Page:The Medical School of the Melbourne University - an address delivered on the twenty fifth anniversary of the opening of the Medical School, in the Wilson Hall, March 23, 1887 (IA b22293346).pdf/12

12 it was, I make no doubt, always his object to arrive at. Nor has he obtained this end in any circuitous or fortuitous fashion. He has tried to deserve his success, and he has gained his success because he has deserved it, and for no other reason. As one of his teachers, I am very proud to have taken part in his education. T regard it as a distinction to have had a share in instructing a man who does such credit to his profession and to his Alma Mater, and I know that my feeling towards him is shared, not only by every other member of the teaching staff of this School, but by the whole brotherhood of Medicine throughout the colony. I point to him as an example to all the other students, past, present, and to come.

In speaking of Professor Allen I cannot forbear expressing myself strongly in deprecation of the treatment he has received at the hands of the Council in connection with the Pathological Museum. This collection had been accumulating for several years at the Melbourne Hospital under his especial direction, for which work he was paid a salary by the Hospital Committee. Believing that its usefulness, and therefore its value, would be increased by its removal to the Medical School of the University, and the Council having expressed a wish that it should be so removed, he, having procured the consent of the Hospital Committee, had it taken thither. The Committee, of course, having no longer any museum to take care of, could not pay a curator, and Professor Allen naturally looked to the Council to continue the salary he had been receiving. But the Council, having got the collection, declined to pay for its superintendence, insisting that Professor Allen's salary, as Professor of Anatomy and Pathology, included any remuneration he might look for as custodian of the museum. After much discussion, they have consented to pay him a douceur, with an understanding that they disavow all obligation for the future, and that the reward of the trouble Professor Allen has taken to benefit the University must be of the mens conscia recti kind. I think there will be no difficulty, in any honourable man's mind, how to define this remarkable proceeding.

In like manner, perhaps, are to be explained the occasional rebuffs administered to the Faculty of Medicine by the Council. The Faculty of Medicine is a body of comparatively recent creation,