Address, delivered by Dr. L.C. Lane, Professor of Surgery, at the commencement exercises of the Medical College of the Pacific, November 2d, 1876.

  • Levi Cooper Lane
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address, delivered by Dr. L.C. Lane, Professor of Surgery, at the commencement exercises of the Medical College of the Pacific, November 2d, 1876. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1876.] one almost forgets the extemporized creation before him, in his admiration of this great interpreter of the laws of nature. And this admiration is kept continually aglow, as one follows him in his search for the hidden links of the chain of being which lie buried in the geological and pre-historic ages. I must not take you away from London without introducing you to one other noted personage in our profession; since in reading his works I am sure that you have already learned to admire, if not to love, the man. This is Sir Thomas Watson, Baronet. Nature conferred knighthood upon Sir Thomas a long time before Queen Victoria did. Years have much bowed down his person, yet he still looks the great and kind-hearted gentleman. At the evening meetings of the Royal Institution, at which were deliv- ered lectures by Tyndall, Huxley, Gladstone, and other celebrated British scholars, Dr. Watson was a regular attendant. On his earnest, straightforward and honest face one could catch traces of that practical and pointed good sense which lends such a charm to the pages of that capital work which every student of medicine should read, entitled: “ Lectures on the Practice of Physic.” A long life of noble and upright purposes has left its impress on his brow. In unmistakable lines patience, energy, and the love of the right are written there. Such a face in an old man presents more genuine loveliness, even though the fingers of time have blotted out its primitive lineaments of beauty, than the most matchless picture which has ever been conceived and executed by the fancy and pencil of a Tiziano or Murillo. My notice of the medical celebrities of London has been almost an uninterrupted eulogy. The note must change when we touch upon the hospital buildings. Though erected with the purpose of lasting forever, yet in their construction and internal arrange- ment they are far behind similar institutions in America. Sprung from a period that antedated modern hygiene, one often finds them lamentably deficient in the facilities for ventilation. Air, now regarded as a thing almost divine, in fact, the major and mi- nor premises and conclusion^ of modern medical reasoning, seems to have been deemed by the former generation as something dia- i bolical, an evil spirit which must be hedged and barred out in
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