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

Page 16 text:

tion for a century. llhe time has passed by, he proclaims, when students Will flock to men 'of genius for the purpose of listening to expositions of theory or to he amused with creations of imagination The school which is- not based on a hospital may have learned and able professors; but the results of their teaching can never be satisfat-tory to the student who seeks to make himself a good practical physician and surgeon. For in the hospital the student learns pathological anatomy. diagnose, the art of prescribing and operative surgery. This germ of wisdom has lived a hundred years. Every medical colony must have it in pure culture to survive. We have it on the authority of his contemporary, Samuel D. Cross. the foremost surgeon of the country during four decades, that Drake was. the greatest lecturer of his time. He loved to teach. and because he loved it, did it well. Word portraits painted thirty years apart show how this teaching effected the manner, the grace, the bearing and even the physical appearance of Drake. Of his personal appearance, Gross said, :'no man could be in his presence without feeling in contact with a man of superior intelligence and acquirement. His features remarkably regular were indicative of manly beauty, and lighted up by eyes of wonderful power and penetration. Drake held nine professorshipe in Five different colleges, for he had the tempermental courage of which Emerson speaks. lithe war like blood which loves a hght, and does not feel itself, except in a quarrel. Daniel Drake was a notable exception to the words of the great sage, nhe that is slow to anger is of great understanding. Drake never grew uld. Death overtook him when the frost of 57 years had slightly silvered his temples. It came while he was in the midst of a course of lectures in the Medical College of Ohio. his First and last love. That was seventy years ago. Every one living today in the great commonwealths about us is unconsciously a bene- ficiary of his work. Drake wore a large mantle. It fitted the shoulders of only one of his successorSeChristian R. Holmes. He too, having acted well his part, laid aside the mantle. SD was' it ordained that his life work completed, his passing should round out the century. It is difficult for me to speak dispassionately of Christian R. Holmes. A hundred years hence, when most of us are forgotten, some one. perhaps in this very spot, will speak of him, uninHuencecl by the great personality that may bias our judgment. Whoever he may be, on looking about him as we do now, must at once recall the last of the Proverbs, Let his own works praise him at the very gates. History is the final court. If we could prophesy its judgment it. would little profit US. But we may rest easy. Father time is always just to the creator of that which is consecrated to good and is beautiful of form. Our present interest is in the qualities of heart and mind which made the man, who for hfteen years held undisputed dominion over the medical affairs of the city of his adoption. and brought to full fruition the ideas and hopes he had conceived. First and foremost. Christian R. Holmes was not nurtured in the lap of luxury. A Dane by birth, and one of the people, he was eleven years old before he learned the rudiments of the language. which in later years he used so persuasively and convincingly in the cause he espoused. Page Fourteen

Page 15 text:

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

Page 17 text:

Even to the end one could at times discern in his speech a touch of his Norse extraction. Yet no one doubted that he was 1009b American. At a time when must men seek rest from their lahnrs. he. fur twu years served his country in its time of need. The military hospital in his charge. was the model of its kind. To my mind Dr. Holmes is the best example of what eur much vaunted melting pot can produce, and of whatt use Can he made of the opportunities 50 unstintingly and impartiaily afforded under our free institutione. From the beginning Dr. Holmes, like Drake, was under the spell of the master word, Work. Work with an object clearly in view. work with pre- cision. In the library below there will always be treasured a mechanical drawing made by him in his early twenties. It is of a locomotive drawn to scale: the handiwork of a master draftsman, who throughout life never allowed the hand to lose its cunning. Decades later it became the right hand of the builder. Had Dr. Holmes continued in his hrst choice of a career. his ability to construct and to organize on a large scale might have made of him another James J. Hill at a Herriman. An illness from overwork fortunately fur ail nf us, led him to the study of medicine. There were years of Struggle, not alone for an education, but for actual existence. He taught mechanical drawing and worked for the Assn- eiated Charities. There, he doubtless felt, for the first time, the needs of the poor and of the sick. The altruism that was in him, there found its proper environment, and developed. There, he must have seen the vision that he lived to realize. C. R. Holmes never changed. He simply grew. For the inborn qualities of a man are fixed almost from the beginning, as the warp and woof of a fabric. It is made of cotton, of wool or silk: Of thESE' the last i3 the Finest. The qualities of heart and mind which made Holmes esteemed in the zenith of his career were there from the beginning. The privations and struggles of the earlier years seemed but to strengthen and to develop them, and 50 to stamp, form and feature, that any might exclaim, llBehnltl, here is a man! Through three decades Dr. Holmes followed his special vocation. The thousands for whom he saved sight or hearing Can better testify than I to the gentle touch. the diagnostic acumen and the operative skill which placed him in the forefront of his colleagues. I-Iis contributions to special literature were many and valuable. They secured for him the presidency of many of the special societies to which he belonged. In considering the extent of his achievements, as a specialist, I would lay special stress on one point, for the benefit of the incoming members of our profession. It is that for a number of years Dr. Holmes practiced general medicine. Therefore. through all his later intensive Studies of a narrow Field, he never lost sight of the whole. It saved him from being a mere craftsman. such as are now being developed by the tendency of many recent graduates to enter at once on some narrow and narrow- ing specialty. and it is common knowledge that the smaller the held the greater is the tendency to megaloeephalism. The crowning work of Dr. Holmes is this little city on the hill, where like the acropolis of old, may it long enshrine the divinities that heal the sick. and with wisdom guard the well. Drake traveled thirty thousand miles to gather Page Fifteen