ACADEMY OF BCHKH.] BIOGRAPHY. 191 



SERVICES ON COMMISSIONS ON THE ALCOHOL PROBLEM AND SANITATION. 



As early as 1872, Dr. Bowditch read before the Boston Society of Medical Sciences a dis- 

 cussion of alcohol as a nutritive agent. He there raised the question whether in morbid con- 

 ditions, when in large amounts it does not induce narcotism, it may not have nutritive values 

 which it does not offer to the healthy organism. This early interest in the pharmacological 

 action of alcohol, as well as an interest in the social problems attending its use, he maintained 

 for many years. In 1S93 he and John Lowell and John Graham Brooks were appointed by the 

 Governer of Massachusetts as a commission to investigate the Gothenburg and Norwegian sys- 

 tems of licensing the sale of intoxicating liquors. An extensive report of their examination of 

 these systems was rendered in 1894. 



Dr. Bowditch was a member of the Committee of Fifty to investigate the liquor problem and 

 was on the subcommittee on the physiological and pathological aspects of the problem. With 

 Dr. C. F. Hodge he made an extensive report, in 1903, on the statements given in textbooks 

 and by eminent physiologists both in the United States and in Europe regarding the physio- 

 logical action of alcohol. 



In 1874, Bowditch served with C. W. Swan and E. S. Wood, on a commission appointed by 

 the mayor of Boston to examine and report upon the comparative desirability, on sanitary 

 grounds, of the rivers near Boston which might serve for additional water supply. 



SERVICES TO MEDICAL EDUCATION. 



Until 1865, instruction in physiology at the Harvard Medical School was given by Oliver 

 Wendell Holmes, Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology. It consisted of remarks on 

 function during anatomy lectures and of a relatively small number of lectures on physiology 

 itself at the end of the course. From 1865 to 1870, Dr. Josiah S. Lombard aided in the physio- 

 logical teaching, and during the year 1870-71, Dr. William T. Lusk, as lecturer in physiology, 

 presented the subject and illustrated it with numerous experiments. This subordinate position 

 of physiology in the medical curriculum was changed when Bowditch returned from European 

 study in 1871. The Parkman professorship was restricted to anatomy, and though Bowditch 

 had the title of assistant professor he had full charge of physiological instruction and at once 

 instituted an admirable course of lectures and demonstrations. He continued in active service 

 for 35 years. In 1876, he was appointed professor, and from 1903 until his resignation in 1906 

 occupied the newly established George Higginson professorship of physiology in the Harvard 

 Medical School. 



In the teaching of physiology Dr. Bowditch's instruction was marked by wide learning, 

 clear discussion of controverted questions, cautious inference when convincing facts were not 

 at hand, and by orderly exposition. His lectures were unusually well illustrated by methods 

 which made lasting impressions. A notable contribution to educational procedure was the 

 sending of students to the original sources for material for physiological theses which were read 

 before the class. The conferences at which these theses were presented and the weekly quizzes 

 which Dr. Bowditch conducted were delightfully informal and conversational. Although 

 welcoming with open mind the introduction of the laboratory method of teaching physiology 

 in the later years of his service as a professor, he warned against too great a reaction from purely 

 didactic methods of instruction "lest useful as well as useless things be swept away," and 

 declared that "a good teacher with a bad method is more effective than a bad teacher with a 

 good method." 



Looking back on 27 years of experience he was so impressed by the vast increase of knowl- 

 edge of medical science and of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that he urged, in 1898, 

 as president of the American Society of Naturalists, certain reforms in medical education. 

 Again in 1900, as president of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, he returned 

 to the problem presented by the immense mass of information which medical schools are 

 attempting to crowd into students during the four-year course, and in an address on "The Medical 

 School of the Future" ventured certain predictions. Because the future medical school must 



