arpensis,--but why multiply names, every one of which brings
back the accession of a book which was an event almost like the birth of
an infant?

A library like ours must exercise the largest hospitality. A great many
books may be found in every large collection which remind us of those
apostolic looking old men who figure on the platform at our political and
other assemblages. Some of them have spoken words of wisdom in their
day, but they have ceased to be oracles; some of them never had any
particularly important message for humanity, but they add dignity to the
meeting by their presence; they look wise, whether they are so or not,
and no one grudges them their places of honor. Venerable figure-heads,
what would our platforms be without you?

Just so with our libraries. Without their rows of folios in creamy
vellum, or showing their black backs with antique lettering of tarnished
gold, our shelves would look as insufficient and unbalanced as a column
without its base, as a statue without its pedestal. And do not think
they are kept only to be spanked and dusted during that dreadful period
when their owner is but too thankful to become an exile and a wanderer
from the scene of single combats between dead authors and living
housemaids. Men were not all cowards before Agamemnon or all fools
before the days of Virchow and Billroth. And apart from any practical
use to be derived from the older medical authors, is there not a true
pleasure in reading the accounts of great discoverers in their own words?
I do not pretend to hoist up the Bibliotheca Anatomica of Mangetus and
spread it on my table every day. I do not get out my great Albinus
before every lecture on the muscles, nor disturb the majestic repose of
Vesalius every time I speak of the bones he has so admirably described
and figured. But it does please me to read the first descriptions of
parts to which the names of their discoverers or those who have first
described them have become so joined that not even modern science can
part them; to listen to the talk of my old volume as Willis describes his
circle and Fallopius his aqueduct and Varolius his bridge and Eustachius
his tube and Monro his foramen,--all so well known to us in the human
body; it does please me to know the very words in which Winslow described
the opening which bears his name, and Glisson his capsule and De Graaf
his vesicle; I am not content until I know in what language Harvey
announced his dis