means of treatment which the experience of mankind in all their history has proved to be the best adapted to the accomplishment of the one great end.

That which is venerable, that upon which "time has snowed the winter of his years," is not to be necessarily, and, therefore, accepted as the best possible means of attaining a given end, neither in medical science, nor in any other earthly thing. We may, and do, admit that long usage is a fact from which may properly be inferred that a given method has been found efficacious, but we hold that it does not follow that it must, therefore, be the most efficacious possible. Still less does it follow that other methods which may be found associated with a confessedly efficacious method, through having been included in the same arbitrary system, must be, therefore, accepted as in any wise good. These propositions seem to be so plain and simple that merely to state them would seem to place them approximately among the self-evident. And, so of the principle of choice, upon which our school is founded.

To the unprejudiced thinker it must seem the boldest absurdity to question its abstract wisdom and truth. The civil or mining engineer does not hesitate; nay, he makes it the chief aim of his art, to choose the very best methods of surmounting the cliffs with his roadway, or bringing their hidden treasures to the light with his tunnel and shaft.

The lawyer, the dramatist, the merchant, the trader, the soldier, all alike follow this common sense rule of practice.

If Bismarck and Von Moltke had followed the methods of Richelieu and Turenne, think you that Sedan and Metz and the coronation of William as Emperor of Germany in the French palace of Versailles would have crowned their work? No! far from it. Why then should the physician alone, whose vocation most closely affects the physical, and through that, the mental and moral welfare of men, why should he, of all men, be debarred the exercise of this most vital prerogative of God-like reason, the right of choice and adaptation?

But I will not risk wearying you by pursuing this branch of

or two considerations which go to show the vital energy and force dwelling in the principle upon which our theory and practice is founded.

I have said that the principle of eclecticism is found and acknowledged in all the walks of life, except our own, and entered my feeble protest against the narrowness that would exclude it from that. Theoretically it is excluded from that. true that the exclusion is adhered to in practice? you, and scan closely the practice of individual

But is it Look about members of

other schools of medicine. What do you find? Simply this, that in all these school alike, the most eminent and successful physicians are those, who, whatsoever school they may profess, are least bound in their practice by its narrow rules.

The successful allopathist and homoeopathist does not hesitate in certain exigencies of his practice to borrow from the eclectics.

So patent and open has this become, that not physicians only, but the great body of laymen, know it, and the latter especially comment on it. The practice, therefore, if not the theory of eclecticism, has penetrated to a greater or less degree throughout the whole of the great body of medical practitioners, through the force of its own reasonableness and efficient power, and wherever it is thus most broadly and liberally adopted into practice, the invariable result is the most eminent success. And thus the great body of medical men are more and more, year by year, rendering, unconscious and unintended, often secret, homage to the grand principle for which Beach. and Morrow and King labored and fought! Could any theory of medicine ask a more triumphant indication of its innate truth and potency than that its avowed enemies should adopt its weapons of warfare against disease and death?

But again. Call it evolution, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, what you will; ascribe it to the self-operating agency of impersonal law, or to the providential ordering of an All-wise Divinity, how you will, the fact remains that the germinal idea, out of which all these phrases and beliefs grow, has become, in one shape or another, the dominant idea of pretty

In whatsoever degree one may be disposed to apply the cardinal idea of this principle or theory to the past of the human family or of the animal kingdom, it is not to be successfully denied that it is grounded strongly upon what seems to be the converging testimony of all human observations through all the ages, whether it be attributed to the ordering of God or the action of self-operating law.

The weak and helpless of every brood of fowls or litter of animals, disappear under the attrition of more or less unfavorable surroundings.

The efforts of breeders of stock are successful in developing a higher grade of organization in so far as they are co-ordinate and in harmony with natural tendencies, and it is fair and ligitimate to argue that they succeed, because they are directed in such harmonious channels.

It cannot be maintained that they succeed where they contravene such inherent tendencies, without a result fatal at once to a belief in God and in law, and no one has developed the mental hardihood of denying both these, and thereby relegating everything to the ordering of chance. It is not my purpose to detail evidences or to trace out the discussion of this theory, but only to point attention to the general fact that the trend of all earthly things seems confessedly to be in the direction of a higher and more perfect organization. And upon this I found the simple question, What is all this but the application, in the broadest and truest sense, of the principles of eclecticism?

Passing, then, any detailed statement of the argument, since even this meager outline must be sufficient to indicate its drift to an audience as thoughtful as such an occasion as this must bring together, I simply call your attention to the fact that the ground theory of the school of medicine which we profess, seems to be the earliest practical application to the needs—the actual, pressing needs-of the human family of the vital element in this great, predominating drift of modern thought.

It seems to have been given to the founders of our system, whether consciously or unconsciously, to put into practice in

of all permanent human advancement. Whether this application was made consciously or unconsciously, can make no sort of difference to the argument as I have sought to outline it. In either case the fact remains that eclecticism in medicine is virtually the first systematic attempt, and remains the most striking example of the application of the germinal idea of the “survival of the fittest," to the practical affairs of life, and as such it stands alone among its compeers as thoroughly in harmony with what may well be termed the "spirit of the age," and thoroughly consistent with the best fruit of the accumulated thought of all the ages.

Thus, then, purposely avoiding the use of all professional technicalities on an occasion of general interest, I have sought merely to point attention to two great facts, namely: 1st, That eclecticism is in the fullest harmony, as a manifestation of scientific thought and practice, with the great dominant tone of the world's best thought; and, 2d, That it has had that most signal of all indications, the adoption of its leading ideas by the ablest of those who may be accounted its enemies, if it has any enemies at all.

I leave to your own minds the development of the manifold and far reaching significance which lies in these two momentous facts, with a modest hope that, if I have not said anything strictly new, I may, at least, have dropped a hint, the following out of which may lead some of you to see truths in new and mutually strengthening relations to each other.

To you, gentlemen of the Faculty, who have led us thus far along the toilsome but satisfying paths of professional knowledge, what can I say more suggestive and significant than that we part from you with the sincerest regret? In the longer or shorter future that lies before us, dark and trying as it must sometimes be to all of us, we shall miss you more than we can find words to tell-more, probably, than any of us can now forecast. In hours of painful doubt and perplexity, when in the service of our fellow-men, we stand face to face with wasting and baffling disease, and contest with the last grim enemy of all flesh the possession of the "frail tenement of

toward us the imploring appeal of the drowning wretch toward the lagging rescue, and stricken families and friends turn passionately to us for aid; when we stand-as, without question, sometimes we must-thus sorely baffled and perplexed, we shall miss your firm and friendly guiding and sustaining hands. And if in such scenes of trial, we shall not falter nor flinch, but "fight the good fight" patiently, hopefully, bravely, even to the brink of the all-swallowing grave, we, and they to whom we minister, will owe it not more to such gifts as God and nature have given us, than to that patient and careful grounding in the elements of professional efficiency which your labors have effected, and that noble example of ready resource and hopeful courage which your lives have furnished us.

And, too, in our moments of triumph-if any such be granted us-when through our efforts we see the light of hope and strength and life coming back to those who have called us to their aid, we shall feel, amid our rejoicing, a pang of regret that you are not there to share in the victory to which your care and training have so largely contributed.

I feel that no assurance is needed to satisfy you that with you all we have become bound by associations of personal friendship and regard, too firm and grateful for any lapse of time to destroy. When we came to you, it was because we believed you to be representatives of truth and rational progress in medical science, and, be assured, we go from you with that confidence not only unshaken, but strengthened and confirmed.

We can but thank you, with overflowing sincerity, for the personal manliness, and the professional acumen and accomplishment, with which you have discharged your duties toward us, and bid you go on with unflagging zeal in the good work you have thus far so nobly carried forward, grounding those who may come after us, in what we are all assured are the loftiest and truest principles of the generous science to which we are all devoted.

And now, my classmates, when I shall have spoken to you