University of Cincinnati College of Medicine - Annual Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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Holmes and Drake l: T THE command of my colleagues I am here to comply with a usage eo-eval with centennial celebrations of beneFtcent institutions. and to recall the human factors most prominent in conceiving and executing their aims and purposes. The century just Closing over this school has encom- passed three generations. each in its turn doing its duty as it saw it. The Medical College of Ohio was foundat'l with a small beginning: The idea in which it was conceived was developed and brought to full maturity in the Medical Department of the University, as it is today. In one form or other it has with- stood for a century the vicissitudes of peace and of war. Four times its faculty and sons were at the service of its country. Except for one year, its doors were never closed. Two of the generations have passed away. What was mortal of the masterful leader of the third was carried from this hall less than a year ago. There tll'C a few of this third generation who tarry, and still Hcarry 0n, blending their efforts with those of the young and strong. 80 d0 generations imper- ceptibly g0 and come. To have liverl through a century, promoting the welfare of the whole Central Valley, the Medical Department of the University and its predecessors must have had many men of national and international eminence. This is not the plate to refer in specific manner to thoae whom through the Five decades: of my student antl academic life I admired, and whose memories I today revere. Two of the men who made the College. like the Alpha and Omega, stand out with great persistence. They are Daniel Drake and Christian R. Holmes. They will leave their impress on many generations yet to come. Not by that which they have written. but because of the institutions. of which one laid the founder lion and the other the ettp-strme. Fume gained by the pen. or by adding something to the general fund of knnwleclge. though for the time momentous, is short of life. There are a few writers of imaginative literature of proportions so titanic that they belong to and are read in all ages. Not sun with writers on medicine. Seventy years age there appeared Drake's enormous work 011 the 'tDiseases oi the Interior Valley. It took him thirty years to gather the material upon which it is based. He t'learly foresaw the miemsmpic origin of disease. As early as 1832 he surmised Cholera to be due to an infection of animaleulur origin. He believed tuberculosis to be ui this nature, and adopted this theory for malaria and typhoid. It was only the thinker speculuting on clinical facts. The thought was there. the proofs were adduced lJy pathologists decades later. Whv wonder, therefore that Drake's work was declared by :1 mmmittee oi the'Ameriean Medical Assnriatiun, Wt rlurahle monument to his name and to t1 medic til reputation not t Centennial Celebration Addrexs-Bv Jose-i R f t i . v i tEng.l. F. A. C. ' - Pl rmsawjf, 111'. D., 1'. R. C. .3. Page Twelve

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DANIEL DRAKE DR Page Eleven

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only of the great valley, but 01' the greater union. He was given an honorary degree by the Philosophic Society of Edinborough. Twenty-five years after this work appeared. it was obsolescent. Today you will find his volumes on a dust covered rack in the basement of the hospital which he founded. A few months ago a distinguished Englishman, an internist. knighted by his King, for services t0 medicine. on seeing the admirable tablet tn Drake in the Hospital, asked HWho was Daniel Drake? So restrirtecl and ephemeral is the thing we call fame. As Dante has it: 'lIt is like the grass whose hue cloth come and go; by the same sun decayed from which it life and health and freshness drew. But the influence which his writings and lectures had on the men of his day has never perished. The late Sir Wm. Oslcr affords a brilliant example of this thought: i'The foremost medical doctor and classical writer of his time has contributed nothing to give him a living immortality, but his intluence will live as did that of Drake. for if there is an immortality of matter transmitted from generation to generation, 50 there is an immortality of thought passed on from teacher to student. The reverence we always owe to the memory of Drake rests on a much higher basis. It was his power to convert into constructive energy the spirit embodied within him of the trite phrase, Hnothing human is foreign to me. This power he First exerted in an appeal for a high class immigration to the City of his adoption and the great interior valley. To this end he published his picture of Cincinnati, in 1810, an original and eminently scientific work; a most unusual advertisement that would attract the best class of home-seekers only. He, for the First time, publicly outlined a system. of canals, which might connect the Great Lakes with the Ohio. He originated the plan of bringing North and South into Closer relationship, by projecting a railroad from Cincinnati to Licle-water. at Charleston, thirty-hve years hetere the first spike was driven on our Southern Railroad. Ile advocated it not for commercial purposes alone, but that the sections might thereby be pledged to common national interests. This. however. did not keep him from advocating the abolition of slavery, in a series of remarkable letters long before the Great Emancipatur had taken up the cause. What Drake himself lacked in opportunities inr study he sought with all the intensity of his nature to secure for others. He laid the foundation of the whole higher educational structures of Cincinnati, and the west. Doctors have always led the way in matters of education. The conception of a large university for Cincinnati originated with Dr. C. G. Comegys. In 1814, Drake founded a college of teachers of which the Law Department of the University became the heir. He was one of the founders of the Public Library. The magnum opus of his constructive genius is the Medical College of Ohio, which together with the Commercial Hospital, formed the nucleus of an institution which a second Drake developed to full maturity. and thereby gave lasting form to the Medical Department of the University. College and hos- pital are one in the concept of Drake. Hospital and college teaching are Com- plementary of each other. In his memorable inaugural address, Drake sounded the keynote Which has vibrated with the harmonious advance of medical educa- Page Thirteen