ibly curious literature of Homoeopathy before that pseudological
inanity has faded out like so many other delusions.

SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS

[A Farewell Address to the Medical School of Harvard University,
November 28, 1882.]

I had intended that the recitation of Friday last should be followed by
a few parting words to my class and any friends who might happen to be
in the lecture-room. But I learned on the preceding evening that there
was an expectation, a desire, that my farewell should take a somewhat
different form; and not to disappoint the wishes of those whom I was
anxious to gratify, I made up my mind to appear before you with such
hasty preparation as the scanty time admitted.

There are three occasions upon which a human being has a right to
consider himself as a centre of interest to those about him: when he is
christened, when he is married, and when he is buried. Every one is the
chief personage, the hero, of his own baptism, his own wedding, and his
own funeral.

There are other occasions, less momentous, in which one may make more
of himself than under ordinary circumstances he would think it proper
to do; when he may talk about himself, and tell his own experiences,
in fact, indulge in a more or less egotistic monologue without fear or
reproach.

I think I may claim that this is one of those occasions. I have
delivered my last anatomical lecture and heard my class recite for the
last time. They wish to hear from me again in a less scholastic mood
than that in which they have known me. Will you not indulge me in
telling you something of my own story?

This is the thirty-sixth Course of Lectures in which I have taken my
place and performed my duties as Professor of Anatomy. For more than
half of my term of office I gave instruction in Physiology, after the
fashion of my predecessors and in the manner then generally prevalent in
our schools, where the physiological laboratory was not a necessary part
of the apparatus of instruction. It was with my hearty approval that the
teaching of Physiology was constituted a separate department and made
an independent Professorship. Before my time, Dr. Warren had taught
Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery in the same course of Lectures, lasting
only three or four months. As the boundaries of science are enlarged,
new divisions and subdivisions of its territories become necessary. In
the place of six Professors in 1847, when I first became a member of
th