An introductory lecture, delivered at the Massachusetts Medical College

An introductory lecture, delivered at the Massachusetts Medical College

Speeches

Massachusetts Medical College

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

Holmes assumed the professorship of anatomy and physiology at Harvard in the fall of 1847 and delivered this introductory lecture to the students on November 3. In an overview of the medical developments of Boston, Holmes alludes here to “the strange magic of the enchanted goblet”—the first administration of ether anesthesia in operative surgery just a year before: “The knife is searching for disease, the pulleys are dragging back dislocated limbs, nature herself is working out the primal curse which doomed the tenderest of her creatures to the sharpest of her trials, but the fierce extremity of suffering has been steeped in the waters of forgetfulness, and the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed forever.”

The lecture prompted The Boston medical and surgical journal to aver that “it is the best discourse ever delivered in the Medical School of Harvard University. It abounds with bright thoughts, and there is a kind of elasticity and vigor running through its pages, that refreshes the reader.”

Title page from the published version of the speech given by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) at the Massachusetts Medical College

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

William D. Ticknor and Company

1847

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Holmes Collection

text

1 title page

English

text

DigID0002199

From the collections of the Boston Medical Library