Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/551

 HOLMES 4

When reforms were inaugurated in the Harvard Medical School, after Pres. Eliot entered upon office, Holmes, although he believed in them at heart, was timid about radical changes, sub- mitting to, rather than actively support- ing them. While he was connected with the Medical School the question of admitting women came up. The suggestion met with much opposition and was finally abandoned. Prof. Dwight thus describes Holmes's attitude towards the subject:

"On this occasion" (exercises at the opening of the new building of the Harvard Medical School in 18S3), after speaking in his most perfect style on woman as a nurse, with a pathos free from mawkishness which Dickens rare- ly reached, he concluded: "I have al- ways felt that this was rather the vocation of woman than general med- ical, and especially surgical, practice." This was the signal for loud applause from the conservative side. When he could resume he went on: "Yet I myself followed the course of lectures given by the young Madame Lachapelle in Paris, and if here and there an in- trepid woman insists on taking by storm the fortress of medical educa- tion, I would have the gate flung open to her as if it were that of the citadel of Orleans and she were Joan of Arc returning from the field of victory." The enthusiasm which this sentiment called forth was so overwhelming that those of us who had led the first applause felt, perhaps looked, rather foolish. I have since suspected that Dr. Holmes, who always knew his audience, had kept back the real cli- max to lure us to our destruction."

Holmes was well versed in standard historical medical works. He present- ed his private medical library, a collec- tion of 1,000 volumes, to the Boston Medical Library, of which he was president for thirteen years. He de scribes these books as so dear to him that "a twig from some one of my nerves ran to every one." In 1800

! HOLMES

he published an address on "Currents and countercurrents in medical science," and in 1S61 incorporated with this his papers on "Homeopathy and Puerperal Fever," and several addresses to medical students, and in 1SS2, a volume of "Medical Essays," containing a few of those published in "Currents and Counter-currents" and some others. In 1874 appeared a sketch of the "Life of Jeffries Wyman," and in 1891 a "Tribute to Henry J. Bigelow, M. D."

As a practitioner, Holmes was op- posed to overdosing. He believed in the self-limitation of disease. "From the time of Hippocrates," he states, "to that of our own medical patriarch, there has been an apostolic succession of wise and good practitioners, who place before all remedies the proper conduct of the patient." The misuse of drugs he expressed well by saying that if all the drugs in the Pharmaco- poeia, with a very few exceptions, were thrown into the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and the worse for the fishes.

Holmes began writing graceful verse and prose when in college, and con- tinued actively productive till the close of his life. To his wit and skill as a writer is due his chief reputation, but this side of his life cannot be adequate- ly entered on here.

After his resignation from the Har- vard Medical School in 1882, he de- voted himself to literary pursuits. In 1886, in company with his daughter, he made a trip to Europe, where he received much attention, and was given honorary degrees at Oxford, ( 'am bridge, and Edinburgh. On his re turn to America he lived quietly in Boston and at his summer home at Beverly Farm until the end came.

In the "Boston Medical and Surgical Journal," 1S94, October 11, vol. exxxi, and in the catalogue of the Surgeon General, Wash. I). O, will be found a list of big writings,

C. R. B.