There is another phase of the lives of these great men of medicine that is so different from what is ordinarily thought to be the rule with physicians, that it seems worth while emphasizing at the end of this introduction. All these great discoverers have been men of constructive imagination, men who might have been distinguished litterateurs very probably, had they applied themselves in that field. All of them have had too much imagination to be materialists, that is, to consider that they could know nothing except what they learned from the matter with which their studies were taken up. All these great discoverers in medicine have been simple, sincere, faithful believers, ready to express their trust in an overruling Providence, and in a hereafter that they knew only by faith, it is true, but which was for that reason none the less distinctly recognized. While it is usually considered that medicine leads men's minds away from orthodox thinking in the great matter of the relationship of the creature to the Creator, all these men have been not only ready to acknowledge their personal obligations to Him, but have furnished exemplary models of what the recognition of such obligations can make of human lives. There is an old proverb that runs _Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei_,--where there are three physicians there are at least two atheists. This has made many a heartache for fond mothers {25} when they found their sons had determined on becoming physicians. If the present series of sketches is to be taken as any argument, however, it is only the small minds among physicians who become atheists. They are not able to see their way clearly from the material they work in to the higher things that prove a source of strength and consolation to the great minds while they are busy making medicine for their own and subsequent generations. Certainly no more thoroughly representative group of the makers of nineteenth century clinical medicine could have been selected than those whose sketches are here given. They are from all the nations who have contributed materially to modern medical advance, yet all of them were deeply religious men. There is another and equally important point with regard to them. It is their relations to their fellows. Without exception they were men beloved by those around them for their unselfish devotion not only to science, but also to their brother men. In the midst of their occupations the thought that has been the profoundest consolation for all of them without exception has been that they were accomplishing something by which their fellow-men would be saved suffering and by which human life would be made more happy. A study of their careers cannot fail to show the young physician the ideals he must cherish if he would have real and not apparent success and happiness in life. {26} {27} MORGAGNI, THE FATHER OF PATHOLOGY {28}