will be given it to carry its healing blessings to the four quarters of the globe. The learning of the medical profession rears its head above the clouds like a snow-capped peak, and the current of its skill and attainment will move on in resistless might and majesty forever.

Beginning with Galen and Hippocrates, the fathers of medicine and for centuries the standard authorities on medicine, to the present time, in no other branch of science has there been such a wondrous evolution and revolution for good.

To you, the people of Louisville and Kentucky, who have contributed so liberally and so generously to this honored institution, whose profoundity reflects the advancement of medical learning as truly as the drop of dew reflects the image of the earth and sky, we extend congratulations for its presence in your midst. We heartily convey our gratitude to you for your historic hospitality, which shall remain in our hearts always as a joy forever.

To all the Christian assemblages of your city we express our deepest thanks for the influences for good which they have brought to bear on our lives and characters.

To you, the Faculty, what can we say to you? How express the mingled feelings which come surging up within our bosoms on this momentous occasion? How express our gratitude for your unfailing persistence and your saintly patience? Happy, indeed, are we, that fortune has detained all of you in our midst, that we may go forth with your blessings on our heads to sustain us in the struggle of life when far away from your fatherly care. How can we thank you for your loving guidance during the years that we have been placed under your mild and gentle direction? If ever, during the years we have known, honored, and cherished you, our acts have caused you pain. and trouble, think of them only as the acts of college boys, and be assured that you will ever be held in grateful remembrance by the students of our dear old University. You have toiled with such unwearied zeal for our welfare and advancement; you have spent so many wearisome hours shaping and moulding the crude clay, with an artist's knowledge and precision, into something lifelike, something useful. You have upheld us in the depths; battled with us to the surface; shared our triumph on the last day. Ah me! how can I say it, but yet-yet it must be, and now we bid you an affectionate farewell, and in the time to come, when our thoughts are gently wafted back on the kindly wings of memory to this soon to be the inexorable past, you

shall always maintain the place of honor in the recollections of our happiest years.

To you, the undergraduates who may be in this audience, you are happy that another year of useful labor has passed over your heads, and that now you are about to enjoy a period of ease and relaxation from your toils. On the faces of all of you may be read the happy visions which go floating through your minds. Old home associations come welling up within your bosoms, and already you fancy yourselves surrounded by dear friends and loving relatives, recounting to them the haps and mishaps of another year gone by. When the declining year brings around the hazy autumn, with its mellow tints and somber hues, you will return refreshed and invigorated to recommence your pleasant tasks. Again will you be greeted by the kindly and affectionate welcomes of the Faculty and the loving hand-clasps of college friends. Farewell to you! Be courageous, be perseverant, be determined, and your future will be laureled with victory. And now to you, dear classmates, must I bid farewell? How like a tolling knell it strikes on the ear, causing a shade of sadness to tinge our otherwise beaming faces. It tells us that we must part. It warns us that the sweet ties of friendship formed beneath the fostering care of this grand old institution must be rudely severed; that we, now gathered around the feet of a kind mother, will be scattered abroad throughout the land, perhaps to meet no more. Oh, the waves of memory that dash over me, as I stand here about to break the last golden link of happy days, happy days which will soon live but in the memories of the past! To think that we who have toiled and struggled up the rugged path which leads to knowledge and to wisdom; we who have shared the joys and the sorrows of each fleeting hour-to think that we, too, must part; that we must drift asunder on the broad stream of life; that days and months, aye, years may roll between us ere we meet again-calls forth the unbidden sigh, the silent tear, which I in vain would endeavor to repress. As I look around me and behold on every side familiar faces, endeared to me by long association and many acts of kindness and generosity, and feel that from them I must part, the words that I would utter fail me, and my heart is deluged with sadness.

Once more memory unveils her treasured storehouse, and from each. shadowy cell shines forth some hidden gem implanted there by the friends of my college days. Oh, fain would I linger yet among you, but fate, the inexorable arbitrator of human destinies, forbids, and we must part. Our college days are over.

Let us then go forth with the firm determination to preserve the fair record which we have won, and by our acts add another star to the constellation of glory in the heavens of our beloved alma mater. Acting thus, honor and success will cling to us, and when Time, with his chastening hand, shall have dimmed the eye and silvered the hair, we can look contentedly back on the past, and feel our hearts grow green by the waters of memory as we think fondly of the class of 1902. May the hand of Time rest lightly upon you, and may the arm of God protect you throughout your whole career, is the blessing that I wish you all. And now, kind friends, to one and all of you I bid a last and a fond farewell.

CANNELTON, IND.

THE IMPROVEMENT IN MATERIA MEDICA AND THERAPEUTICS DURING THE PAST CENTURY.*

BY JOHN G. CECIL, B. S., M. D.

Professor of Materia Medica, Therapeutics, and Public Hygiene, University of Louisville.

A simple recountal of the improvements in these branches of medi cal science during the hundred years just past would more than tax your patience, accordingly I will content myself by asking your attention to only a few of the more important.

The discovery of new remedies, the progress in the manufacture of medicines, and the improved methods of applying therapeutic agents to the alleviation of human suffering is truly wonderful, and can only be appreciated by the centenarian, or one well versed in the history of medical sciences. It may safely be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that progress and improvement in this realm of science has kept pace with that in any other, and that more of genuine advancement has been made during the past century than during all the preceding centuries together.

Familiarity with modern improvements is conducive to forgetfulness, and we scarcely stop long enough to contrast the attractive, tasteless, and efficient medicines that are dispensed to us with the crude, inelegant, bitter, and too often nauseating drugs that were given to our forefathers. So rapid have been the changes, so numerous the discoveries, so great the improvements, that books upon the subject can

*Faculty valedictory at Commencement of the Medical Department of the University of Louisville, March 28, 1902.

scarcely keep the pace; one edition is not exhaused before another is demanded, and an edition issued ten years ago is to-day out of date.

It has long been said that the exhibition of each dose of medicine is an experiment, and that the practice of medicine is wholly empirical. In a narrow sense this true, but in a broader and truer sense it is untrue. The action of medicines upon individuals differ as individuals differ the one from the other; in a generic sense the action of a given medicine is practicaly the same upon all individuals.

The administration of all medicines in common use is now predicated upon what is termed their physiological action. Thousands of experiments by patient workers have been made upon healthy humans and the lower animals to determine the effects of medicines upon the various systems, organs, and tissues of the human body. With this vast array of observations and facts established by competent observers, together with the accumulated evidence of clinicians of all ages past before him, the physician of to-day is not groping blindly in the dark, but his application of therapeutic agents to the cure of disease rests upon a real indisputable scientific basis. By far the greater proportion of what is known about the scientific action of medicines is the result of study and experiment during the last century.

Permit just a word in passing in regard to vivisection, or experiments upon live animals for scientific purposes. Much that is unwise and short-sighted has been said and written, and many attempts have been and are still being made at prohibitive legislation against these experiments. The best answer to all such caviling is that had not these studies and experiments been made the science of materia medica and therapeutics would be just about one hundred years behind what it is to-day; and the just retribution for the anti-vivisectionist would be to relegate him when ill to the crude empiricism and nauseous medication to which his great-grandfather was subjected and had to endure.

An advance of extraordinary value effected wholly during the past century has been the discovery and separation of the alkaloidal extracts from the crude drugs. The chief or principal action of a drug almost invariably depends upon its alkaloidal extract. This extract is a definite and single medicine, whose dose is small, whose action is definite and powerful, and whose effects are more easily observed and studied. In most instances the usefulness of the extract is equivalent in every way to the drug from which it is separated, and it is easier of administration. For example, how much more elegant, accurate, and efficient

is quinine than cinchona, strychnine than nux vomica, morphine than opium! Another very decided advantage accruing from the use of these extracts, which are stable and invariable in strength, is exact accuracy in dosage, and our ability to obtain definite results and ascribe the effects with certainty to the remedy given.

To the enterprising chemist and pharmacist we owe an everlasting debt of gratitude. By untiring zeal and improved methods of manufacture most medicines are now offered to the public in forms agreeable to the taste and easy of administration. To realize something of the improvement that has taken place in this direction, compare the elegant triumphs of pharmaceutical art as it is to-day presented in elixirs and wines, gelatin- sugar- and chocolate-coated pills, with the bitter decoctions and infusions, the old-fashioned pills rolled in lycopodium, the bulky and nauseous powders, and that esophageal impossibility, the massive bolus of a hundred years ago. The man who invented the gelatin capsule should have his name written high on the scroll of fame and a monument erected to his memory by the pill-taking public. By use of this simple little device even castor oil becomes "a thing of beauty and a joy forever," and the bitterest enemy of the small boy becomes his cherished friend.

In the number of medical agents and ways of treating the sick there is an embarrassment of riches. The hundreds of the past century have grown into the thousands of to-day, and every year adds hundreds more. The tireless investigator has ransacked every known kingdom in his eager search after the materials of medicine. He has forced to his uses the trees and herbs of the woods, the flowers of the field, the roots of the ground, the minerals of the earth, the fishes of the sea, the wild animals of the forest; even the elements bow down before him; he has constant use for air and water, both hot and cold. Fire and electricity also serve his purposes. Animals that furnish none of the materials of medicine become useful for experimental purposes. He first tries his medicine on the dog. In his eyes something more than the hind legs of the frog is desirable; he uses the whole frog. Rats, mice, guineapigs, and rabbits are not beneath his notice; birds, dogs, cows, and horses serve other than domestic purposes; even his simian ancestor has not been neglected by the therapeutic investigator.

Turning from glittering generalities, mention may be made of a few of what may properly be designated as the special therapeutic blessings of the nineteenth century. In preventive medicine the greatest thera