Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/268

 260 Southern Historical Society Papers.

did we not learn it forty years ago, that the truest and most infallible touchstone of any man's real worth and merit is the esteem in which he was held by his comrades in the army ? Long continued priva- tion, suffering, danger, these bring out in clearest lines the real disposi- tion and features of a man's character. All false pretenders, shams and frauds disappear under the burning test of that stern trial. Selfishness, in none of its Protean forms, can long escape detection, and the bluster of the bully and the braggart, and the vulgar feats of the swashbuckler and the bruiser are not mistaken for true cour- age. All men, in that relation, receive a just and lasting appraise- ment.

Of these displays of professional skill from the binding of General Jackson's earliest wound at first Manassas to the last sad offices to his dying chief at Chancellorsville, and on down to the parting scenes at Appomattox, the achievements of this great master of his art must be recounted by more apt and fitter tongues than mine. It is now well known that the demands upon his skill as surgeon and physician did not exhaust or even employ the full measure of his large capacity. In other and more extended fields he displayed a genius for compact organization, a contemplation and grasp of broader needs of humanity, and a clear perception and an effective employment of the adequate means for their complete relief. From his own experience, and from that of his fellow-surgeons, he made broad and intelligent inductions, which, in later years, were ex- pressed in his chapter on the "Treatment of Gun Shot Wounds," which found place in the standard works of his profession, and ob- tained ready acceptance by the masters of surgical art the wide world over.

At the close of the war Dr. McGuire settled in the city of Rich- mond, to make that his future home, and was elected to fill the Chair of Surgery in the Medical College of Virginia, then recently made vacant by the death of Dr. Charles Bell Gibson, and he held this chair until 1878.

In 1883, he founded the St. Luke's Home for the Sick, with its attendant training school for nurses. The increasing demands upon this institution soon required an enlargement of space and facilities; it was removed in 1899 to a new building erected for the purpose in the western part of the city, which remains another monument to his wise sagacity and pious zeal.

Impressed with the need for a larger and more thorough culture,