Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/566

NAME HOLMES 544 HOLMES doors. A rush takes place ; some collapse, some are thrown headlong, and three hundred raw students precipitate themselves into a bare and comfortless amphitheatre. Meanwhile the professor is running about, now as nimble as a cat, selecting plates, rummaging the dusty museum for specimens, arranging microscopes, and displaying bones. The subject is carried in on a board ; no automatic appliances, no wheels with pneumatic tires, no elevators, no dumb- waiters in those days. The cadaver is dec- orously disposed on a revolving table in a small arena, and is always covered, at first, from curious eyes, by a clean white sheet. Re- spect for poor humanity and admiration for God's divinest work is the first lesson and the uppermost in the poet-lecturer's mind. He enters, and is greeted with a mighty shout and stamp of applause. Then silence, and there begins a charming hour of description, analysis, simile, anecdote, harmless pun, which clothes the dry bones with poetic imagery, enlivens a hard and fatiguing day with humor, and brightens to the tired listener the details of a difficult though interesting study." ".' d how he loved anatomy ! as a mother her child. He was never tired, always fresh, always eager in learning and teaching it. In earnest himself, enthusiastic, and of a happy temperament, he shed the glow of his ardent spirit over his followers, and gave to me, his demonstrator and assistant for eight years, some of the most attractive and happy hours of my life." During that autumn, writes Prof. Dwight, "I frequently recited to Dr. Holmes, and saw the great patience and interest with which he demonstrated the more difficult parts of the skeleton. In November began the dreary sea- son of perpetual lectures, from morning till night, to large classes of more or less turbulent students." "To make head against these odds, he did his utmost to adopt a sprightly manner, and let no opportunity for a jest, escape him. These would be received with quiet apprecia- tion by the lower benches, and with uproarious demonstrations from the 'mountain,' where, as in the French Assembly of the Revolution, the noisiest spirits congregated. He gave his im- agination full play in comparison, often charm- ing and always quaint. None but Holmes could have compared the microscopical coiled tube of a sweat-gland to a fairy's intestine. Medical readers will appreciate the aptness of likening the mesentery to the shirt ruffles of a preceding generation, which from a short line of attachment e.xpanded into yards of compli- cated folds. He has compared the fibers con- necting the two symmetrical halves of the brain to the band uniting the Siamese twins." "One would think, from Dr. Holmes's won- derful facility of expression, that lecturing year after year on the same subject, the lectures would have been as child's play. But I am convinced that this was not so. "You will find," said he to me at the time that I succeeded him, "that the day that you have lectured, something has gone out from you." To his sen- sitive organization I imagine that the trials in- cident to the tired, and in the early years more or less unruly class, were greater than his friends suspected. I remember once his telling Dr. Cheever and myself how exceedingly an- noying it is to the lecturer to have any one leave the room before the close. I often mar- veled at the patience he displayed." Holmes at an early period took an interest in the microscope. He was one of the early microscopists, and was a very good one. The instrument was not among the tools of the instructing physicians when he was studying in Paris, but soon afterwards it came into general use. He brought one home with him from Europe. It fascinated him, as indeed it did many another. He had a great taste for everything ingenious, and playing with this new machine devoured many an hour. He was forever taking his own to pieces and putting it together, and trying all sorts of experiments with it, both as to the mechanism itself, and as to the subjects of examination. How well I recollect the intense absorption with which he would thus pass long hours — hours which were not wasted, for "he was no mean authority on this subject in his day," says Dr. Cheever. While a popular teacher, Holmes can scarce- ly be designated a scientific anatomist, since no discoveries, either in the field of microscopic or in that of macroscopic anatomy, are to be attributed to him. The nearest approach to a contribution to histology was a paper which he read at a meeting of a medical society in 18.^1, in which he described some cells at the ends of long bones. He was, however, always ready to give lessons in the tise of the microscope, before its value was generally appreciated. The mechanical skill which he showed in this aided him in inventing a stereoscope for hand use, which was much esteemed. When reforms were inaugurated in the Harvard Medical School, after Presi- dent Eliot entered upon office. Holmes, al- though he believed in them at heart, was timid about radical changes, submitting to, rather than actively supporting, them. While he was