Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/244

 It was repeatedly said by his colleagues that he was the best medical teacher in the United States. He was personally of equally high standing. Of the highest degree of morality and integrity, benevolent, deeply religious, and with high ideals, he was the pride of every community in which he lived.

On January 29, 1832, Marcus Whitman received the degree of doctor of medicine from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York.

At times there have been implications that Dr. Whitman was not a well educated physician. This is far from the truth. He had a much better preliminary education than the average physician of his time. He had a superior preceptor under whom he studied for two years, instead of the usual single year before entering medical college, he attended a school where the privilege of dissection was unique, and under teachers of superior capability, and each with much previous successful teaching experience.

Then he had four years of independent practice, and next a year of study under the Reverend Mr. Brackett, enough capable a teacher to have been a tutor in Williams College for two years. Then he returned to his medical college, able by reason of his practice to appreciate fully the teaching under a group of familiar teachers of the highest teaching proficiency, and in a school especially devoting itself to training men for practice of the frontier.

To all this mental training must be added the training of character under the influence of men of high ideals and noble character, Freedom Whitman, Moses Hallock, Dr. Ira Bryant, the five professors at the medical school in 1825-26, the Reverend Daniel Eastman, the Reverend Joseph Brackett, and again four of his former medical teachers and finally Dr. John Delamater.

Had Marcus Whitman possessed omniscience, it hardly seems that he could have planned a medical education that would have better fitted him for the career that was ahead. When, on January 29, 1832, the diploma was handed to him, Marcus Whitman, M.D., was a thoroughly well educated physician for his times.

Some laymen might wish to end the discussion of a person's