roof, all might find the special information they were seeking; where the latest medical intelligence should be spread out daily as the shipping news is posted on the bulletins of the exchange; where men engaged in a common pursuit could meet, surrounded by the mute oracles of science and art; where the whole atmosphere should be as full of professional knowledge as the apothecary’s shop is of the odor of his medicaments.  This was what the old men longed for,—­the prophets and kings of the profession, who

        “Desired it long,
   But died without the sight.”

This is what the young men and those who worked under their guidance undertook to give us.  And now such a library, such a reading-room, such an exchange, such an intellectual and social meeting place, we be hold a fact, plain before us.  The medical profession of our city, and, let us add, of all those neighboring places which it can reach with its iron arms, is united as never before by the commune vinculum, the common bond of a large, enduring, ennobling, unselfish interest.  It breathes a new air of awakened intelligence.  It marches abreast of the other learned professions, which have long had their extensive and valuable centralized libraries; abreast of them, but not promising to be content with that position.  What glorifies a town like a cathedral?  What dignifies a province like a university?  What illuminates a country like its scholarship, and what is the nest that hatches scholars but a library?

The physician, some may say, is a practical man and has little use for all this book-learning.  Every student has heard Sydenham’s reply to Sir Richard Blackmore’s question as to what books he should read,—­meaning medical books.  “Read Don Quixote,” was his famous answer.  But Sydenham himself made medical books and may be presumed to have thought those at least worth reading.  Descartes was asked where was his library, and in reply held up the dissected body of an animal.  But Descartes made books, great books, and a great many of them.  A physician of common sense without erudition is better than a learned one without common sense, but the thorough master of his profession must have learning added to his natural gifts.

It is not necessary to maintain the direct practical utility of all kinds of learning.  Our shelves contain many books which only a certain class of medical scholars will be likely to consult.  There is a dead medical literature, and there is a live one.  The dead is not all ancient, the live is not all modern.  There is none, modern or ancient, which, if it has no living value for the student, will not teach him something by its autopsy.  But it is with the live literature of his profession that the medical practitioner is first of all concerned.