August 23, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



235 



which you owe so much, who honors you 

 with her endorsement to-day, who certifies 

 for your efficiency to the public, who 

 counts on you to uphold her high tradi- 

 tions, and who confides no small part of 

 her reputation to your care and custody. 

 And with the sense of this responsibility 

 assumed on your part I give you greeting 

 and welcome from the school which to-day 

 awards to you its degree, and extend to 

 you the fellowship of the profession whose 

 ranks you to-day formally join. 



And now permit me for a moment to 

 look back on some of your personal ex- 

 periences of the past four years of under- 

 graduate life, and to ask you to consider 

 and interpret them in reference to the in- 

 fluence they should exert on the shaping 

 of your future careers. Any one of your 

 various branches of study will furnish 

 ample material to point my meaning, but 

 let me draw my illustration from my own 

 field and recall to your minds some phases 

 of your anatomical studies. Probably, at 

 the very outset of your anatomical work 

 you were more or less confused and over- 

 whelmed by the multiplicity of detail 

 which you were called upon to master. 

 Much of it undoubtedly appeared to you 

 unnecessarily complicated, needlessly mi- 

 nute and exhaustive in description and 

 classification. Eager for the practical ap- 

 plication of knowledge, you possibly ques- 

 tioned the actual value of some of the in- 

 formation which, by the terms of your 

 course, you were required to make your 

 own. But let me ask you now, at the close 

 of your successful preparatory period, to 

 regard the hours thus spent from a slightly 

 different standpoint and to draw from your 

 experience a lesson for your future inde- 

 pendent guidance and conduct. Remem- 

 ber, in the first place, that to many of you, 

 at least, when you began your professional 

 work as undergraduates of this school. 



methods of natural object study were new 

 and the correct perspective difficult to ac- 

 quire. Subconsciously, perhaps, you gi-ad- 

 ually came to realize the value of the train- 

 ing which these early anatomical exercises 

 developed in the close association and co- 

 ordination of brain, hand and eye. 



It is quite true that to you, practitioners 

 of medicine and surgery, much of the 

 knowledge thus acquired will be of no 

 direct practical use in its individual and 

 concrete form. To the coming expert in 

 internal medicine the foramina and proc- 

 esses of the sphenoid bone are of little 

 importance, nor does the successful practi- 

 tioner of midwifry find that his cases 

 hinge on his knowledge of the terminal 

 distribution of the ulnar artery. As 

 stated thus boldly, this is undoubtedly 

 true, but in drawing these conclusions you 

 should not lose sight of some important 

 facts. 



In the first place, whatever special 

 avenue of professional activity may open 

 to you, the training which you have re- 

 ceived here in mastering the details of 

 organic structure, in correctly estimating 

 the physical, mechanical and biological 

 problems you will encounter, in analyzing 

 the trend and the ultimate effect of a 

 pathological environment on normal struc- 

 tures, these are the forces which your medi- 

 cal course has placed at your disposal, and 

 your ultimate success will depend on the 

 keenness, dexterity and judgment with 

 which you employ them. It makes little 

 difference how you have acquired the cor- 

 rect methods of study and interpretation, 

 to what exercise you owe the delicacy of 

 touch, the capacity for accurate observa- 

 tion and logical deduction. You have 

 chosen an arduous profession. You have 

 passed successfully through your pre- 

 liminary training. You are fitted to begin 

 your i-eal work, but remember that this 



