sickness, undisdainful of the garret or the cellar if human need have made them holy-triumphs of a skill made quick by sympathy, of a sympathy made a reality by skill-it is enough to say to you that you are members even now of Guy's Hospital; that her historic nobleness, graced by so many illustrious names, enfolds you; that her resources, by which, when incomparably less rich than now, so many men have been trained to greatness, are at your service. And while our thoughts recall in a rapid survey the names of which Guy's Hospital is proud, assuredly they rest on none with a deeper satisfaction than on that of the physician who has so recently, to the regret of all, resigned the post he has so long adorned. Of those unwearied labours which in past years rendered the name of Owen Rees identical with all that was most profound and helpful in the application of chemistry to pathology and practice, it is not for me to speak; it is known to all how deep is the debt which science owes to them, most heartily acknowledged as it is by those most capable of judging of their worth. How rich and deep a stream of life runs through this hospital may best be evidenced, perhaps, by the men it loses from its outward ranks, and yet lives on no less vigorous and strong. But, indeed, they are not lost, for their love is as deep as

ever; nor would their service, if it were claimed, be less ungrudging.

But Guy's Hospital gives to you more than a past glory, a present privilege; her honour in the future she commits also to your hands. To-day gathering to her, to receive what of instruction she has to bestow, it will not seem to you so long before you stand as the distributors of her blessings to the world. In you and by you she will live. She will be but what you will make her. Out of your ranks must come the men who shall sustain (it will be sure to be sustained) the honour of the past-nay, of the present; worthy successors of the men to whom now your admiration is so justly given, to whom you will so rightly feel it a privilege to listen, but whom here I must not name. Even more still, by you must be sustained, and will be, that wider, deeper, and higher honour of Guy's Hospital, which depends not on the eminence and fame, however great and well deserved, of a few, but on the good and faithful work-often most skilful and splendid work, though little known or applauded-done by the men of Guy's in every land.

For it is the true glory of this hospital that it has, for generation after generation, sent out into the abodes of suffering a band of truthful, honest, and able

men, who have willingly let pass no opportunity of becoming true helpers to their fellows. She has done her part, and will do it yet again in you, in binding all the world in one electric chain of service. As you look round on one another, you are in great measure strangers now; but there is a potent magic in these walls: hence you will go forth an army of brothers, pledged that through you the weight of human sorrow shall be lightened.

There is one spectacle that the past has sometimes seen. Let us record it, lest the future be incredulous; justly incredulous; nay, indignant at the slander. For it was a creature in the shape of a man; and it bore in its right hand a diploma, obtained by pretence of study-a certificate of cunning and deceit. Forth over the earth it walked, a more malignant pestilence: disease itself endowed with will, made powerful to cheat; enriching its armoury of destruction with lies. It has said to the sick and suffering, 'Look to me;' and has let them perish, or guided them to a speedier grave. It has made murder its amusement, and thrust its reddened hand into the pinched pocket of the widow; shaming the thief by meaner robbery. But I am wandering from my subject. I was thinking of the times when there could be found men base enough deliberately to contemplate deceiving their

sick fellows with sham knowledge: of times when men, or things that might be mistaken for them, could come to an institution like this, where such historic memories challenged their emulation, where misery in every form of pathos appealed to their compassion, and could give to time spent in indolence, or riot the name of pleasure.

Very far, indeed, I have wandered from my subject; which is you, gentlemen, and your studies. For you come here to a feast, and a more splendid feast was never spread before man. In its chief epitome the human frame-all Nature spreads herself before you, and invites your gaze. As your eye scans the list of subjects you have to master, you might feel disposed to count their number a burden, and wish (without being chargeable with indolence) that your labours might be restricted to a narrower range. But it would be a fatal wish. The glory of our art is the extent of its range over almost all the sciences; for this means that it is rooted deep in Nature, and insists on pursuing to the utmost the sources of every fact with which it has to deal.

And even now, while we meet, the bounds of medical science are enlarging. We may almost see them expanding day by day, and making tributary fresh domains of knowledge. Not only chemistry,

botany, zoology—these have been long its servants— but new domains of physics, molecular and other, of the science of electric currents, and of heat; problems of the first dawnings of life-for the question of the dependence of putrefaction upon the presence of germs owes its interest and its passionate pursuit to medicine-are drawn into the widening vortex of our studies. Further still: the structure of the earth is bidden to reveal what part it plays in the production of disease; nor does the geologist touch a stratum too deep, or too remote, for the physician to have an interest in his researches. The explorers of the deepest sea-bottom aid him in the study of respiration; the student of storms for him discovers ozone; and the spectroscope, we may be sure, will not have done its work till the study of the remotest star lays its offering at the feet of the healer of disease. We have or, in the person of the physician of the future, shall have-an interest in the colours Sirius flashes back to the patient eye of the astronomer; for they will teach us something more of the planet upon which we dwell. Nay, the milky way itself becomes our servant, and holds up before us in its forms of beauty, winding in spiral clusters through infinitude, the very image of the living forms we question with half-hopeless curiosity beneath

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