn shoemaking as practising physick." 
 
 There were other heretics besides Sydenham; for, as Mr. Ward tells 
 us, "Some have said that physick is no art at all, nor worthy of the name of 
 a liberall science, as Peter And. Canonherius, a practitioner at Rome, en- 
 deavored to prove by sixteen arguments." 
 
 The vicar himself practised physic, as well as preached, like others of 
 his clerical brethren. We find from him that quarrelling and quackery 
 were quite as common then as now. The university-teaching which Syden- 
 ham spoke of with such contempt was, of course, the book-learning of the 
 time, and not the practical instruction of later days. Much as we have 
 gained, the following words from the Diary are not so far from truth 
 to-day as they might be : — 
 
 11 
 
"There are several sorts of Physitians, said one ; first, those that canne 
 talk but doe nothing; secondly, some that can doe but not talk; third, 
 some that can both doe and talk; fourthly, some that can neither doe nor 
 talk, and these get most monie. 
 
 "Some doctors have a noble out of a pound of their apothecaries; as 
 Dr. Wright; many (have) a crowne, as an apothecarie in London told me." 
 
 In this last sentence, and in the fact that the English "general practi- 
 tioner," so called, has charged, not for his advice, but for his pills and 
 potions, lies the secret of that disgraceful drugging system which has racked 
 the entrails of Englishmen from generation to generation; which we in- 
 herited from the mother-country; and which is fast giving way to those 
 more rational views, in which healthy nutrition, and the skilful alleviation 
 of symptoms, are taking the place of the exhausting depletions and specific 
 poisons supposed necessary to the cure of disease. In spite of this corrupt- 
 ing influence, English medical science and art asserted themselves succes- 
 sively in men like Linacre, Harvey, Sydenham, and Mead, and the practi- 
 tioners who confined themselves to medical, in distinction from surgical, 
 practice, so as to deserve the eulogies of such personages as Dryden and 
 Pope, of Johnson and Parr and Blackstone. 
 
 But chirurgery — medical hand-work — fared very differently. No 
 longer ago than when President Holyoke, whose son, the venerable physi- 
 cian, some of us well remember, entered upon the duties of his office, and 
 for years after that time, the London Company of Barber-Surgeons were 
 holding their meetings at their hall in Monkwell Street; and it was not till 
 very near the middle of the last century, that the surgeons were incorporated 
 as a separate body. It was about the same time, that is, during the reign 
 of George the Second, that the question was discussed in open court, before 
 the chief justice of England, whether a surgeon was an "inferior tradesman," 
 within the meaning of a certain statue of William and Mary. But we must 
 remember in what contempt other of the most useful occupations were held 
 so long as society was enslaved by its feudal traditions. Traffic and agri- 
 culture were scorned by the descendants of the Norman robbers, until they 
 were starved into better views and more civil language than they had 
 inherited. 
 
 "The toiling tradesman and the sweating clown 
 Would have his wench fair, though his bread be brown," 
 says Michael Drayton in the poetical epistle of Edward Fourth to Mistress 
 Jane Shore. And now the great nobles of Britain are very glad to turn an 
 honest penny by traffic, instead of taking it by force from their neighbors. 
 The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt; 
 "Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt; 
 The Douglas, in red herrings." 
 
 12 
 
One son of the Duke of Argyle marries the queen's daughter; and the other 
 comes to New York, and goes into a trading-establishment. In this country, 
 more especially, the useful arts have no right to complain of their want 
 of fair recognition. If we do not absolutely forbid idleness, our rich 
 men and women who live for amusement only are very apt to find them- 
 selves uncomfortable until they can get out of a country where there are 
 bounties granted to fishermen, and nothing but taxes for gentlemen of 
 leisure. 
 
 The movement of civilization is a perpetual struggle between the arts 
 of destruction on the one hand, and those of construction and conservation 
 on the other. All that the earth teaches us of man in the earlier periods of 
 his ascertained existence shows him to have been a fighting cannibal, who 
 cracked the bones of his deceased relatives, to get their marrow, with the 
 same pious satisfaction his descendant shows in breaking the seal of a last 
 will and testament. The best man among savages is the one who swings 
 the heaviest club, and has eaten the largest number of his enemies, or who 
 carries most scalps at his girdle. It is somewhat better in our day ; but the 
 ideal state of society is not yet made quite real. The fighting man is still 
 the one most honored by the world. Even the phraseology of our religion, 
 which points to the Lord of hosts and the Captain of our salvation, shows 
 us how deeply-rooted is that feeling of the supreme excellence of a military 
 title, which we inherit from the man-eating troglodytes. 
 
 But the modern movement, in its truest form, insists that mutual 
 destruction is not the chief end of man. Even the fighting Romans had 
 got so far as to decree that the oak-leaf garland, ob cives servatos, should 
 take precedence of the conqueror's laurel. And Christian civilization is 
 ready to acknowledge, to-day, that the only really noble warfare is that 
 against the evils which beset the race. Men must be slain for a long time, 
 always perhaps, in the greater conflicts of right and wrong; but humanity 
 confesses, that, apart from the righteous end to be attained, a bloody victory 
 is only a less calamity than a bloody defeat. 
 
 The arts of peace are gaining in consideration over the arts of war, 
 slowly, we must own, but steadily. And, if any one of these arts of peace 
 should have appeared entitled to the highest consideration of a civilized 
 people, it would seem to be that which professes to relieve suffering, and 
 prolong life. So it would have been if medicine could have done all that 
 was asked of it. The physician would have been held only second to the 
 Deity, had he not too frequently disappointed the expectations of those who 
 were ready to worship him. This always was and always will be. The 
 children of Israel complained that they had to make bricks without straw; 
 the physician has to make bricks without clay. Many of the patients that 
 come to him had never any physiological right to live at all. They are not 
 much nearer to the true human pattern than that same starved Justice 
 
 13 
 
Shallow, who was like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring ; when 
 he was naked, for all the world like a forked radish. And they come com- 
 plaining that they are not in condition to run ten miles within the hour, 
 or fight the champion of the heavy weights for the prize belt. It has taken 
 a dozen sickly generations to breed them down to constitutional invalidism, 
 and they want a pill or powder to set them all right again. Or they come 
 to the physician at fifty or sixty, wrecks of fine constitutions, got up 
 originally without regard to expense, btit burned out with strong drink, 
 and browned to the marrow with narcotics and nicotics, and want back 
 the virginity of their sodden and corrugated tissues. Or, it may be, some 
 desperate and violent malady has stabbed them to the death ; and, because 
 no one has seen a hand with a poniard in it, the patients or their friends 
 think that some drop or potion will undo the mortal eflfect of the invisible 
 dagger-stroke. 
 
 These inevitable disappointments have kept the medical profession from 
 receiving that degree of confidence and of honor to which its noble function 
 seemed to entitle it. It does its best ; but that is not enough for the eager 
 demand of men for health, and length of days. Hence the great number 
 of pretenders and pretentious systems which profess to be able to meet 
 this want. Men, and, still more, women, wish to be deceived; and it be- 
 comes a lucrative trade to promise cures, as it was to promise gold in the 
 days of the alchemists. 
 
 "Spondent quas non exhibent divitias, pauperes alchimistse." 
 In spite of all the obstacles which meet those who give their lives to 
 the pursuit of knowledge, without regard to the prejudices it disturbs, 
 science was never honored as it is in our time ; and the science of life was 
 never studied as at the present day, — never with such an apparatus of re- 
 search, never with such concentration of talent on special investigations, 
 never with such hope of resolving the most difficult problems within 
 the reach of human faculties. Considered merely as a study, medicine is 
 a great and profoundly interesting branch of science; but having regard 
 to the interests it deals with, — life and death, well-being and misery, the 
 conditions of mind and body, the happiness or wretchedness of whole 
 communities, — we can hardly wonder, that, in early ages, a divine origin 
 was assigned to it, and that he who is called the Lord of hosts is also spoken 
 of by the nobler title of the Healer of the land and of the people. 
 
 Your profession, young gentlemen, is now an accepted province of this 
 great and beneficent calling. It has shared the effects of that onward 
 movement which has asserted for the arts of peace the dignified position to 
 which they are entitled. You are bound, in your turn, to reflect honor 
 on the institution which has invested you with authority to go forth as 
 its representatives in the domain of your special duties. The diploma 
 you have received is a certificate of your fitness for these duties; but 
 
 14 
 
it implies a promise that you will try to do credit to those who stand 
 sponsors for you as you are christened with your new title. Harvard 
 University is doing all it can do to recognize the value of your profession 
 to the community ; and it does this at the time when it is making the most 
 strenuous efforts to place medical education on a basis worthy of a branch 
 of knowledge so complex, so vast, so all important to mankind. That open 
 volume with Veritas inscribed upon it should be, and it is, carried at the 
 figure-head of the argosy of our American intellectual progress. Our 
 university always was, and must be, a leader in educational movements. 
 She is waiting for those to follow that dare, to pass her that can; and, if 
 any drop astern, she must wave them a courteous salute, and leave them. 
 
 And now, gentlemen, we bid you God-speed as you go from these halls 
 to exercise your talents which have been here trained, and apply the 
 knowledge which has been here imparted to you. May you find the public 
 ready to appreciate and reward your skill ; and so acquit yourselves, that 
 the ear which hears you shall bless you; and the eye that sees you bear 
 witness to you ; that the smiles of innumerable friends may reveal to you 
 the perfection of your own handiwork; and your praise be in all the 
 mouths of a grateful community ! 
 
 15 
 
oJOI-UMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBftARIFS ( 
 
 HK66H73 1919 C 1 
 
 The d.ii: 
 
 >i^ 
 
 2002449498 
 
<m