"Tu recte vivis si curas esse quod audis; Neve putes alium sapiente bonoque beatum." --Horace, _Ep_., 1, 16. [You are living right if you take care to be what people say you are. Do not imagine that any one who is really happy is other than wise and good.] "Quod ipse sis, non quod habearis, interest." --Publius Syrus. [The question is what you are, not what you are thought to be.] "May you so raise your character, that you may help to make the next age a better thing, and leave posterity in your debt for the advantage it shall receive by your example." --Lord Halifax. {349} THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS [Footnote 20] [Footnote 20: This was the address to the graduates at the First Commencement of the Fordham University School of Medicine, June 9, 1909.] I have felt that the first graduation of the youngest of the medical schools might very well be occupied with the consideration of the place of the medical profession in history. We are rather apt in the modern time to neglect the lessons of history and, above all, of the history of science, first because it is not always easy to get definite information with regard to it, and secondly and mainly because we are likely to imagine that scientific and medical history can mean very little for us. In America particularly we have neglected the history of medicine and it has been one of the definite efforts at Fordham University School of Medicine to renew interest in this subject. It is entirely too important to be neglected and it has valuable lessons for all generations, but especially for a generation so occupied with itself, that it does not properly consider the claims of the past to recognition for fine work accomplished, and for the exhibition of some of the best qualities of the human intellect in the pursuit of scientific and practical medical knowledge in previous generations. {350}