504 EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES. 



influence, and for four years the professor of the theory and practice of 

 medicine in this university. He belonged to that remarkable group 

 of American physicians, trained under Louis, who brought to this 

 country the best methods and traditions of the French school of medi- 

 cine at the time of its highest glory. His diagnostic powers are said 

 to have been remarkable. With his broad sympathies, his lofty ideals, 

 and his active and enlightened efforts for the promotion of clinical 

 medicine, how he would have welcomed such opportunities as will be 

 afforded by this laboratory to contribute to a better knowledge of the 

 nature, the diagnosis, and the treatment of disease. 



Our country has, until within a very few years, been deprived of 

 the encouragement and opportunities for original investigations in the 

 medical sciences afforded by large and thoroughly equipped labora- 

 tories. We can still count upon the fingers of one hand our medical 

 laboratories which are comparable in their construction, organization, 

 and appliances to the great European laboratories. Notwithstanding 

 these obstacles, there have been American physicians of whose con- 

 tributions to medical science we may feel proud. 



But a new era has dawned. Of that we are witnesses here to-day. 

 The value of medical laboratories is now widely recognized among us. 

 To those of us who appreciate the underlying currents in medicine, 

 who follow with eager interest the results of the almost feverish activi- 

 ties in foreign laboratories, who recognize the profound interest and 

 importance of the many medical problems which await only patient 

 investigation and suitable facilities for their solution, and who would 

 like to see our country take the prominent position it should in these 

 investigations, our laboratories may seem slow in coming, but they will 

 in time be provided by enlighted benevolence. The individual or insti- 

 tution or hospital which contributes to the establishment of a good 

 laboratory devoted to any of the medical sciences merits in unusual 

 degree the gratitude of all medical men; yes, of every true friend of 

 humanity. Such gratitude we feel for the generous and public-spirited 

 founder of this laboratory, who has contributed largely to the advance- 

 ment of medicine in this country, and of whose splendid services to 

 this university I need not speak in this presence. 



I congratulate this city and this university and this hospital upon 

 the important addition made by this laboratory to higher medical edu- 

 cation and the opportunities for scientific work in this country. May 

 the enlightened aims of the founder and the hopes of all interested in 

 the x^romotion of medicine in this country be fulfilled by the scientific 

 activities which will now begin in the William Pepper Laboratory of 

 Clinical Medicine. 



