racle,--the earlier writer,
Jean Louis Petit,--and his formidable snuffbox. What he taught me lies
far down, I doubt not, among the roots of my knowledge, but it does
not flower out in any noticeable blossoms, or offer me any very obvious
fruits. Where now is the fame of Bouillaud, Professor and Deputy, the
Sangrado of his time? Where is the renown of Piorry, percussionist and
poet, expert alike in the resonances of the thoracic cavity and those
of the rhyming vocabulary?--I think life has not yet done with the
vivacious Ricord, whom I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic
literature,--a sceptic as to the morality of the race in general, who
would have submitted Diana to treatment with his mineral specifics, and
ordered a course of blue pills for the vestal virgins.

Ricord was born at the beginning of the century, and Piorry some years
earlier. Cruveilhier, who died in 1874, is still remembered by his great
work on pathological anatomy; his work on descriptive anatomy has some
things which I look in vain for elsewhere. But where is Civiale,--where
are Orfila, Gendrin, Rostan, Biett, Alibert,--jolly old Baron Alibert,
whom I remember so well in his broad-brimmed hat, worn a little jauntily
on one side, calling out to the students in the court-yard of the
Hospital St. Louis, "Enfans de la methode naturelle, etes-vous tous
ici?" "Children of the natural method [his own method of classification
of skin diseases,] are you all here?" All here, then, perhaps; all
where, now?

My show of ghosts is over. It is always the same story that old men tell
to younger ones, some few of whom will in their turn repeat the tale,
only with altered names, to their children's children.

Like phantoms painted on the magic slide,
Forth from the darkness of the past we glide,
As living shadows for a moment seen
In airy pageant on the eternal screen,
Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame,
Then seek the dust and stillness whence we came.

Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, whom I well remember, came back from Leyden,
where he had written his Latin graduating thesis, talking of the learned
Gaubius and the late illustrious Boerhaave and other dead Dutchmen, of
whom you know as much, most of you, as you do of Noah's apothecary and
the family physician of Methuselah, whose prescriptions seem to have
been lost to posterity. Dr. Lloyd came back to Boston full of the
teachings of Cheselden and Sharpe, William Hunter, Smellie, and Warn