we do not always do
justice to our country brethren, whose merits are less conspicuously
exhibited than those of the great city physicians and surgeons,
such especially as have charge of large hospitals. There are modest
practitioners living in remote rural districts who are gifted by nature
with such sagacity and wisdom, trained so well in what is most essential
to the practice of their art, taught so thoroughly by varied experience,
forced to such manly self-reliance by their comparative isolation,
that, from converse with them alone, from riding with them on their long
rounds as they pass from village to village, from talking over cases
with them, putting up their prescriptions, watching their expedients,
listening to their cautions, marking the event of their predictions,
hearing them tell of their mistakes, and now and then glory a little
in the detection of another's blunder, a young man would find himself
better fitted for his real work than many who have followed long
courses of lectures and passed a showy examination. But the young man is
exceptionally fortunate who enjoys the intimacy of such a teacher.
And it must be confessed that the great hospitals, infirmaries, and
dispensaries of large cities, where men of well-sifted reputations are
in constant attendance, are the true centres of medical education. No
students, I believe, are more thoroughly aware of this than those who
have graduated at this institution. Here, as in all our larger city
schools, the greatest pains are taken to teach things as well as names.
You have entered into the inheritance of a vast amount of transmitted
skill and wisdom, which you have taken, warm, as it were, with the life
of your well-schooled instructors. You have not learned all that art has
to teach you, but you are safer practitioners to-day than were many of
those whose names we hardly mention without a genuflection. I had
rather be cared for in a fever by the best-taught among you than by the
renowned Fernelius or the illustrious Boerhaave, could they come back to
us from that better world where there are no physicians needed, and, if
the old adage can be trusted, not many within call. I had rather have
one of you exercise his surgical skill upon me than find myself in the
hands of a resuscitated Fabricius Hildanus, or even of a wise Ambroise
Pare, revisiting earth in the light of the nineteenth century.

You will not accuse me of underrating your accomplishments. You know