Page:Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (ser 03 vol 05).djvu/63

Rh attainable by one person. Perhaps Dr. Wood, in his own sound judgment, was no exception to the remark, for the authorship of an epic poem entitled, The First and Last, printed in England and published anonymously in this country, was never acknowledged by him during his life, and has only been revealed since his death. Among his manuscripts are poetical translations from foreign languages, original poems, essays on medical and other subjects, and also an unfinished novel of several hundred pages. Whatever may be their merits or demerits, their existence manifests the versatility of his talents and the incessant activity of his pen, passing thus in perpetual exercise "from grave to gay, from lively to severe;" and they were probably written with the double motive of diverting his mind and testing his powers in new walks of composition.

The old usages regulating professional intercourse, digested into a Code of Ethics chiefly through the agency of Dr. Hays, whose death we have so recently been called upon to deplore, were long observed with great nicety and strictness. Dr. Wood—upright and honorable in all his ways—clung to them with great punctiliousness, as the expression of right feeling and conduct. In consultations of more than two persons, the members, beginning with the youngest, gave their opinions in succession; and the utmost formality was observed in communicating with the friends of the patient; which was only done through the medium of the attending physician, to whom they were always properly referred for all necessary information. The consultants entered and left the room in the order of invitation, the gentleman asking for the consultation taking precedence. The consideration shown by Dr. Wood and the older members of that school, to