10 SAMUEL JAMES MELTZER— HOWELL ^^'^ouxxt 



enabled him to influence directly the thought and tendencies in medical circles. That he was a 

 strong factor in the development of American medicine is recognized freely and gratefully by 

 his contemporaries. It happens sometimes that men may pose as authorities in medical science 

 among practitioners although they have little honor among the workers in science, or vice versa, 

 but it was Doctor Meltzer's deserved good fortune to be most highly respected and honored by 

 both the practitioners and the laboratory workers. While this reputation rested primarily upon 

 the character of his investigative work, his personal influence was augmented greatly by his 

 constant active participation in the meetings of the numerous societies to which he belonged. 

 He believed strongly in the benefits to be derived from personal contact among workers, and he 

 was especially interested in getting together the men who were doing scientific work in clinical 

 medicine. He was the founder and first president of the Society for Experimental Biology and 

 Medicine, and at the memorial meeting held by this society shortly after his death the speakers 

 all emphasized the great importance of his personality in developing this important center of scien- 

 tific activity. It was at his invitation that in 1 903 the workers in the biological sciences who were 

 resident in New York met to form an organization whose express purpose was to stimulate 

 experimental work in biology and medicine. He gave to this society such devoted personal serv- 

 ice and identified himself so completely with its activities that for a long period it was commonly 

 designated as the " Meltzer Verein." In like manner he was the founder and first president, 

 1909, of the " Society of Clinical Investigation," the main purpose of which was to bring together 

 the men, mostly young men, who were engaged in investigations bearing upon internal medicine. 

 His fellow members give unanimous testimony to the influence that he exerted upon this group 

 of men, and to the inspiration that they derived from the fine and high ideals that he impressed 

 upon the society through his addresses and his example. He served also as president of the 

 Association of American Physicians, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American 

 Gastroenterological Society, the Federation of American Biological Societies, and the American 

 Physiological Society, and was in addition a faithful and active member in many of the other 

 national societies, such as the Society of Biological Chemists, the Society of Pharmacology and 

 Experimental Therapeutics, the Society for Experimental Pathology, the American Philosophical 

 Society, the National Academy of Sciences, etc. 



In most of these societies his membership was far from being simply nominal. He attended 

 the meetings, he read papers and took an active part in the discussions and the business sessions. 

 In all of them it may be said that he was a prominent member, influential in his contribution 

 and personally known to the other active members. This fact in itself, when we consider the 

 range of subjects covered and remember that these societies are composed of specialists and 

 trained investigators, enables us to understand how his influence was so widespread. He came 

 into contact, as a colleague, with the workers in all branches of medical sciences. He knew the 

 kind of work that each was doing, so that to a really remarkable extent he was in sympathetic 

 touch with the progress being made in all departments. To maintain this relationship meant 

 of course that he kept himself informed in the current literature of all these various branches 

 of medicine. He was in fact an indefatigable student in all sides of modern medicine. Members 

 of his family inform me that he subscribed to some 35 medical and scientific periodicals and 

 read them all faithfully in spite of the fact that very poor eyesight made his reading slow and 

 difficult. But he had a retentive memory and was quick to grasp the essentials of a paper and, 

 besides, the effort necessary to keep pace with medical and scientific progress was not for him 

 a task, it was his greatest pleasure. It was this sustained and absorbed devotion that made it 

 possible for him to participate actively and creditably in so many fields of medical research. 

 He was really well informed on many sides, and this broad knowledge, supported, as it was, by 

 an excellent memory for details, enabled him to appear to great advantage in society meetings 

 in the discussions of papers. It would seem as though he was prepared to make some contribu- 

 tion to almost any paper that was presented, although the subject might be far outside his 

 special fields of work. Some phase of the subject would appeal to him or remind him of things 

 that he had read or that he knew from his own experience. Whatever it was, even if somewhat 

 remote or trivial, he was likely to speak it out, as a sort of expression of interest, or to stir up 



