to send children to school; but are we not making education in some respects, in some of its features, too free, too common? These, as well as some of the questions involved in the medical charities and free dispensaries, are certainly of interest to physicians, and in their capacity not only as physicians, but as citizens. The medical citizen who solves some of the more pressing problems of private and public charity, and especially of the altogether too indiscriminate medical charities of large cities, will be rendering his profession and the community a signal service.

Gentlemen of the medical profession, in the code of laws to which I have from time to time referred there were provisions made for certain trained and selected citizens who were termed guardians.

Your profession and training, the demands of professional honor, constitute you guardians of certain of the interests of your fellow-citizens, and you are good or bad citizens as you perform or neglect your duties. Those duties are not confined alone or solely to matters which are commonly regarded as strictly medical. As men of reputation and extensive acquaintance in your several communities your advice will be sought, your example followed in matters political. Your knowledge of men will help you in advising who will make the best legislators, councilmen, school commissioners and even mayors and governors. I do not propose to talk politics or advise the use of this organization for ordinary political purposes. There are questions, however, upon which the united voice of the members of this Faculty might well be heard, and, being heard, would have a powerful influence.

The other day in a not far distant State, in a board having to do with the highest educational interests of the State, there was danger of a wholly incompetent and, to the interests of better education, dangerous man being elected. The medical men of the State became interested, and by their united efforts, in the face of the opposition of the dominant party, their candidate was chosen.

In matters relating to public health, to education, to the care of the dependent and the defective you can, if you will, make yourselves as strongly felt, and as these are matters upon which you are better prepared to pass correct judgment, your duty is plain.

If you are adverse to serving in local or State legislative bodies, your voice should and can be potent in the selection of those who will represent you. Party influence and party fealty, I know, are powerful agents, and often agents for good, and are necessary in our political methods; but sometimes there are higher claims than those of party, and those claims should be, and by the majority of the medical profession are, I believe, recognized.

Let us measure the men we are asked to place in position and power by the same standard we would use in placing our private interests in their hands. Let us investigate their ability to make or execute laws, remembering, with Spencer, that "there is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instinct."

We hear now and then of the force of awakened public sentiment. The very phrase implies that public sentiment sometimes sleeps, and while wakening and rubbing its eyes and getting its

bearings your practical politician, who never sleeps, will snatch the prize for which he is scheming-the control of public affairs, the key of the public treasury. What is needed in this land and in this day is a live, active, wide-awake, always vigilant public sentiment, not one which needs awakening or is only aroused into action by some public or official scandal. In this respect no class can set a better example than the members of the profession to which we belong; none, I fear, is more apt to feel that these matters need not engage its attention.

We are, I take it, united as to the necessity of clean and wellpaved streets, of a pure water supply, of an efficient system of sewerage for our cities and towns, and yet of the hundreds of doctors who realize the importance of these matters, how many personally take the pains to help secure the best men and the most efficient means to accomplish these things?

I believe that certain pessimistic members of the profession hesitate to support the measures looking to hoped-for sanitary improvements here in Baltimore because of doubt as to the honesty or ability of those who may have charge of the execution of the work.

Have those men, have the majority of us, taken occasion to teach our public servants that "corruption wins not more than honesty?" Have we not the rather looked upon dishonesty in official and business life with a too easy tolerance? Have we not sometimes purposely kept our eyes closed to crimes against the community lest we be given some trouble in helping to bring the criminal to justice? Have we not, indeed, with easy good nature on occasion given our voices or names to aid those who sought to mitigate the punishment when the criminal was at last convicted?

When the betrayer of a public trust is made to feel the weight of public opinion and the force of social and business ostracism; when the man who robs the public treasury or a bank or a trust company is punished as certainly and with as little of the law's delay as the petty thief who robs a hen-roost; when from private or semiprivate business affairs "graft" is eliminated, then, and not until then, may we feel certain that our civic corporations are conducted with as much regard for the stockholders' interests, the interests of the citizens of those corporations, as are our many successful and honestly-managed private corporations. That day will come only when you and I take as much and as active interest in the selection of those who conduct those corporations as we would in learning who are the directors of the corporation which is to manage our private investments or guard our estate if we are fortunate enough to accumulate one.

These, then, are some of the elements in our social or political life concerning which the members of the medical profession are particularly qualified to instruct or guide public opinion and public action, and which as good citizens they are bound to take into thoughtful consideration: The importance and force of heredity, the true nature and object of education, and the best methods of imparting an education; the necessity and value to the developing mind of such environment, both mental and material, as shall develop a love for and an appreciation of the true and the beautiful;

the selection of those who are physically and mentally equipped for an education, and the selection of that form of education best adapted to the individual.

The methods of modern life, intemperance in living, in eating, in drinking, are subjects upon which physicians daily admonish their patients, but as to their influence upon the general public the force of example, possibly too little is said.

Life in a modern city is not well calculated to prolong life or make it more comfortable. The effect upon the nervous systems of its citizens, of the noise, the rush, the bustle of a city's streets, cannot be calculated, but is by no means a negligible quantity in enumerating the causes of nervous diseases.

The care of the dependent, the sick, the defective, the regulation and control of immigration, the most vigilant scrutiny of all that may affect public health, and a hearty co-operation in every way with the public health authorities are all part of the citizen doctor's duties.

And, lastly, a proper active patriotic interest in the political movements of his State or locality, the use of his knowledge and influence in the selection of public officials, and in holding them to high ideals and strict accountability fall within his line of duty, as they do within that of every citizen of the State.

I have, I feel, but crudely drawn the outline of a picture, the details of which you can fill in better than I can. But I believe no higher calling could come to you; no more responsible office be yours, with greater capacity for good, than the plain every-day duties of a citizen as they are seen or should be through the eyes of a well-informed physician.

In performing those duties opposition, misrepresentation, contumely will meet you. Seldom will any reward for your self-imposed task come to you. Those you are attempting to aid will misinterpret your motives and oppose your efforts.

You have seen your professional brothers sacrifice the allurements of home, the enticement of wealth and ease-aye, even life itself that pestilence might be studied and its progress stayed. You have seen from their work that "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war," and "higher tests of manhood than battles ever knew."

Their work has not only enlarged your professional knowledge, enhanced your professional skill, but wealth uncounted has and will result to this nation and others by reason of their devotion to humanity and science.

To them or their memory but scant tribute has been paid. But this must not deter you. The power, the influence, the knowledge is yours, and as you use them to the healing of the nation, to the uplifting of humanity, to the rooting out of disease and misery, and crime, and corruption, you will be sustained and blessed, as those others who have gone before you have been, by the consciousness of duty done. Great deeds, like a noble piece of statuary, require to be viewed from a proper distance to be fully appreciated, and so to your memory will come in time, as will come to theirs, the tribute of a grateful posterity.

AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF DR. OSLER'S PROFESSIONAL WORK.

"WE cannot now go very curiously to work to scrutinize the character of his work; we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces and weigh this and measure that, and sum up and pronounce. We are too near as yet to him.' These words, spoken of another man who had undergone a translation much more serious than that from Baltimore to Oxford, may well be quoted at the beginning of an article dealing with Dr. Osler's professional work.

It is of interest to note his early training, for on it the structure of later years has been built. Dr. Osler has said that a man should come into internal medicine by one of three ways—physiology, physiological chemistry, or morbid anatomy-and which he chose will be evident. He began his work at the Toronto School of Medicine, later going to McGill University, where he graduated in 1872. After this he went abroad for two years, going first to London, where he devoted special attention to work in physiology with Burdon-Sanderson, his predecessor in the chair of medicine in Oxford. At the same time he was attending clinics at University College Hospital, where he followed Jenner and Wilson Fox in medicine, Ringer and Bastian in the outdoor department, and Tilbury Fox in dermatology. From London he went to Berlin, where he studied under Virchow and did work in physiological chemistry with Salkowski. At the same time he followed the clinics of Frerichs and Traube. Early in 1874 he went to Vienna, where the first half of the year was spent under Bamberger and Hebra along with work in special courses. How much these years spent abroad meant need not be told to those who have worked under him or listened to his clinics. The impressions then made of the methods of the Teutonic clinics doubtless had much to do with his resolve to fashion the medical department of the Johns Hopkins Hospital along the same lines.

In 1874, on his return to Montreal, he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, which included the course on physiology and a series of 20 lectures on pathology. For this he was given a certain amount of apparatus, but, as he has jestingly said, "it never would work." Instruction in histology was soon added to this course and the first practical work given in 1875-76. About this time demonstrations in physiology were given on Saturday afternoons, and in the next year a course in pathological histology was begun during the summer session. In the end of 1874 he was appointed physician to the smallpox hospital, a position which he held for nearly a year, and with the salary of this, microscopes