A Surgeon's Valedictory

The second of Philadelphia's great medical Da Costas last week delivered his valedictory to Medicine, his prolog to Death. When Jacob Mendez Da Costa (1833-1900) died, the profession summed up its reverence for him in the title, "physicians' physician." The eulogy "surgeons' teacher" is ready for John Chalmers Da Costa, no kin of Dr. Jacob. He has taught in Philadelphia more than 40 years.

Last week, 67, he was partially paralyzed, physically decrepit, mentally scintillating. An attendant wheeled him before the Philadelphia County Medical Society and handed him sheet by sheet the last paper he expected to read. Bluntly he offered his wisdom:

"The medical profession is troubled with the same thing today that it was troubled with when I started my career. There are too many young men being knocked off the ladder of fame by old men coming down. . . .

"... A young doctor's chief practice must be that of economy. . . .

"It is strange, considering financial needs and so many improper openings to riches, that so few physicians deviate into quackery. . . .

"I do not see how a medical man can be vain. . . . He sometimes must come to a realization of his own smallness when he stands by, impotent to save. . . . Yet some are. [Vanity] creeps up into them through some mousehole or other. . . .

"A physician . . . will be surprised to find how few suffer near the end. . . .

"Even though a doctor is in the Winter of his years and the machine is growing very creaky, he must never let the icicles gather about the heart nor permit the lamp of pity to be extinguished in his soul. .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.