420 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. LII. No. 1349 



proved indeed to be the spark which ignited 

 the tinder of his latent interest in pathology 

 and caused it to burst into flame. Fortunately 

 Welch now entered in October, 1874, upon his 

 interneship at Bellevue Hospital, where this 

 strongly aroused impulse was to find an 

 abundant field for expression. He now also 

 came more directly imder Delafield's influence, 

 and was thrown with the elder Janeway. 

 Much of his time was spent in the deadhouse 

 performing autopsies, first on his own and 

 then on many other cases; and it is a remark- 

 able tribute to his technical skill and acumen 

 of observation, as well as felicity of descrij)- 

 tion, that Delafield invited him to use his 

 special book for recording the protocols of the 

 postmortem examinations, and that he was 

 made a curator of the Wood Museum attached 

 to the hospital. 



Although it was perhaps not clearly per- 

 -ceptible at the time, it now appears that the 

 circumstances surro\mding and thus acting 

 mpon the sensitive imagination of Welch, the 

 student, were favorable to his development; 

 for notwithstanding the poverty of material 

 resources and of laboratory facilities of the 

 era, he had the good fortune to come imder 

 the influence in the medical college of not a 

 few men of remarkable mental vigor and at- 

 tainments. Besides those already mentioned, 

 there were on the faculty of the college in 

 his day Dalton and Curtis in physiology, St. 

 John and Chandler in chemistry, Edward 

 Curtis in materia medica, Markoe in surgery. 

 Sands and Sabine in anatomy and McLean 

 in obstetrics; weekly clinical lectures were 

 given by Willard Parker and T. Gaillard 

 Thomas, the prestige of whose strong person- 

 alities and eminent careers in surgery and in 

 obstetrics and gynecology respectively must 

 have been potent forces. He was thrown as 

 prosector into close association with Sabine 

 and with the demonstrators of anatomy, John 

 Curtis and McBurney. It was especially at 

 the suggestion of Sabine that Welch wrote 

 his graduating thesis upon goiter, which re- 

 ceived the first prize, and in the preparation 

 of which he familiarized himself with medical 

 literature and bibliography at the 'New York 



Hospital Library. At Bellevue Hospital his 

 contacts with Delafield and with Janeway 

 became numerous and close, the forerunner, 

 as it chanced, of a relationship destined to 

 become even more intimate and significant at 

 a somewhat later period. 



Moreover, the era in which the young stu- 

 dent found himself was one of fundamental 

 flux of belief brought about by the new 

 cellular pathology and the discoveries of 

 PasteTir just impending. Into this whirlpool 

 of shifting ideas, which were to move in the 

 next succeeding years with ever-increasing 

 speed, Welch with his eager, open and re- 

 sponsive mind was throvm. That his imagi- 

 nation was powerfully stirred by the intellec- 

 tual ferment of the time may be assiuned. 

 One circumstance is, however, quite clear: 

 at this stage pathology as an independent 

 career had not been seriously before his mind, 

 nor was it so to present itself until a whole 

 new set of experiences had been pressed 

 through. 



The year and a half's interneship over, 

 Welch is about to take ship for what proved 

 to be for him and us a great adventure. In 

 April, 1876, in company with his friend and 

 fellow townsman. Dr. Frederic S. Dennis, he 

 sailed on the Cunarder Bothnia for Liverpool. 

 From Liverpool he went to London, where he 

 spent a few days, crossed the channel from 

 Harwich to Rotterdam and made his way 

 leisurely along the flowering Dutch and Bel- 

 gian fields as the spring was passing into the 

 mild early summer months, toward Strass- 

 burg, the first stopping place on the long but 

 important road which was about to fascinate 

 his view. 



Welch's European experience begins with 

 Waldeyer, the director of the Anatomical In- 

 stitute in Strassburg, with whom he studied 

 normal histology. This subject was of course 

 taken up on account of its fundamental im- 

 portance as a basis for pathological histology. 

 But it is significant that the interest in chem- 

 istry, also as a foundation subject, which 

 carried Welch to !N"ew Haven on the very 

 threshold of entrance to his medical studies, 

 had remained alive; hence part of his time 



