PROFESSOR FREER AND THE UNIVERSITY. XXvil 



The methods of successful men are always interesting and 

 instructive. Professor Freer's methods were very simple. In 

 dealing with his superiors he usually made a direct request and 

 reenforced this request by a presentation of all the facts bear- 

 ing upon the subject. If the first effort failed, he would repeat 

 the request until he secured what was wanted or was ordered 

 to desist. In dealing with his colleagues and assistants, his 

 watchword was efficiency and all men were judged upon this 

 basis, a very satisfactory method for a man of his broad learn- 

 ing and experience, but a hazardous one for a less experienced 

 leader. 



Something of Doctor Freer's conception of the function of a 

 medical school is shown in his Commencement Address to the 

 graduating class in 1910 in which he said: 



The exact training- which the graduate of a modern medical school ob- 

 tains from his work in the various laboratories; the development of his 

 powers of observation by a study of physics, chemistry, bacteriology, pathol- 

 ogy; by his contact with the methods of diagnosis and clinical reasoning 

 in the hospital and by the broad phases of hospital discipline which 

 surround him during the final years of his course of study, will have been 

 without meaning if they have not shown him one fundamental fact, that 

 all of this hard work will have been valueless, if he has not had introduced 

 within his being the divine spark of independent thought * * *, jf he 

 has not this ambition, his future will be first one of stagnation, then of 

 retrogression. It has been one of the chief missions of the Faculty to 

 cultivate this spirit among the students, and the members of the latter body 

 themselves must be constantly extending their view-points and developing 

 the various special branches to which they are devoting their attention. 

 What is true of the individual members holds good of any institution of 

 learning, a condition of dependence on what is already known and a tend- 

 ency to look backward into the past is in reality retrogression; and 

 intellectually such an institution must die, no matter how magnificent its 

 buildings, how extensive its equipment, or how generous its means. The 

 teaching force must itself not only be capable of advancing new thought 

 and of developing new methods, but it must utilize these capabilities to the 

 best advantage, continually and restlessly pressing forward to higher 

 ground. Otherwise, the teacher is not capable of inspiring his pupils, he 

 becomes a mere repeater or reciter of text-books, a monitor or supervisor 

 of method which of itself is cast into fixed molds and is already passing 

 toward its end. 



