School physicians to the Board of Health, at the commencement of the epidemic, exhibit a mortality of twenty-six per cent., or more than six times the mortality of the liberal systems of

medicine.

Again: the average amount of mortality in the hospitals of Europe is from nine to ten per cent., while the average amount of mortality in European Homœopathic hospitals is from four to five per cent. a disproportion of two to one under similar circumstances. The mortality of European hospitals, compared with the mortality of American Eclectic practice, exhibits a disproportion of ten to one; and in comparing the treatment of cholera in Parisian hospitals with its treatment in our Cincinnati cholera hospital, we find the mortality of the former sixty two and a half per cent., the latter twenty-three and a half, during the same season, in the treatment of the same disease.

Such being the facts-there being in one case a disproportion of two or three to one, in others a disproportion of six to one and ten to one, and in another of nearly twenty to one in the mortalitywe may thereby be warranted in assuming that the usual difference of mortality in private practice would exhibit a disproportion of two to one; and that if the Eclectic practitioner loses annually five cases out of five hundred, the Old School practitioner, under similar circumstances, would have lost ten. At least, it is certain, according to their own reports, that the Old School hospital practice would, out of the five hundred patients, have lost, not five, but eighty-five. Thus we arrive at the conclusion, that every Eclectic practioner in active practice saves annually at least five lives which would have been lost by the Old School system.

Now, in the past five years, since the establishment of the Eclectic Medical Institute, we have graduated about two hundred physicians. This number, engaged in practice, would treat annually at least one hundred thousand patients, of whom they would save at least one thousand who would have lost their lives but for the agency of the Eclectic system.

If, then, we are now instrumental in saving every year a thousand lives, is not this worth more than all the glory of all the merely military heroes whom our country has produced? These are our peaceful triumphs; and still the tide of beneficence swells higher each year, as the armies of peace are swelled by new recruits, and through their agency millions are added to the health and wealth and happiness of the nation-not merely by the salvation of life, but by the sound health of those who are effectually relieved from disease, free from mercurial poisoning, and the lingering torments of a bloodless and broken down constitution.

The Eclectic Medical Institute has already reared for itself a monument more lasting than brass and marble-a monument composed of living men and women. At the lowest calculation, there

are at least five hundred men and won.en in this city, who would have perished during the late cholera epidemic, but for the assistance of Eclectic medicine. About two thousand cholera patients underwent Eclectic practice, and I presume no one will deny that of that number, at least six or seven hundred would have died under the most skilful mercurial practice, whereas the number who died was much less than one hundred. Of these five hundred men and women who constitute the undying monument of Eclectic medicine, I might point out your valued citizens from the halls of legislation and of justice, down to the humblest walks of life-a number of whom I trust are present here this night.

You, gentlemen, in like manner, will build yourselves monuments of living flesh and blood-they shall bless and honor your name, and their children's children, through endless ages, shall owe you a lasting debt of gratitude. Ay, you have already begun-you have already known the proud satisfaction of the worthy physician, who has saved his fellow beings from impending death. I recognize, and I am tempted to name those before me who have already done themselves honor as practitioners of the true healing art; but I must desist, for I should be required to name the greater portion of this large assembly of graduates.

Go on, gentlemen, as you have begun-build up your living monuments by the salvation of life. Those monuments of your good deeds shall outlast the Egyptian pyramids; for man, immortal man, shall endure longer than the soulless stone; and your monuments of life shall tower higher than those pyramids, and give you a better fame, for they shall rise up to the courts of heaven, and bear the record of your good deeds through the realms of eternity, in sight of God, and angels, and mankind.

With such an end before you, I trust you will not be discouraged, or even provoked, if men refuse to do homage to truth, and to honor properly the Medical Reform. Be not disturbed if they slander you, as they have slandered every benefactor of mankind. You are now fairly prepared to follow the examples of the most illustrious of good men. As Harvey, Jenner, and Gall peacefully pursued their sublime vocations to bless and enlighten mankind, while learned colleges and royal societies frowned upon them, so will you labor for the health, prosperity, and enlightenment of your beloved country, while thirty-seven medical colleges, and about as many medical journals, and innumerable societies ring with denunciations of your philanthropic labors.

Wm. Harvey and Christopher Columbus toiled on with unswerving fidelity to the great truths which possessed them, while multitudes scoffed at them, and the great mob of well-dressed gentlemen who conceived themselves the very standards of respectability, the oracles of learning and established truth, rose up like an army across their path. But mark the issue of the conflict.

Wm.

Harvey, with truth in his soul, has conquered all that mighty array of powerful, wealthy, and learned men, and if his opponents are remembered at all, it is merely because they come down to our times hanging on to the extremest skirts of his triumphal robe.

Christopher Columbus has triumphed over all the proud learning and wisdom of his day; and when we desire to know who were the great men the learned men-the respectable men--the powerful men, who looked down upon the poor Genoese mariner with scorn, we must dig down deep amid the dust and ashes of oblivion, where they are buried with all their pride, and pomp, and power. You, gentlemen, are about to engage in a similar contest. You know that you possess the truth-you know that you are bearing forth blessings to mankind, not inferior to any that I have named. If. Harvey brought to light the functions of the heart, you are acquainted also with the functions of the brain-if Jenner brought forth the antidote to small pox, you carry forth also the antidotes to cholera.

Bearing as you do these and other great blessings to mankind, what is it to you that colleges, journals, and societies fulminate their loud thunders over your heads? What is it to you that combinations are formed to put down, and that a vast array of very wealthy and learned and respectable influence rises up against you? You live in a land of freedom, where the triumph of truth is not only certain, but speedy; and you will rise up over all such influences you will scatter them before you-you will see them going as

"The mist on the mountain, the foam on the river,
Which gleam but a moment and vanish for ever."

The period of conflict will be but a moment in the history of a nation, yet it may be a life-time to you and me. The greatest absurdities and most soul-harrowing barbarities have heretofore required an age to abolish them. It is but little more than a hundred years since people were legally murdered for witchcraft; and there are still intelligent men-ay, in this city-who are believers in witches. [A prominent divine, about four years since, preached a sermon against witchcraft in Cincinnati, in which he avowed his belief that Mesmeric operations were witchcraft and of diabolical origin.]

About three hundred years ago, surgeons, after amputating a limb, controlled the hemorrhage by putting on boiling pitch, or by burning the part with red hot irons. It was a horrible scene then in which the surgeon figured. Ambrose Pare proposed simply to tie the arteries, instead of burning the poor patient. The College of Physicians of Paris denounced him, and endeavored to suppress the dissemination of his improvement by the authority of Parliament. They could not put it down, but they kept up the dignity of the profession; for many of the orthodox surgeons of those

days continued for nearly a hundred years longer to burn their patients, instead of tying the arteries.

So at the present tine, the Eclectic treatment of cholera was demonstrated in New York, in 1832, to be capable of saving almost every patient who was attended to in time, without a grain of calomel. The facts were suppressed by Dr. Stevens, who stood at the head of his profession, and have never been made known to Old School practitioners. At the same time that this demonstration was given, the cholera raged in Lexington, Ky., then the center of medical education in the West. One of my friends, a young man of genius and eloquence, who might now have been shedding the light of his mind upon our country, was attacked by the disease; he was attended by the leading medical teacher-a teacher of the ultra mercurial practice, whose influence has passed over the Southwest like the Samiel wind of the desert, blighting and withering where it passed. From him my friend received, in the treatment of his disease, a pound and a half of calomel, and he is now where the tombstone alone reveals his premature end.

Practical demonstration of the falsehood of these terrible medical delusions, avails but little. Dr. Hawthorne, in England, although a votary of the old mercurial system of practice, discarded and denounced the use of calomel and the lancet in cholera, and was rewarded by a success similar to that of the American Eclectic practice. Yet his success has not impressed the medical profession generally.

Now, although it is nearly twenty years since it was proved that nearly all cholera cases may be cured by proper means, and that calomel and the lancet are positively pernicious, still in our late pestilence, calomel and the lancet were used in this city, and with a fearful fatality this stereotyped mercurial practice was followed throughout this country; and while upward of four thousand were saved here by Eclectic and Homoeopathic practice, the people of the East Indies were at the same time suffering under the epidemic so severely, that in some places men could not be found to bury the dead. Two or three thousand perished daily at Siam, whose corpses were either burned in piles or left to putrefy on the ground. These horrors will be checked in the course of time. I predict, that when a sufficient number of young men have studied the Eclectic and Homœopathic systems, to carry their blessings through the country, the ravages of cholera will no longer have power to paralyize the commercial business of the country, and spread mourning and desolation through the land.

These barbarisms will not be entirely abolished in our day, gentlemen. You will have them before you as constant incentives to do your duty manfully. I trust you will-I know you will. You will remember that you belong to the "vanguard of the army." You will remember that you are participators in this great

movement, which is American in its origin, and which possesses the expansive freedom of the American mind-which is as grand in its aims as our own vast rivers, cataracts, and mountains-as fresh and original as our own primeval forests.

You will remember that you are engaging in this grand enterterprise now in the very infancy of our country, when you can exert an important influence in moulding its destiny.

You will remember that the time is near at hand for America to assert her pre-eminence among nations, and for American mindAmerican science, to take their leading rank.

You will then move on with a calm and sublime enthusiasm, bearing in mind your high and holy calling, and the grand panorama in which you are called to perform your parts in the drama of life-bearing in mind that in your professional labors, you are building yourselves monuments of life or monuments of death-preparing for yourselves everlasting shame and remorse, or joy and honor, derived from the rescued lives of families preserved from ruin and death.

And now we must part, each to pursue his own career of arduous and life-long labor. I know you have toils and trials before you, but you have also your glories and triumphs. God bless you all. Farewell-farewell, until we meet again, with clear consciences and with lives adorned with honorable deeds.

SENTIMENTS OF THE CLASS TOWARD THE FACULTY.

ECLECTIC MEDICAL INSTITUTE, March 2, 1850.

THE members of the E. M. Class convened at the appointed hour-Mr. S. N. Caldwell was called to the chair, and A. D. Skellenger, appointed Secretary.

The Rev. J. Dalby briefly and eloquently stated the object of the meeting, expressing his own feelings of respect, friendship, and gratitude for the entire Faculty, and though himself an Eclectic, he especially cherished profound gratitude toward Prof. S. Rosa and the science of Homœopathy, and suggested the propriety of manifesting publicly the sentiments of cordiality entertained by each member of the class.

Upon motion, it was

Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed to draft the expression of the class on the occasion.

Whereupon the Chair appointed Messrs. Bates, Dalby, Hatch, Taffe, and Vansandt, who, after a short consultation, reported the following preamble and resolutions, which, upon due consideration, were unitedly adopted.