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she has in the past, prove a kind mother to all, and, finally, adorn your lives with the grandest of human achievements-an honorable and distinguished name. One thing will always remain to you that no other class can ever attain to. You are, and will be henceforth and forever more, the first class ever graduated from the Medical Department of Niagara University. This class, together with the professors and lecturers who have received the gown and hood, constitute the nucleus of the Alumni Association of this College. When we consider the high plane on which this University has been placed, the extended and liberal course of instruction which will be demanded, yea, exacted, of all who succeed you, there is fit reason to be proud to stand as the illustrious predecessors of such a noble army as will surely follow you. There is something of intrinsic value associated with the first of all acts or endeavors. Think how the poets have hallowed this senti

ment:

"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail."
"Deep as first love, and wild with all regret."

"Fierce as the first shock of contending foes."

You are the first fruits-the first born of the Medical Department of Niagara University. As such I congratulate you, not only that you have been found worthy to receive this degree, but that you have attained it after passing a test examination as severe, I believe, as was ever given a graduating class on this side of the Atlantic.

To the average medical student, on the eve of his graduation, a mythological allusion would be lost, but it will be patent to you, who, long before you knocked at the outer door of the temple of medicine, had wandered, by the light of the midnight oil, through the intricate and winding labyrinths of integral and differential calculus, and had felt your souls grow harmonious at the bidding of Homer and Virgil. You well remember that Apollo, the son of mighty Jove, King of all the Grecian deities, was the god, not only of music, painting and sculpture, but also

of medicine. The son of Apollo, by Koronis, daughter of a Thessalian Prince, was named Esculapius, and he was, and is, styled the demi-god of medicine, as Hippocrates is the father. To Æsculapius the number seven was sacred. His temples of worship, which afterwards became hospitals, were built in the form of heptagons, or seven-sided figures. On the seven sided altars, seven unplucked fowls were sacrificed to dissipate pestilence, and propitiate the favor of this god. May we not congratulate you and the Medical Department of Niagara University, that this, the first class asking for graduation, was of this mystical number seven; not only sacred to Esculapius, but suggestive of the seven liberal arts and sciences, the seven wonders of the world, and that beautiful constellation the Pleiades, or seven stars. For though, alas! one of your number was plucked, he may now typify "the lost pleiad," and you may still make these bright orbs of heaven the jewels of your class. Bind their sweet influence to your imperial ægis. They are, as you were, seven, and when

"In the night you see the Pleiades rising through the mellow shade,
Glittering like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid,"

remember that as our world and her sister worlds are revolving about the sun, that same sun, and the system of suns to which he belongs, are revolving about your constellation—that Alcyone, the brightest of the seven, is the central sun to which our own day-king bows! May we not hope to carry this comparison still further? Why may not the most brilliant of this group of medical stars become so eminent in his profession that the medical world shall make him their central light and controlling power?

And now, gentlemen, I desire to speak to you of the significance of the rites and ceremonies through which you have just passed. In adopting the form of graduation peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge, we may be accused of aping effete monarchies; others may go so far as to call these forms an out

growth of Romanism. Nothing could be more foreign to the fact, or could more fully display the ignorance of such as may condescend to make this or kindred criticisms.

These are the historical and classical illusions to which our rites point, and from which they derive significance:

In the middle ages, Professors of, and Doctors in Divinity, Medicine, Laws and Arts were directed to wear long, loose, flowing robes, to distinguish them from men-at arms, knights and their squires, who were not only fettered by ignorance, but still farther hampered by unwieldy coats-of-mail. As learning was revived and became more common, all the students in the several departments of the universities were permitted to wear the gown, so emblematical of their freedom from ignorance and the quixotic follies of knight-errantry. At this time it became necessary to designate such as had passed through the required grades of study from those who were yet in their pupilage. Therefore, after the seventeenth century, Oxford decreed that a hood should be added to the scholarly costume, as a badge of distinction of the several learned professions and their different grades. The hood of a Bachelor of Arts, Law or Medicine had but one cauda, to show he had yet one step to advance. The divinity-hood was of black, lined with white, with one or two caudæ, as he was Bachelor or Doctor of Divinity. The Bachelor of Arts wore a black hood, with a narrow edge of ermine. The Master of Arts had a lining of crimson or cherry-colored satin. The Doctor of Laws wore a hood of white satin, lined with purple, the white to show the purity of the law, and the purple lining, being the blending of red, the color of blood, and blue, the color of mercy, was to show that mercy should ever temper the sword of justice. The hood of the Doctor of Medicine you have seen, yea, have received. It is of red, as you behold — red, the emblem of life, as it is so closely allied to the color of the sun and of fire, which, to the Ancients, were the great life-generating, life-preserving powers in the earth. The lining, you observe, is blue, the color of truth and of mercy; it should

teach the wearer that mercy and truth should govern the doctor, not only in shedding the blood of his patients, but in his defense of the faith.

But still more is signified by the Doctor's hood. The first statue, found in the sculptures of the Ancients, wearing a hood, was that of Telesphorus, the son of Esculapius, the genius or deity that presided over that secret and mysterious vitality which sustains the convalescent. He was always represented on the left of Esculapius, as Hygiea, the goddess of health, was on the right. He was closely wrapped in his gown, and hooded. The careful wrapping up seems to indicate the shrouded nature of the vital force which he personifies, and the care which should be given ever to all convalescents. His is the first hood on record, and is the model from which all others have been copied. Whenever your gown and hood are derided, invoke the spirit of Telesphorus, the deity of convalescence, for your warrant, and the scholars of all ages will acknowledge your kinship. Your university degree, of which the gown and hood are the emblems, will be to you what the golden branch plucked from the sibyline tree was to "the pious Æneas," who would have failed in his dreadful enterprise of invading the realm of the dead without it; for you, too, must go down with your patients almost to the valley and shadow of death; and, as by the same means he vanquished the three-headed dog, Cerberus, so must you overcome the many headed hydra of disease. This golden branch was held out to Charon, and he dare not refuse to ferry a living mortal across the Stygian tide. Your degree will be a passport into the convocations of the wisest and best men of all nations; for the learned have ever held that education is of little or no value, only so far as it conduces to a kingly power over yourselves, and through you to others of your kind, onward and forward to the last moment of human necessity, and, as it enables the possessor understandingly to consult with the great, the wise and the good of all ages. "Books will speak plain, when counsellors turn pale."

The

dead are the best counsellors of the living; they give, but never receive.

It is the fullness of the treasure of books, and the superiority of inventions, that makes you to night

"Heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of time."

And now, gentlemen, a few mentions of what you must not do. There is a no little danger that your professional usefulness may be early impaired by the demon of pride taking you up into an exceeding high mountain, and showing you all the kingdoms of this world, and assuring you of the most masterly success if you will consent to make this your dwelling-place; in other words, become a specialist from the beginning of your professional career. I have no doubt that after a dozen years or so of general practice many of you will naturally gravitate toward some special branch of practice; that is legitimate, but, until after attaining an all-sided professional character in general practice, you are forced, by environing circumstances and the natural adaptation of your talents, and the almost unanimous verdict of your professional brethren, to take such a course, avoid it as you would the dismemberment of your bodies, or the loss of some attribute of the mind.

Again, never forget that the status of a professional man is not his own estimate of his value. No better speculation could be entered into than buying certain professional men at their true value, and selling them at their own valuation of themselves-the profit would be enormous. It is just as true that the position to which the public assigns them is often faulty. Communities often over and underrate us. The true place which you or I, as doctors, must find at last is the nitch to which the profession assigns us. The valuation which our professional brethren place upon us is correct, and the sooner we admit the fact the better for our happiness.

Again, gentlemen, remember," Honor to whom honor is due." When you locate in some new field of practice do not expect to

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