OBITUARY. 21 



Had Dr. Reese lost his pen and his rhetoric the day after he 

 entered New York, he would probably have risen to lasting 

 eminence and great prosperity in the medical profession. But, 

 "he was made so 5" and therefore he continued to write and 

 speak. 



His first school of rhetoric, when quite a boy, was a Methodist 

 meeting; and he continued to exercise his talents, in the same 

 way, after he wa« a physician. Now it is a felicity in the life of 

 a physician to accept without a question the creed and offices of 

 the church in which chance or fortune may place him. But, Dr. 

 Reese took to religion rather antagonistically. In his airing of 

 his inner man he somehow put his foot over the trace, and came 

 to some disagreements with some of the regular clergy. And as 

 it was not an easy thing to get the last word with the Dr. the 

 matter was rather ungracefully referred to at his funeral. 



Situated as he was in New York, it was natural that Dr. Ree«e 

 should desire to be a public teacher of medicine. He was, at 

 different times, employed as a professor in three medical colleges. 

 He was a zealous and spirited teacher ; but always in small col- 

 leges, and always to the injury of his professional success. 



Indeed there was a sort of epidemical furor over the northern 

 states for medical colleges. Gentlemen who had been educated 

 abroad, and had seen the glory of Letsom, Hunter and. Cooper, 

 returned emulous of such glory at home. Colleges sprang up in 

 the great cities. And when it was seen that emigrants in the 

 north and negroes in the south needed physic, the rage for multi- 

 plying small doctors exceeded all bounds, and flooded the country 

 with cheap men, who have anastomosed with every quackery, 

 without apparent improvement of the public health or advance- 

 ment of medical science. 



Dr. Reese had a faculty and tact at controversy, which drew 

 him away from his profession, in the contest about " The Bible 

 in the Public Schools." The paper of Col. Stone was open to 

 his writings, and he pursued the matter with a zeal which made 

 him the candidate of his party for the office of superintendent. 

 He was elected, and a subsidence in the controversy led to the 

 assumption that the conflict was ended. 



But this was only a side-issue of a much more comprehensive 

 question, which will remain open until it shall be ascertained (at 

 the end of our civil wars) what shall be the future relations of 

 religion to the government, and what church will then be able to 



