THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



'57 



ings to the stock of professional knowledge in 

 any of the branches of scientific knowledge. You 

 will see that this is an enlargement of the pow- 

 ers, and authorizes this institution to grant 

 this degree not only to those who pass a post- 

 graduate course, but also to those who have 

 produced satisfactory evidence of superior 

 attainments in authorship or otherwise. This 

 at once places this College upon a level with 

 Yale, and Harward, and Columbia, the Univer- 

 sity of the City of New York, and other such in. 

 stitutions, in conferring degrees upon gentle- 

 men of scientific or scholarly or literary attain- 

 ments although they may not have passed 

 through a certain post-graduate cuiriculum of 

 study. I dare say that they will be coming 

 from the East and the West and the North and 

 the South to discover how these possibilities 

 may strike them, and if the experience of the 

 Faculty is as is the experience of some of our 

 older institutions of learning, some of the pro- 

 fessors will wish they had never been born. 



Now, I have not time to dwell, or even to 

 speak of in a limited degree, a large number of 

 the points upon which I would like to dwell, 

 but I want to call the attention of the audience 

 to this fact, that I was particularly struck, and I 

 hope that under the circumstances you will 

 pardon me for alluding to myself, because I am 

 the victim. I was particularly struck in passing 

 through that institution with one thing, and that 

 was this : how closely these gentlemen em- 

 bodied in their methods of instruction, 

 the principles which underlie scientific 

 instruction in any and every school from 

 the kindergarten to the university and 

 that is this, according to the principles 

 laid down during the lifetime of Apostalaso > 

 who was born in 1746, laid down more than a 

 hundred years ago, the cardinal principles up- 

 on which elementary instruction is based, and 

 which must always apply to instruction when 

 it is delivered or imparted by the hand of a 

 master-workman — that you should proceed 

 from the simple to the complex. I noted, I 

 cannot elaborate upon it again — that they 

 should proceed from the concrete to the ab- 

 stract, and that they should proceed from the 

 known to the unknown. Now, I have visited 

 many schools of mines, and schools for applied 

 science throughout the United States in by- 

 gone years, and I have never seen, my friends, 

 and I want to say to you, that although in the 

 legal profession, I am not paid for saying these 

 things. I have never seen an institution which 

 from an observation made in its various depart- 



ments and laboratories, and with the apparatus 

 and appurtenances that they have, and an ex- 

 amination into their course of study, I have 

 never seen an institution that more perfectly 

 embodied these great principles that underlie 

 all instruction. They have the laboratory be- 

 fore them — they proceed from the known to 

 the unknown, and before the professor an 

 nounces a principle as a duly established fact, 

 by a series of experiments along the lines of 

 investigation at hand, he leads the pupil grad- 

 ually up to the final conclusion and to the 

 enunciation of the principle involved, so that 

 you see here throughout all of its departments, 

 in the department of materia medica, in the 

 department of pharmacy, in the department of 

 pharmacognosy or knowledge of the materials 

 of which the drugs are composed, in the labor- 

 atory, in the chemical department, everywhere 

 you see here exemplified these great principles 

 that underlie the proper process of instruction. 



I want to call your attention to one other 

 thing, at least, and that is this, that it is well 

 recognized in every intelligent community, and 

 by a discriminating public that every profession 

 that has to meet with the recommendation*, 

 and with the sympathy and support of the pub- 

 lic, must have at the bottom of it, correct mor 

 al principles. There is the highest code of 

 morals, there is the highest code of profession- 

 al honor we all understand, among the mem- 

 bers, and governing the members of the medi- 

 cal profession. You do not take your cases 

 involving your rights of property or person, to 

 an attorney or a counselor who is of low grade 

 in character or in reputation. There is a high 

 degree of professional ethics in law, and in 

 medicine, and of course, in theology, but I 

 want to say that there are equally high degrees 

 of professional honor imposed by this institu- 

 tion, and embodied in its code of ethics, upon 

 the young men who graduate here. 



Let me read one or two — a few. First of all, 

 they agree that they will accept a standard of 

 excellence in their professional work, and in 

 the dispensing of the preparations with which 

 they have to deal in their daily vocation, and 

 that will not depart from that professional 

 high standard imposed by the highest authority 

 of the country except where higher authority 

 if possible, has proved some other process 

 more reliable to attain the same end. You see 

 at once, this gives a guarantee for professional 

 accuracy. Again, this class pledges itself that 

 they will allow no quack medicines that are gotten 

 up simply to sell, to take the place of the v ( 1 



