SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 335 



Time may efface the personality of our founder, as it lias effaced 

 the personality of Rahere, the founder of St. Bartholomew's ; but 

 the beneficence of Johns Hopkins will last for centuries, and grati- 

 tude will cherish the memory of his broad views, his great liberal- 

 ity, his wise and beneficent purposes. 



The previous speakers have told us of the circumstances which 

 led to the construction of these buildings, and have described their 

 purposes. Let me, from a different point of view, point out some 

 of the benefits which are likely to proceed from this foundation. 

 As I enter upon this theme, I am reminded that in 1789, John 

 'Ho^Ndir A, facile princeps among modern philanthropists, published 

 in a quarto volume, just before his death, the observations he had 

 made upon the lazarettos of Europe. That was the beginning of 

 reforms in prisons, asylums, refuges, and hospitals. To this work 

 he prefixed these words of Cicero {De Oraiore, I. 8), a motto so 

 appropriate that I might take it for a text : " Quid tarn porro re- 

 giuni, tarn liberals, tarn mujiificum, qttavi opemferresiipplicibus, 

 £xciiare adflictos, dare salutem, liberare periculis." 



First, last, and always, this hospital is to furnish relief to the 

 sick and wounded. Make the best of it, introduce fresh air and 

 sunshine, and provide the utmost comfort ; secure wise physicians, 

 engage the best trained nurses ; decorate the walls with pictures ; 

 bring fruit and flowers, and books and friends, and even the com- 

 forting influences of religion, — yet you cannot conceal the direful 

 consciousness that this is the home of suffering. 



'* From any other ill 

 (Except it be remorse) can men escape 

 By work, — the healing of divinest balm 

 To whomso hath the courage to begin, — 

 But sickness holds the sick man in a chain 

 No will can break, or bend to earthly use." j 



The names that have been given to these abodes of the sick are 

 ■suggestive. " Hospitality " and " hospital " alike suggest the be- 

 stowal of kindness to guests. The word " lazaretto," ultimately 

 degraded, pointed at first to the restoration of life. " Misericordia," 

 " La Charite," " La Pitie," " The Home of the Good Samaritan," 

 ■" The House of Mercy," bring to mind the kindly influences of 

 love and care. St. John, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew, and St. 

 Luke, above all other apostles, are favorite patronymics. Paracel- 

 sus died in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. Bethlehem, Bethany, 

 Bethesda, and Jerusalem recall the scenes where the great Physi- 

 cian was present. The name of Christ has been given to many a 

 foundation. In other places the hospital shares with the temple 

 the name of " Hotel-Dieu," or " House of God." 



By whatever name it may be called, this is a convent where 

 sickness is the abbess. The rule of sympathy for the suffering 

 must govern everybody with a strictness of discipline as rigid as 

 the rule of the Benedictines or the Carthusians. Those who daily 

 walk these cloisters will be the warders of life and health, however 

 high their station, or however humble their service ; and casual 

 visitors will not cross the threshold of the wards without pity for 

 those who are disabled, or without admiration and gratitude for 

 those whose lives are spent in alleviating distress. 



This hospital will not only meet the daily calls of humanity, it 

 will stand ready to render extraordinary services in those emer- 

 gencies which not even the progress of municipal reform and pre- 

 ventive medicine can entirely ward off. A fire, an explosion, an 

 accident on the rails or on the seashore, the fall of a platform or of 

 a building poorly constructed, may at any moment tax the utmost 

 resources of a great establishment. True, we have no fear of 

 leprosy and the plague ; we have almost ceased to dread the com- 

 ing of the cholera ; yellow-fever we are hoping to thwart in its ap- 

 proaches to our Northern seaports (vaccination, which was spoken 

 of by Sir James Simpson " as the greatest thought ever broached 

 in practical medicine," is a great prophylactic) : but we are not 

 certain that diphtheria and infectious fevers will not continue to be 

 epidemic; nor can we always be sure that the boards of health in 

 the city and State will succeed in protecting us, as well as they 

 can, from the inroads of pestilence. Indeed, it is well to inquire 

 whether Baltimore is now fortified as it should be against the hos- 

 tile incursions of epidemic disease. In addition to its other func- 



Ugo Bassi 



I the Hospital, p. 13. 



tions, this hospital will stand as a reserved force, — a sort of store - 

 house of energy, ready to serve the city if apprehension and disease 

 spread their pall upon it. 



Here let me say, in anticipation of the future and in memory of 

 the past, that, in all the records of bravery on land and sea, none 

 are more noble than those of the medical profession. Free from all 

 excitement, free from the hope of reward, free from any commands 

 but those which are divine, they have in times of pestilence gone 

 from bed to bed, firm, fearless, faithful, carrying the offerings of 

 cheer, comfort, and relief, and often of restoration to health and 

 vigor. For them there is no repose in time of danger. The black 

 wings of death hovering over a city do not deter them from duty ; 

 and often it may be said of them, as Milton said of Abdiel, " faith- 

 ful found among the faithless," faithful only they. Read the an- 

 nals of modern pestilence, of cholera in New York, of fever and 

 famine in Ireland, of yellow-fever in the South. Everywhere it is 

 the same story. The more direful the record, the more unflinch- 

 ing, the more self-forgetful, the more humane, are the efforts of 

 physicians. 



While the offices of a hospital are bestowed without money and 

 without price on those who are destitute, those who are able to 

 pay for suitable attendance, and for the domestic comforts to which 

 they are accustomed, may discover that they can here be better 

 treated than in many private houses. The conditions of quiet are 

 more easily secured ; suitable diet at unusual hours can be com- 

 manded ; medical attendance is within call at every moment of the 

 day and night ; manifold appliances for relief are more readily ob- 

 tained. More and more frequently travellers, students, all whose 

 homes are in hotels and boarding-houses, and even many who 

 have good private homes, turn toward good hospitals when they 

 see the need approaching for prolonged and special care. For the 

 wants of such persons, provision has been made in the wards here 

 set apart for paying patients, male and female. 



This hospital would be a very narrow institution if it kept to 

 itself its experience. It is the essence of quackery to deal in mys- 

 teries and nostrums : it is the glory of medicine that it owns no 

 patents, and conceals no discoveries. On the contrary, the best 

 hospitals of the world consider it one of their first duties, second 

 only to the care of their patients, to record the cases they have 

 treated, the methods they have pursued, the results, whether favor- 

 able or unfavorable, which have followed. Scientific studies in 

 pathology and practical medicine must be printed. Special papers, 

 often requiring costly illustrations, must be published upon extraor- 

 dinary cases, and upon new operations and modes of relief. It is 

 thus that the science of medicine is advanced. Where secrecy 

 reigns, carelessness and ignorance delight to hide : skill loves the 

 light. 



It is impossible to have a^hospital without its becoming a place 

 for medical education. It is interesting to note that in the physi- 

 cian's oath, attributed to Hippocrates, the duty of imparting knowl- 

 edge is explicitly enforced. Even the country doctor, as he rides 

 from village to viflage, takes in his gig an observing pupil, like the 

 squire to a knight-errant. Eveiy great surgeon is watched with 

 the closest attention by the younger physicians who assist him. 

 Every mother is the pupil of the physician whom she calls upon to 

 attend her suffering child. So, of course, a hospital, having upon 

 its staff men of rare qualifications who are in daily consultation 

 with their most skilful brethren, is, from, the necessities of the case, 

 a place for instruction. How systematic that instruction will be, 

 depends on circumstances that at the moment need not be pre- 

 sented. All that need now be said is, that hospitals the wide 

 world over are the schools of medicine and surgery. 



The training of nurses is another form of hospital activity, re- 

 cently developed, never hence to be abandoned. To the sister- 

 hoods of the Roman Catholic Church, to the Protestant Deacon- 

 esses of Kaiserswerth and the Bethanien at Berlin, and to many 

 guilds in many lands, much credit is due for lessons they have 

 taught the world as to the importance of training nurses. Eliza- 

 beth Fry was one of the first Englishwomen to propose such in- 

 struction. Florence Nightingale, by her services in the Crimean 

 war and by her subsequent writings, has borne a noble part in this 

 work. So, too, have our own countrywomen. The civil war, full 

 of sad recollections, has some bright stories, and among them none 



