ESSAY-REVIEWS 81 



His of Leipzig and Cunningham of Dublin. In 1888 Billings 

 delivered a striking historical address on " Medical Museums " 

 in which, speaking of his own collection at Washington, he 

 said that the " medical museum hinted at matters which lay- 

 outside the scope of known physical and chemical laws." 



Events and doings crowd the canvas of the picture of 

 Billings's later life so closely that it is scarcely possible to cast 

 more than a fleeting glance at them. He visited this country 

 many times, and he formed many warm attachments and close 

 friendships, but the two most famous visits were the occasions 

 when in 1881 he delivered the address on " Medical Literature " 

 before the London meeting of the International Medical 

 Congress, and in 1886 the address in Medicine before the British 

 Medical Association on " Medicine in the United States." The 

 temporary celebrity which the subject and manner of delivery 

 of this frank exposition of the contemporary state of the pro- 

 fession in the States secured him on this side of the Atlantic 

 was somewhat clouded by the widening of the rift already 

 existing between himself and prominent members of the 

 American Medical Association. It is needless to say that the 

 publication of this address meant to Billings the severance 

 of lifelong friendships, an event suffered by him with his usual 

 equanimity. 



His professorship of hygiene at the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, his gift to medical literature of the Index Catalogue 

 of the Surgeon-General's Library with which he was actively 

 connected up to 1895, hi s directorship of the New York Public 

 Library, his writings and lectures on medical and vital sta- 

 tistics, his connection in later years with the Carnegie Institute 

 which secured the continuation of the Index Medicus, are events 

 for a knowledge of which readers must refer to the memoir 

 itself. His undertakings would have taxed the mind and 

 strength of a man whose health never failed him, but from 

 middle life Billings suffered from a malady which necessitated 

 not only medical but repeated surgical relief. 



The collection of the material for this memoir must have 

 been a work of great labour, but the effect of its careful 

 perusal has been to imprint on the memory a due sequence 

 of events in a wonderful career. There are three portraits of 

 Billings in early, middle, and later life respectively, a detailed 

 bibliography of his many writings, and a genealogy of his 

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