

THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1885. 



OUK KECENT DEBTS TO VIVISECTION.* 



Br WILLIAM W. KEEN, M. D. 



PROFESSOR OF SURGERY. 



LADIES : It is my happy privilege to congratulate you on the com- 

 pletion of your three years of preliminary study, and on your 

 merited reward in receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine from 

 the oldest and largest medical college for women in the world. 



By this degree you are permitted to enter the ranks of one of the 

 most ancient, honorable, and laborious professions. With it you as- 

 sume certain valued privileges, and have cast upon you certain weighty 

 duties. Both the privileges and the duties will exact from you all the 

 intelligence, skill, tact, and faithfulness which you possess. 



You will observe that I said a moment since you had finished your 

 "preliminary" studies; for your first and most pressing duty after 

 graduation, and one for which happily you will at first have ample 

 time, is to continue your medical studies. I do not say complete them, 

 for, be your lives even prolonged far past the allotted threescore and 

 ten, instant, constant, intense study is the imperative condition of the 

 right kind of success. You know very little now. Happy both you and 

 your patients, if even w r ith gray hairs comes ever-growing knowledge. 



But you have other duties than those to self you have great duties 

 to the communities in which you w T ill live. Women especially will not 

 only look to you in times of peril, whether in childbirth or sickness or 

 accident, but also for guidance in that greatest duty and privilege the 

 prevention rather than the cure of disease. This is the glory of our 

 times and the magnificent duty of our profession, that by enlightened 



* The Address to the graduates of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 

 Philadelphia, delivered March 11, 18S5. 

 vol. xxvii. 1 



