Page:Memoir of George B. Wood, M. D., LL.D.djvu/12

 life; and which, during the forty-two years of his continuous labors as a medical professor and clinical teacher, were spread broadcast throughout this country. No one man has ever done so much as he, to form and influence medical opinion in America upon both practical and ethical questions. Well has it been for the profession, that his teaching was dictated by good judgment, careful study, and, above all, the highest principles of rectitude and honor.

Dr. Wood's first course of lectures was one upon chemistry, delivered to a non-professional audience, chiefly composed of ladies, in Dr. Joseph Parrish's private office. Here, in a lay course, as Dr. Littell observes, in a Memoir to which I am much indebted for information, "before a class entranced by his carefully prepared experiments and not likely to be hypercritical in its judgments, he gained confidence and dexterity, and was thereby better fitted to perform his part in a more formal and important sphere." There was a tradition amongst medical students and others, that Dr. Wood was not, at the beginning of his work as a teacher, an easy, fluent or graceful speaker. It is entirely accordant with what we know of his whole life, to suppose that this may have been true; and that his having become, in maturity, one of the most admirable and successful lecturers of his time was due far less to any natural gift of eloquence than to assiduous and long continued exercise and cultivation of his powers.