lege has aimed at and succeeded in providing. The general purposes of the two institutions were as closely parallel as the sympathy between the men in control of them was natural and inevitable. That, in filling its medical department, the choice of the University should have fallen upon our school was to us an evidence of that appreciation which honest effort is always willing and happy to receive. The Faculty gladly accepted the alliance with Washington University because it will serve as a guaranty, to the profession and to the public, of thorough work. The circumstance that at the time we had reason to take pride in our independence and self-reliance made it all the more easy to enter into the compact. The strongest unions are dictated by choice rather than necessity.

By this connection, the University has but one vital interest in its medical department, viz.: to maintain the efficiency of the College on the University's own high level; while the College has thereby published its promise to the furnish in its own line the same thorough training as the departments of arts, and science, and law, in theirs. The University has reviewed the work of the college and found it satisfactory; it has expressed its faith in the ability of the college to educate men for the profession of medicine.

The ultimate benefit of the union will be reaped by our students. They are brought into relationship with students pursuing other work; they are put in touch with university work and spirit; they are made to share in the broader views and higher culture imparted by university instruction. To them we have the right to say: Ours is an educational institution pure and absolute; whatever shall come to us, whether of income or donation, to you it must and will be devoted; our merit shall be measured not by the emolu ments of our teachers, but by the extent to which we shall use our facilities for the instruction and improvements of the youths who come to work with us.

My history has come down to date. In November, 1842, the teaching of medicine in this school was begun by five professors; at present, the faculty consists of eighteen members, assisted by thirteen additional instructors and a number of clinicians. It is a pleasure to reflect that the present faculty is still connected, through several of its members, with the youthful past of the school, nay, even with its earliest infancy through the revered Nestor of our corps, Dr. Abram Litton, whom we can never cease to think of as our own, though he has now folded his hands after the most faithful, thorough and loving labors of forty-nine years.

The school has attained its majority. It has shown by acts that leave no doubt and cannot be misinterpreted, what are its aims to endow its graduates with that measure of medical proficiency which can be attained within the short period of three years by the best means available. The means must consist in a groundwork of scientific studies, with ample opportunities of testing and applying knowledge and acquiring technical skill in the laboratories, and in a superstructure of medical, surgical and therapeutical studies with similar opportunities of personal experience in the recognition, interpretation, and treatment of disease. The modern drift in medical education, in all education, is to enable the scholar to see for himself and to draw his own conclusions. Oral instruction is largely supplemented by ocular demonstration or, better still, supplanted by the learner's own labor with hand and eye and brain. The student is to verify and as it were rediscover for himself the tenets that form the body of medical science, and to acquire the manual and mental skill to execute the art.

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To satisfy these requirements demanded a generous development of the laboratories and clinics of the school. In its earliest years, the College had only one laboratory, that of Anatomy; and that so imperfectly organized that on one occasion an unfortunate accident was able to expose it

to the destructive violence of an unreasoning and superstitious mob;-and its clinical facilities were very scant. Now, by far the largest space of the College building is devoted to laboratory and clinical work. There have been furnished separate students' laboratories for anatomy, chemistry, physiology, histology, pathology and bacteriology.

The teaching of chemistry is now carried on chiefly in the practical way; that of normal and pathological histology and bacteriology is scarcely attempted in any other; the pupil gets his knowledge of healthy and diseased tissues by seeing them, by preparing them for the microscope with his own hands; he is led to cultivate the known pathogenic microbes for himself, to realize their existence, their modes of life, their powers for evil, and the means that will destroy them. He is admitted into a laboratory of that science which above all protects the medical man against poverty of thought and the limitations of routine,- physiology;a laboratory so thoroughly equipped, and manned by so competent a professional physiologist, that it not only furnishes opportunity for students' work, but fully supplies the means for original research.

In a parallel way, the practice of medicine and surgery is now taught by methods based in the main on clinical illustration and practical exercises. Not less than twenty hours a week are spent by the senior student in clinics devoted to general medicine, general surgery, and eight specialties, where he is taught to examine patients, make diagnoses, and assist in carrying out the treatment; while didactic teaching in the same branches is made more and more subordinate.

Such are the methods,- such have been the aims of the St. Louis Medical College. They are limited only by financial limitations. To progress in the same direction. with unhesitating step is its highest aspiration, its ambitious desire. In its steady onward course, swayed by no

mercenary considerations of immediate material success, the College meets without solicitude the competition of the annually increasing number of commercial ventures in the field of medical education ;—and conscious of its successful efforts in doing good work, hopes ultimately to conquer the indifference of the medical fraternity, and to gain what it deserves, the approbation and support of the community.

APPENDIX.

I. First Board of Trustees, appointed and confirmed by the Board and Faculty of the St. Louis University, on October, 7th, 1842: Benj. F. Farrar, John O'Fallon, John C. Dennies, Adam L. Mills, George Collier, James Clemens, Jr., Rev. Wm. G. Eliot, Charles P. Billon, Warwick Tunstall, J. B. Crockett, James H. Lucas, I. C. Davis. This board organized on October 8th, 1842, by the election of Mr. Lucas, President; Mr. Mills, Vice-President; Mr. Clemens, Treasurer; and Mr. Tunstall, Secretary.

II. Original Faculty, elected by the Board and Faculty of the St. Louis University, October 7th, 1842:

Dr. Josephus Wells Hall, Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine. Dr. Hiram Augustus Prout, Professor of Materia Medica, Chemistry and Pharmacy.

Dr. James Vance Prather, Professor of Surgery and of Surgical and Pathological Anatomy.

Dr. Daniel Brainard, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology.

Dr. Moses Lewis Linton, Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children.

Dr. Prather serving as dean.