BUFFALO ACADEMY OF MEDICINE, SURGICAL SECTION. EIGHTH OPHTHALMOLOGICAL CONGRESS. MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL NEW YORK. Fig. 1.-Patient Walking, showing the feet everted by Spiral Rotator 707 Fig. 2.-Patient Sitting, showing Flexibility of Spiral Rotator. Buffalo Medical Surgical Journal IBRARY SASSY VOL. XXXIV. Original Address. No. 1. ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATES AT THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF NIAGARA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL COLLEGE.1 BY HARLOW C. CURTISS, A. M., WE HAVE just completed the Columbian year with all its pomp and ceremony; with all the eloquence of the gifted speakers of America; with all the wonderful creations of American inventive genius; with the triumphs of our mechanics, engineers and electricians, we have emphasized the rapid progress made in the development of skilled and scientific labor, in which we lead the world. As by a magician's wand, there arose on the shores of our inland ocean, suddenly, as in a night, that marvelous White City, whose entrancing beauty-apparently not of this world, but in reality a grand, a concentrated expression of the artistic accomplishments of American landscape engineering, the architect's pencil, the sculptor's chisel-dazzled the wondering eyes of the men of all nations, who hurried thither from every quarter of the globe to exhibit in those magic storehouses the fruits of their industry, their creations of art, their achievements in science. Truly, there at Chicago the nations vied with each other to show to the world, each for itself, what its own people had accomplished in the strife to push ever onward the steady march of Human Progress. It was as if all the world had taken for its motto the words "Religio, Cultura, Mores." How much mankind has accomplished under the inspiration of these three ideals: How much have we failed: How much more must we strive in the future. But, suddenly as a dream, the dazzling, beautiful 1. Delivered at the Academy of Music, Buffalo, May 9, 1894. White City has vanished; the men of all nations have scattered themselves throughout the world; they still must continue to struggle on in the round of daily tasks, all through the unnum bered cycles of time, until at last "the trump shall sound," and then, as we were in this our Columbian year, dazzled by the magic beauty of our White City by the Lake, then to our almost blinded sight may be unfolded the glories of the beatific vision, then we shall fully realize how feeble have been our best efforts, how small their results. But we shall rejoice if we have done our humble best in a lifelong struggle to perfect ourselves in "Religio, Cultura, Mores." May it then be granted to each one of us to know that the world is not any worse for our having lived in it. During this our Columbian year we have given much of our attention to the times in which our great discoverer lived, the conditions that moulded him in his development, the motives and influences that impelled him to continue in his daring advance onward through the world of unknown waters to the land of his dreams. Now, let us, as men interested in humanity, in medicine, the healing art, consider the conditions which necessitated the establishment of this our benign mother, the Medical Department of Niagara University, the progress that has been made by her, and the motives which inspire the carrying on of her work. Niagara University was founded by the priests of the congregation of the mission in the year 1856, and in the year 1863 was incorporated by the legislature of the State of New York under the name of the Seminary of Our Lady of Angels. It was erected in 1883 into a university, under its present title, by the regents of the University of the State of New York, with the full powers and authority of a university. The college of arts of the university is situated on the highest point of the Monteagle Ridge, at Niagara Falls, a location unsurpassed in beauty and grandeur; beautiful views are seen at various points of the college grounds; from the great waterfall the course of the river can be followed over the wild rapids tumbling through the narrow green-clad gorge, on and on until we see in the distance the deep blue of Lake Ontario. Here, immersed in the rest and quiet of the virgin forest, with the beauties of Nature spread before them by a bountiful Creator, the men of Niagara cannot fail to draw in with each breath deep draughts from the fountain of knowledge established by the reverend fathers and prove themselves faithful to the beautiful motto of the university, Religio, Mores, Cultura. In the year 1883, the authorities of the University, realizing the needs of the great city at the upper end of their beautiful Niag ara, and feeling the great necessity of a complete and more thorough education for the medical men of their vicinage than was then afforded by the various medical faculties of the day, determined to establish in Buffalo a school of medicine, which should afford a complete and thorough education in that science and art to cover a course of at least three years, instead of a course of but two years, the usual length of the course prescribed by most of the medical faculties in the United States at that time. So, calling to their assistance many of the leading medical men of Buffalo and the vicinity, men unsurpassed by any in the depth of their learning, the extent of their accomplishments, the proficiency and skill of their practice, the wideness and honor of their reputations, they founded in that year the Medical Department of Niagara University. The medical faculty at once established a course in medicine covering a period of three years, and has ever since carried on the work of the medical school with great thoroughness. So much so, that now, at the end of some eleven years from the inception of the school, the Niagara graduates in medicine are every where found in the front rank of their profession. The wisdom of the founders of the medical school in insisting upon the three years' course, has been most forcibly demonstrated by the fact that the University of the State of New York has only recently insisted upon a three years' course being followed by the candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in all the medical schools of the state. [This, in obedience to a law that the Medical Society of the State of New York strove, for ten years, to establish.-Editor.] It is the desire of every member of the medical faculty of Niagara University (unless I am greatly in error) that the course in medicine shall be further lengthened to four years. And this, I doubt not, will be done at some convenient time in the near future. Here, in America, we have presented to us special needs and conditions which are so broad and widespread in their ramifications that they concern all classes of society, and influence and affect the relations and accomplishments of the men of every calling in the community. The absence of an hereditary superior class, the necessity of building from the foundations in the whole social fabric, the prevalence of intelligence and education, the restlessness of ambition and the strife for betterment, the sense of personal worth, contempt of tradition and conventionalities; self reliance, the adaptability to circumstances and the ability to conform circumstances to desires; the stimulating climate, fertility of the soil; the richness of the rewards secured by effort in every department of human labor, the regard for learning, the prevalent tone of religious thought, the pride of citizenship, the atmosphere of freedom, civic pride; the mingling of races and ideas; these, among other influences, have contributed largely to the development in the United States of a special and peculiar type of manhood; to a complex condition of the social community; to special and peculiar influences and needs, which we have in common with no other people. Among such people, there being always a close relationship between the character of the medical advisers of a people and the character of the people themselves, it is inevitable that there should be a special type of medical man; that our system of medicine and the laws governing it should materially differ from those prevalent elsewhere in the civilized world. Here the dominant ideas of liberty (often degenerating down to the level of unrestrained license) have had a direct and powerful influence upon our system of medicine. In many of our states the practice of medicine is still thrown open to any man who chooses to hold himself out as a "Doctor," without any special license to practise, without any special qualifications; and the confiding public is forced to choose and sift out for itself, often at the expense of the public health, the good from the bad, the quack and the charlatan from the medical man of sound professional skill and attainments. The popular theory is that each individual is free to choose for himself his own system of medicine as well as his own religion. Governmental paternalism, which tries to protect each individual from the hollow and false, has no tolerance in the minds of our liberty-loving people. Individualism in medicine, as in everything else, has full swing, and the needs of the social community are not considered at all in comparison with the right of the individual to choose for himself. There is no vagary so wild, and no pretension so preposterous, but that it shall receive a respectful hearing with our American people. But although with us a greater proportionate number of individuals have devoted themselves to the art of healing than among the people of any other nation, the good sense of our people has constantly been effective in sifting out the good from the bad, sterling worth from its imitation, reality from hollow pretense, |