496 CALVIN ELLIS. 



their essential and minute characteristics. He claims that the " sci- 

 ence of medicine is in advance of tlic art." And here he broaches 

 the chief idea underlying his unfinished work on " Symptomatology," 

 and declares that " to make a diagnosis needs as nice a calculation, a 

 balancing of many points, as any legal inquiry; but instead of this we 

 make a rough guess." " If you would elevate the profession," says he, 

 in another part, " receive every new truth fi-om any source." These 

 are indeed high themes, and nobly treated by him. They are true 

 to all the aims of this Academy in its desire that its members should 

 strive for simple, severe truth in every branch of human learning. 



In 1880 (No. 41 on list) his pamphlet on "Albuminuria as a Symp- 

 tom " gives a full idea of his great learning upon that single symptom, 

 and foreshadows more clearly the same above-named work. 



This memorial would leave a meagre idea of Dr. Ellis's literary 

 work, if we should not attempt- to give some few details of a work 

 upon medical diagnosis, on which for many years, and with many 

 interruptions caused by disease, he was laboring even up to within 

 a few days of his death. Unfortunately, it has been left in such an 

 imperfect condition, on many and disconnected pieces of paper, which 

 he alone could have brought together so as to make a whole produc- 

 tion, that publication seems impossible. 



The word Symptomatology was chosen by Dr. Ellis as showing 

 somewhat the character of the work. The ideas * underlying it are, 

 in my view, far in advance of the present mode of clinical instruction. 

 The work would have been, in truth, an encyclopaedia of all the symp- 

 toms which have been actually proved to occur in connection with the 

 various diseases to which mankind are at times subject. These would 

 have been arranged alphabetically, and the diseases, in wliich they 

 had been thorouglily and scientifically proved to occur, would have 

 been given. Kefcrences to authors, in which the less known symp- 

 toms are- reported, would have been made. This might have been 

 called its first part. In the second part, he would have had re- 

 corded cases, for the diagnosis of which he would refer to each symp- 

 tom as found in the first part, lie would probably be able very soon 

 to eliminate from any case under examination a great majority of 

 the diseases, in which the symptom might be known to occur. In 

 this way, he would proceed Avith all the symptoms recorded in the 



* Dr. Ellis has distinctly docl.arcd that to Skoda and Oppolzer he owes 

 tlie first conception of a plan, which he had vainly sought for from previous 

 teachers. 



