V.

THE DOCTOR.

VERSES.

(Read at the Complimentary Dinner given to Dr. Holmes by the Medical Profession of New York on April 12, 1883.)

BY DR. A. H. SMITH.

YOU'VE heard of the deacon's one-hoss shay
Which, finished in Boston the self-same day
That the city of Lisbon went to pot,

Did a century's service and then was not.
But the record's at fault which says that it bust
Into simply a heap of amorphous dust,

For after the wreck of that wonderful tub

Out of the ruins they saved a hub;

And the hub has since stood for Boston town,
Hub of the Universe, note that down.

But an orderly hub, as all will own,

Must have something central to turn upon,
And, rubber cushioned, and true and bright,
We have the axle here to-night.

Thrice welcome then to our festal board

The doctor-poet, so doubly stored

With science as well as with native wit,
Poeta nascitur, you know, non fit,
Skilled to dissect with knife or pen-

His subjects dead or living men;

With thought sublime on every page
To swell the veins with virtuous rage,
Or with a syringe to inject them
With sublimate, to disinfect them;
To show with demonstrator's art
The complex chambers of the heart;
Or armed with a diviner skill
To make it pulsate at his will;
With generous verse to celebrate
The loaves and fishes of some giver;
And then proceed to demonstrate
The lobes and fissures of the liver;
To soothe the pulses of the brain
With poetry's enchanting strain,
Or to describe to class uproarious
Pes hippocampi accessorious;
To nerve with fervour of appeal
The sluggish muscles into steel,
Or, pulling their attachments, show
Whence they arise and where they go;
To fire the eye by wit consummate,
Or draw the aqueous humour from it;
In times of peril give the tone
To public feeling, called backbone,
Or to discuss that question solemn,
The muscles of the spinal column.
And now I close my artless ditty
As per agreement with committee,
And making place for those more able
I leave the subject on the table.

N this presentment of the life and work of Oliver

IN

Wendell Holmes as a literary man it is not necessary to treat at any length of his work as a scientist-as student, physician and professor;

except in so far as that scientific work and knowledge have influenced or coloured the literary work, and this has already been done incidentally in the preceding pages.

On returning from his European studies, and taking his medical degree, as we saw earlier, young Doctor Holmes distinguished himself by carrying off three out of four medals offered for essays on certain medical subjects. These essays were published in 1838, but have not been included by the author in his collected writings, though he tells us in a "Second Preface" to the volume of Medical Essays that he felt tempted to include the Essay on Intermittent Fever in New England. The essays which he has included in this volume are named

the list at the conclusion of this book. As Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, first at Dartmouth and then, for upwards of thirty years, at Harvard, Holmes's influence for good must have been incalculable. A man thoroughly versed in the branches of science which it was his province to teach, of keen insight into facts, both of character and of knowledge, gifted with a remarkable power of literary expression, with an epigrammatically clear and concise way of putting things, of wide culture, in keen sympathy with those whom he was teaching, and of strong personal charm, it is difficult to conceive of a man more fitted for the rôle of teacher.

Several of the essays in Pages from an Old Volume of Life are inspired by the author's professional studies; essays such as those on the Physiology of Walking and of Versification. We shall, however, best know the doctor-writer in the volume which he has named Medical Essays. The first paper in this book is on Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions, and in it Doctor Holmes treats to "critical martyrdom" a craze which he says is not entitled, by anything it has done or said, to even so much notoriety as a public rebuke. This essay was delivered, in the form of two lectures, before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of General Knowledge. Needless to say that it was treated to many "counterblasts" from the voices and pens of the followers of Samuel Hahnemann. Doctor Holmes cited cases and references innumerable proving the delusion under which the supporters of Homœopathy were labouring. "Not one statement shall be made which cannot be supported by unimpeachable reference. . . I have no quibbles to utter, and shall stoop to answer none; but, with full faith in the sufficiency of a plain statement of facts and reasons, I submit the subject." The following is an amusing example of the cases cited by the indignant attacker of Homœopathy. "A young woman affected with

1

1 Medical Essays, p. 40.

.

jaundice is mentioned in the German Annals of Clinical Homœopathy as having been cured in twenty-nine days by pulsatilla and nux vomica. Rummel, a well-known writer of the same school, speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by Homœopathic doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona. I happened to have a case in my own household a few weeks since, which lasted about ten days, and this was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital practice, so that it was nothing to boast of."1 This case well points the one valuable thing which Doctor Holmes finds that Homœopathy has taught,—namely, the wonderful restorative and curative power of Nature herself, a power which, by the way, Hahnemann and his disciples explicitly deny. With regard to the survival of Homœopathy at all, Doctor Holmes says, leaving his readers to supply italics to the latter half of his sentence, "It takes time for truth to operate as well as Homoeopathic globules." 2 Throughout a hundred pages the doctor adduces arguments, cases and reasons against this delusion, and treats it to the scorn and sarcasm of which he is no insignificant master. His opposition to Homœopathy is again shown in the latest of his volumes, Our Hundred Days in Europe. Indeed, he tells us that when at Stratford-on-Avon he had to change

1 Medical Essays, pp. 76-7.

2 Ibid., p. 78.