- blishing the subject of hygiene as one of the principal
professorial chairs, thus making it an equal as well as obligatory study. Another important improvement adopted was the establishment of an Examination Board, independent of the teaching staff, a plan not then customary in the United States. This Board was composed of some of the best known members of the profession, and at the same time we changed the ordinary term of medical study from three years to four.
During the early years of the college I occupied the Chair of Hygiene, and had the pleasure of welcoming Miss Jex Blake, then visiting America, as a member of the first class. The Professor of Hygiene also superintended the important work of the sanitary visitor at the homes of the poor. It has always seemed to me, during many years of active private practice, that the first and constant aim of the family physician should be to diffuse the sanitary knowledge which would enable parents to bring up healthy children.
The most painful experience which I met with in practice was the death of one of my little patients from the effects of vaccination. This baby, though carefully tended and the lymph used guaranteed pure, died from the phagedenic ulceration set up by vaccination in a rather scrofulous constitution. To a hygienic physician thoroughly believing in the beneficence of Nature's laws, to have caused the death of a child by such means was a tremendous blow!
