26 September 1906

Bronze medal by French artisan Leon Deschamps, honoring Harvard's president Charles William Eliot. It was struck in 1907 as part of the John Harvard tercentenary celebration and depicts President Eliot at the time of the Quad's dedication. The reverse depicts the Johnston Gate, in Cambridge.

On Wednesday, September 26th, President Eliot spoke again, this address on "The Future of Medicine," a plea for turning the attention of physicians and researchers to preventive medicine and education on a society-wide rather than an individual basis:
If civilized society is to endure under its new exposures and dangers, it is clear that the medical profession must take up with new ardor the work of preventing approaching disease in addition to the work of treating disease arrived. The profession must recognize that health is eminently a social product …. The medicine of the future has therefore to deal much more extensively than in the past with preventive medicine, or in other words, with the causes of disease as it attacks society, the community, or the state, rather than the individual …. The study of mitigations, remedies, and cures is to continue; but the study of the causes of disease and the means of prevention is to be greatly developed.

List of physicians suggested for honorary degrees, 1906

As part of the dedication ceremonies on September 26, honorary degrees were to be presented to some distinguished physicians. In this memo, the dean of the Medical School, William L. Richardson, canvasses and records the opinions of some of the faculty members on the matter. Ultimately, President Eliot conferred honorary doctorates of laws degrees on Drs. Henry P. Bowditch and J. Collins Warren, recognizing their extraordinary labors on behalf of the Medical School, and Charles Algernon Coolidge, as the architect, became Harvard's first honorary Doctor of Arts. Additional honorary doctorates were conferred on Drs. Simon Flexner, José Ramos, Franz Keibel, Charles Scott Sherrington, Francis John Shepherd, Sir Thomas Barlow, and Abraham Jacobi.

Sheet music for Hymn 283, the "Harvard Hymn", 1906

The so-called "Harvard Hymn" was sung by the Alumni Chorus at the Academic Session of the Dedication on September 26th. This unusual Academic Session was held in Cambridge, at Sanders Theater, reinforcing the Medical School's close ties to the University. It was only the third such session not held in the month of June in Harvard's history. The "Harvard Hymn" was composed by John Knowles Paine, the University's late professor of music.

Laudate Dominum : Motett for Male Chorus accompanied by Organ, Two Trumpets, Four Trombones, 1906

Harvard's Assistant Professor of Music, F. S. Converse, composed this choral work for the dedication of the new Medical School buildings on September 26th. A chorus of alumni under the direction of Harvard's choir-master performed the piece. A similar Converse composition was played at the University Tercentenary exercises in 1936.