areer was not unlike his
own, and who lived to the same patriarchal age.

"From his early youth he had always entertained a deep sense of
religion, a consummate love of virtue, an ardent thirst after knowledge,
and an earnest desire to promote the welfare and happiness of all
mankind. By these qualities, accompanied with great sweetness of
manners, he acquired the love and esteem of all good men, in a degree
which perhaps very few have experienced; and after passing an active
life with the uniform testimony of a good conscience, he became an
eminent example of its influence, in the cheerfulness and serenity of
his latest age."

Such was the man whom I offer to you as a model, young gentlemen, at the
outset of your medical career. I hope that many of you will recognize
some traits of your own special teachers scattered through various parts
of the land in the picture I have drawn. Let me assure you that whatever
you may learn in this or any other course of public lectures,--and
I trust you will learn a great deal,--the daily guidance, counsel,
example, of your medical father, for such the Oath of Hippocrates tells
you to consider your preceptor, will, if he is in any degree like him
of whom I have spoken, be the foundation on which all that we teach is
reared, and perhaps outlive most of our teachings, as in Dr. Jackson's
memory the last lessons that remained with him were those of his Old
Master.

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MASSACHUSETTS.

A Lecture of a Course by members of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, delivered before the Lowell Institute, January 29, 1869.

The medical history of eight generations, told in an hour, must be in
many parts a mere outline. The details I shall give will relate chiefly
to the first century. I shall only indicate the leading occurrences,
with the more prominent names of the two centuries which follow, and
add some considerations suggested by the facts which have been passed in
review.

A geographer who was asked to describe the tides of Massachusetts
Bay, would have to recognize the circumstance that they are a limited
manifestation of a great oceanic movement. To consider them apart from
this, would be to localize a planetary phenomenon, and to provincialize
a law of the universe. The art of healing in Massachusetts has shared
more or less fully and readily the movement which, with its periods of
ebb and flow, has been raising its level from age to age throughout the