498 CALVIN ELLIS. 



able minority, have carried out all their plans as "originally pro- 

 posed." * These changes have made the School, in its perfect arrange- 

 ments for instruction, the equal of any one in tliis country, and very 

 much superior to most of them. It now vies with some of the best in 

 Europe. By them the name of Harvard University has been greatly 

 honored. To Dr. Ellis, as Dean of the Faculty, and his younger as- 

 sociates, is due the supreme merit of giving this great boon to our 

 country. 



It must be admitted that this statement contradicts the resolution 

 accepted and recorded by the Overseers of the University at their 

 meeting, June 22, 1882. That resolution gives the high merit of these 

 reforms to one who was, throughout the years of discussion thereupon, 

 their ablest opponent. Each item was carried by the Faculty, in spite 

 of that opposition. Yet the resolution of the Overseers declares that 

 *' his [namely, the opponent's] practical wisdom and energy greatly con- 

 tributed to and controlled the progressive steps by which the Medical 

 Department of the University has reached its present high position." 

 In other words, that resolution virtually gives to another what justly 

 belongs to our deceased associate. Thus much the canons of biograph- 

 ical truthfulness require, if we would enumerate all the reasons the 

 Academy has for honoring the memory of Dr. Ellis. These vast 

 improvements in the means and modes of instruction in medicine, 

 which have been, only within a very short time, finally inaugurated 

 at the Harvard Medical School, are, of themselves, sufficient glory to 

 any one who has striven for them. These reforms have been for many 

 years intimately connected with Dr. Ellis's life-work. Considering 

 their immense influence for good upon medical practice in the future of 

 this country, they perhaps present his strongest claim to the gratitude 

 of the medical profession and of the community, and to honor from this 

 Academy. As all the facts mentioned in this part of our subject rest 

 on unim[)eachable authority, silence upon them, in any memorial of 

 Dr. Ellis, would be a neglect of an obvious duty. 



We have traced Dr. Ellis as a physician, a writer, a professor of 

 medicine, and a reformer in medical education. How was he as a 

 man, publicly and socially, in the more intimate relations of man to 

 man ? No one was ever more public-spirited than he. Twice, dur- 

 ing the civil war, he went, at the request of the Governor of Massa- 



* Words used by Dr. Ellis only a few weeks before his death, when con- 

 versiri};; with myself on the subject. It is believed that they are true, and that 

 medical iiublic opinion fully sustains this assertion. 



