JEFFRIES AND MORRILL WYMAN 107 



tion me about it, and our discussion of the matter brought us 

 to the place of friends, though we were generations apart. His 

 effort to form a judgment of this case, his inevitable fairness, 

 made a great impression on my mind; it was the most beautiful 

 exhibition of fairness and sympathy I have ever seen. Out of 

 it came the conclusion that while the action of Agassiz was rash 

 and illegal, the results were on the whole just. I distinctly re- 

 call how well Wyman weighed a suggestion of mine that it would 

 not be right to judge Agassiz's course of action by the rules of 

 the place where he was, but rather by those which held in the 

 part of the world where he had acquired the standard of con- 

 duct which he brought with him when in middle life he came 

 to this country; that the College in taking him took not only 

 his learning but his habits as well ; that these would not always 

 happen to fit a New England school was to be expected. 



Jeffries Wyman was one of three brothers who had a place 

 in the life of their time. Merrill, the elder, was a physician 

 of distinction who served the community of Cambridge, espe- 

 cially that of the College, for over sixty years. He had the same 

 simplicity and honesty that characterized his brother Jeffries. 

 He also knew most accurately the difference between know- 

 ledge and conjecture, and brought to his judgment of malady 

 a rare penetration as well as an inventiveness in devising the 

 means of help. Though successful by dint of his success, he 

 lacked a full share of popularity because of his unwillingness 

 to humor his patients. If he found nothing the matter with them 

 he was likely, after looking at the pictures on the wall and 

 making some irrelevant remarks about politics or the weather, 

 to go away without any evident consideration of the case. If, 

 however, there was reason for it, he would set about his task of 

 helping with amazing devotion. When near eighty years of age, 

 long by the time when he was willing to undertake any surgical 

 work, he found himself in face of a case of strangulated hernia, 

 when to save the life an immediate operation was necessary. 

 He had no surgical instruments with him, but he at once and 



