Personal courage is one of the noblest characteristics which any man can display, particularly so when it combines the moral and the physical type. Public bravery brings nearly always its meed of public recognition. In fact, publicity is often the stimulus to a kind of bravery which without it would hardly respond to the tests. But your really courageous man is he who cares not for a search-light to reveal his deeds, one who dares and does within the quietude of his own environment that from which his weaker brothers would shrink. The soldier stirred to frenzy by the intensity of his passion will accomplish with but little dread that which might easily baffle the resolution of a reasoning man in a calm mood. The religious fanatic, be he Mussulman or Christian, may permit himself to be rent asunder rather than recant; but his motives are essentially selfish, since he looks forward to the Mohammedan's or the Christian's paradise, and so they are far from altruistic. But for that quiet heroism which shuns publicity, which calls for the highest quality of both mental and physical courage, which looks forward neither to the golden present nor the mystical yet sensuous future, commend me daily, yes hourly, to the sick rooms of patients suffering from diseases which menace the welfare of others, the infectious, the dangerous, the loathsome. One may read of late many stories of army surgeons doing heroic deeds under fire, and one's heart naturally thrills with emotion as he imagines the scenes and wonders what manner of daring may lead a man to risk his life after this fashion. But I submit to you, that brave as is such a deed and worthy of all possible honor, it has been hundreds of times for one exceeded in the actual devotion to duty and the resolution required to brave the elements, or to face death elsewhere than on the battlefield, or to surrender strength or mayhap life itself, or to invite disaster by infection, or to wear out and work out life in the constant grinding altruistic work of doing for others, who perhaps have violated every known sanitary law and forfeited their every right to live. Here is a theme that might well stir the most eloquent poet or orator that ever lived. How then shall I do it justice? Joanna Bailie has well put it: "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he whose nobler soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger Nature shrinks from." This recognition of our profession was accorded much more unstintingly nearly two thousand years ago, at a time when it was much less deserved, when Cicero wrote (_De Natura Deorum_) "_Homines ad Deos nulla re propius accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando._" (Men are never more godlike than when giving health to mankind).