Personal Reminiscences of Dr. Meltzer. 



23 



This represented the spirit of his great love for scientific work. 

 At one and the same time he not only fulfilled the desire of his 

 life, but he renounced the material treasures of this world, and yet 

 he remained free and un trammeled to do as he liked. On one 

 occasion when I publicly mentioned this incident before him he 

 regarded me with disapproval, and yet I believe it belongs to 

 the story of his life. Very few men at the age of fifty-five would 

 do likewise. 



Meltzer was always a prominent figure at those international 

 congresses which he attended. On such occasions the friend- 

 ships between Meltzer and his old associate, Knonecker, were 

 always warmly renewed. At the International Physiological 

 Congress at Groningen in 191 3 Meltzer, speaking in German, 

 presented an eloquent and graciously worded invitation that the 

 proposed congress of 19 16 meet in New York. At the close of 

 the speech a German turned to me and said, "Aber, Meltzer 's 

 Rede war schon! " 



Like many of us who had known the better side of intellectual 

 Germany, Meltzer was extremely cast down by the war. He 

 sought to prepare the way for peace in his "Fraternitas medi- 

 corum" which was founded on the assumption that, since physi- 

 cians of the Red Cross were bound to serve friend and foe alike, 

 therefore, physicians themselves could readily resume friendly 

 relations at the termination of hostilities. The supreme bar- 

 barity of modern warfare, however, has prevented the consumma- 

 tion of this altruistic hope. 



Meltzer belonged truly to the younger men of his generation. 

 For them he would make any sacrifice. He established the Ameri- 

 can Association of Clinical Research, the members of which were 

 to be workers in the scientific sense. This society was so revolu- 

 tionary that it earned the name of "The Young Turks." He 

 was continually saying that in clinical medicine we had not yet 

 reached a proper level of accomplishment, a level he hoped would 

 still be attained in the future. It is usually hard for an older 

 man to properly appraise those who are much younger than he. 

 Liebig thought Voit a man without ideas, and Yoit twenty years 

 later knew of no prominent physiologist of forty years of age, 

 at a time when Kossel and Hofmeister would both have been in- 



