Nor would the profession forgive me if I forgot to mention the admirable museum of pathological anatomy, created almost entirely by the hands of Dr. John Barnard Swett Jackson, and illustrated by his own printed descriptive catalogue, justly spoken of by a distinguished professor in the University of Pennsylvania as the most important contribution which had ever been made in this country to the branch to which it relates.

When we look at the literature of mental disease, as seen in hospital reports and special treatises, we can mention the names of Wyman, Woodward, Brigham, Bell, and Ray, all either natives of Massachusetts or placed at the head of her institutions for the treatment of the insane.

We have a right to claim also one who is known all over the civilized world as a philanthropist, to us as a townsman and a graduate of our own Medical School, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the guide and benefactor of a great multitude who were born to a world of inward or of outward darkness.

I cannot pass over in silence the part taken by our own physicians in those sanitary movements which are assuming every year greater importance.  Two diseases especially have attracted attention, above all others, with reference to their causes and prevention; cholera, the “black death” of the nineteenth century, and consumption, the white plague of the North, both of which have been faithfully studied and reported on by physicians of our own State and city.  The cultivation of medical and surgical specialties, which is fast becoming prevalent, is beginning to show its effects in the literature of the profession, which is every year growing richer in original observations and investigations.

To these benefactors who have labored for us in their peaceful vocation, we must add the noble army of surgeons, who went with the soldiers who fought the battles of their country, sharing many of their dangers, not rarely falling victims to fatigue, disease, or the deadly volleys to which they often exposed themselves in the discharge of their duties.

The pleasant biographies of the venerable Dr. Thacher, and the worthy and kind-hearted gleaner, Dr. Stephen W. Williams, who came after him, are filled with the names of men who served their generation well, and rest from their labors, followed by the blessing of those for whom they endured the toils and fatigues inseparable from their calling.  The hardworking, intelligent country physician more especially deserves the gratitude of his own generation, for he rarely leaves any permanent record in the literature of his profession.  Books are hard to obtain; hospitals, which are always centres of intelligence, are remote; thoroughly educated and superior men are separated by wide intervals; and long rides, though favorable to reflection, take up much of the time which might otherwise be given to the labors of the study.  So it is that men of ability and vast experience, like the late Dr. Twitchell, for instance, make a great and deserved reputation, become the oracles of large districts, and yet leave nothing, or next to nothing, by which their names shall be preserved from blank oblivion.