FOREWORD consecutively to Osler against his will. How did he do it? I know not.' A personality of this kind, combining the spiritual gravity of Pasteur or Lister with the engaging humanity of Astley Cooper or Ludwig, Syme or Dieulafoy, is rare in medicine. To possess it is, in itself, a kind of genius. 6 Though he never wrote verse, it happened that, through the spoken and written word, Osler awakened in his pupils and colleagues a keen interest in what President Gilman once called 'our heritage of English poetry' even where it has been seemingly obliterated by the dull grind of daily life. In most men', Sainte Beuve tells us, 'there is a poet who dies young while the rest of the man survives.' Many physicians and medical graduates (les évadés de la médecine) have been admirable poets, from Thomas Lodge (of Shakespeare's Rosalind) to the present Laureate, Dr. Robert Bridges. Among the earlier men, Goldsmith, Akenside, Garth, Blackmore, Haller, Werlhof, have the true sober-sided eighteenth-century flavour. Schiller stands between the old régime and the new order of things. Keats, Holmes, Weir Mitchell, Sir Ronald Ross, Henry Head, and John McCrae are bright names among the moderns. In the Parnasse médical français, compiled by that able medical historian, Achille Chéreau, there seems to be only one copy of verses worthy of citation, namely those of Philippe Ricord, who practised a speciality which has only just become mentionable to the ears polite' of our own generation. This dizain is unique of its kind. It and ura ini na mrrière. Que le tombeau seui s'en empare. Qui de roupieront plus les pieurs. poetry by Verses by The present collection is devoted neither to nedical men cor to poems on medical subjects, Sertical men eldom rise above a certain levei. Poems on mertical themes, such as those of Flaubert's friend. Louis Bouillet, isually turn out to be the dry, uninspiring products himera tisporting itself in vacuo. Studies of both necies have been made now and then, from the De medicis poetis ! 1669, of the Danish anatomist, Thomas Bartholinus, to the charming volume recently published by Dr. Charles L.. Dana (New York. Dr. Harvey Cushing has a unique Collection of poems by medical men. The late Dr. Robert Fletcher, of Washington, had one of the choicest collections of English and American verse in existence. But practising physicians have usually no active interest in poetry; it be for the reason given by Sainte Beuve, or where the viewpoint is not material. from sheer lack of leisure. Yet medicine touches human life on every side, and there is may FOREWORD hardly any state of soul' in the lives of men, women and children, which does not some time come under the observation of the physician, as the natural confidant, counsellor, and friend of his patients. In this relation, it is given him to be, as Wordsworth said of the poet himself, 'the rock of defence for human nature', and here Wordsworth's magnificent defence of poetry is again apposite : 'The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of Science is pleasure, but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and inalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow beings. The Man of Science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes it and loves it in his solitude. The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings may join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is on the countenance of all science. Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, "that he looks before and after". He is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs; in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time.' This collection is based upon the theory of Goethe that the only inspired poem is the short 'occasional poem'. The finest poetic thoughts are things of momentary clair voyance, fleeting, elusive, to be apprehended only by the raptim of the natural artist. There have been, indeed, sustained flights of sublime utterance, as in Milton or Wordsworth, and wonderful feats of artistry and architectonics, as in Keats or Swinburne, but Morte d'Arthur, St. Agnes' Eve, Tintern Abbey, Empedocles, or The Altar of Righteousness are ouvrages de longue haleine and require amplitudes of leisure. They cannot be grasped in the briefer, idle moments. Relying then upon the poems with the true 'lyrical cry', and leaving the longer pieces to the leisured cognoscenti, the design of this collection is made apparent by its arrangement. Assume a young physician, of good upbringing, and with the kind of liberal education which his calling requires. Some of the emotional experiences reflected in these poems will be inevitably his, as he passes through life, or he will observe them in others, in his professional experience. The effect of medical training upon the individual is peculiar, in that it frequently gives a materialistic bias to the mind. But the effect of medical experience in practice, the constant familiarity with all modes of human suffering, is different. If it does not make the doctor right-hearted and high-minded, then he will fall short of the old Greek standard set by the Father of Medicine—that rectitude of mind and character is essential to the making of a good physician. Medicine is almost inevitably a matter of ethical relations and of treading the path of duty. It is, in some relations, far from a pleasant profession, yet the physician must always cultivate cheerfulness, good humour FOREWORD and that goodwill toward his fellow creatures which alone 'makes insight'. Dealing, as he does, daily and hourly with all forms of physical and mental suffering, the doctor cannot consciously adopt loose morals or frivolous standards without losing caste, even within the tribunal of his own conscience. In spite of smoking-room jests, and the large humorous perception of life required of him, his patients alone, in their helplessness and misery, will constantly remind him that want of decency shows want of sense'. Quand notre mérite baisse notre goût baisse aussi. 6 The late Dr. Weir Mitchell, in Characteristics, has outlined a segment of human experience which is almost inevitable in the life of any well-poised young physician, to whom it is one of the essentials of his calling that his mind. should work apart, in a certain isolation and detachment. In early manhood, I was shy, reserved, and selfconscious. ... About the time I began to like scientific study, I lost for life the sense of ennui which had been one of the peculiarities of my childhood. . . . My long absence abroad enabled me usefully to escape from many of the narrowing associations of my youth, and to enter on life untrammelled. I found, indeed, as I grew older, that the comrades of my youth were no longer such. I had moved away from them; but friendly time brought others whom I learned to love better and with more reason.' From the beginnings of civilization, physicians have excelled in serious studies. In the generation just past the poets most favoured by them have been those who deal with the ethical and philosophical aspects of life, as Wordsworth, Shelley, Arnold, Clough, Lord Houghton, |