Twenty-five years have passed since one of your honored Presidents spoke to this Society of certain limitations to the power of our Art, now very generally conceded.  Some were troubled, some were almost angry, thinking the Profession might suffer from such concessions.  It has certainly not suffered here; if, as some affirm, it has lost respect anywhere, it was probably for other, and no doubt sufficient reasons.

Since that time the civilization of this planet has changed hands.  Strike out of existence at this moment every person who was breathing on that day, May 27, 1835, and every institution of society, every art and every science would remain intact and complete in the living that would be left.  Every idea the world then held has been since dissolved and recrystallized.

We are repeating the same process.  Not to make silver shrines for our old divinities, even though by this craft we should have our wealth, was this Society organized and carried on by the good men and true who went before us.  Not for this, but to melt the gold out of the past, though its dross should fly in dust to all the winds of heaven, to save all our old treasures of knowledge and mine deeply for new, to cultivate that mutual respect of which outward courtesy is the sign, to work together, to feel together, to take counsel together, and to stand together for the truth, now, always, here, everywhere; for this our fathers instituted, and we accept, the offices and duties of this time-honored Society.

BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.

An Introductory Lecture delivered before the Medical Class of Harvard University, November 6, 1861.

[This Lecture appears as it would have been delivered had the time allowed been less strictly, limited.  Passages necessarily omitted have been restored, and points briefly touched have been more fully considered.  A few notes have been added for the benefit of that limited class of students who care to track an author through the highways and by-ways of his reading.  I owe my thanks to several of my professional brethren who have communicated with me on subjects with which they are familiar; especially to Dr. John Dean, for the opportunity of profiting by his unpublished labors, and to Dr. Hasket Derby, for information and references to recent authorities relating to the anatomy and physiology of the eye.]

The entrance upon a new course of Lectures is always a period of interest to instructors and pupils.  As the birth of a child to a parent, so is the advent of a new class to a teacher.  As the light of the untried world to the infant, so is the dawning of the light resting over the unexplored realms of science to the student.  In the name of the Faculty I welcome you, Gentlemen of the Medical Class, new-born babes of science, or lustier nurslings, to this morning of your medical life, and to the arms and the bosom of this ancient University.  Fourteen years ago I stood in this place for the first time to address those who occupied these benches.  As I recall these past seasons of our joint labors, I feel that they have been on the whole prosperous, and not undeserving of their prosperity.