50 Alumni Reunion 



nomena of modern education and social organization that 

 were to characterize his career as president of the Univer- 

 sity. 



I do not here speak of his interest in medical progress. 

 That will be done by one who is an expert, and I should 

 not presume to anticipate what he may have to say. But 

 I do recall the astonishment with which I listened, on 

 the occasion of the opening of the hospital, to an address 

 by him which seemed to handle with amazing facility 

 aspects of medical progress which might well be deemed 

 beyond the grasp of a layman. And I recall also the 

 address which he delivered in 1898, on the occasion of the 

 opening of a new home for the Medical Society of Connec- 

 ticut, in my native town of Hartford, an address which 

 clearly showed that if he was not one of the medical 

 fraternity, he was certainly at home among them, and if 

 he could not speak with the knowledge of a professional 

 he, at least, could show how an outsider looked at the 

 progress of their science and estimated their advances. 

 It is worthy of note that on that occasion his chief 

 interest lay in the history of medicine, the progress of the 

 science from Harvey to the present time, but it is also 

 worthy of note that in the course of his address he dis- 

 closed an intimate knowledge of instruments and methods 

 that were employed in furthering the cause of medical 

 science. One would have thought that he had lived among 

 the doctors. 



Next to this wide and embracing desire to make all 

 fields of intellectual and scientific activity his own, 

 Dr. Oilman's greatest gift to this University on its 

 academic side was the unqualified approval of the highest 

 scientific ideals. In his earliest writings, in the sixties, 

 we find him laying down certain very important criteria, 

 which; were far from being generally appreciated at that 

 time. "Where there is a university organization," he 

 wrote, "the constant effort should be made to educate men 

 of science, able to investigate, competent to teach, pro- 



