Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/258

 and made the subsequent establishment of the Medical School a comparatively simple process, a natural outgrowth.

Here, in fine, was a representative cross-section of the material for the general renaissance of the medical profession in America that was one of the by-products of the Revolution. The assembling and organizing of the best of that calling, hitherto scattered and out of touch, was a move as beneficial as it was novel; from their mutual attrition and stimulation, from the new fields opened to them, from the new opportunities for experiment and investigation, and from the epochal introduction of the system of examining candidates before a government board, arose a new day in the annals of the ancient art and mystery of the leech. The premature plans of Dasturge were more than realized. Modern medicine took form, suitable educational facilities sprang up, medical associations came into being, the scales dropped from eyes long blinded by prejudice and convention, and the profession assumed a dignity and importance that it had never known before, and that is still increasing with the years. And that Harvard College played so large and so early a part in this awakening, as a result of so gallantly manning the original Army Medical Corps, is not the least of its claims to distinction.