THE LESSON OF A NOBLE LIFE. 263 which had come to him from men whose lives had inspired his own and which they had worn with such a daily beauty. The shadows of approaching mortality were illuminated not only by the brightness of dawning heaven, but by the consciousness of good desert, of a life consecrated to noble aims, and of an ever-abiding desire to do nothing that might be called unbecoming a gentleman and a Christian, or cause one pang in the hearts of his friends. "He was the soul of goodness; And all our praises of him are like streams, Drawn from a spring, that still rise full and leave SURGEONS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPILETTER FROM DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH. TAL. As might naturally have been inferred from the honor and esteem with which he was regarded, Dr. Warren was in various forms connected with many societies and institutions. From February, 1846, he was one of the six visiting surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was also secretary of the Medical Board at the same institution, and perpetual secretary of the Boylston Prize Committee from his election in 1850. He was president of the Boylston Medical Society, and of the Suffolk Medical District Society. On the 30th of October, 1866, he was elected president of the Massachusetts Medical Benevolent Society, and from the death of his father in 1856 he served as president of the Thursday Evening Club till his own decease, and likewise of the Warren Museum of Natural History. He was a councillor of the Massachusetts Medical Society; a fellow of the American Medical Association; a trustee of the Humane Society and of the Lying-in Hospital; one of the standing committee of the Cincinnati, and of the committee for visiting the Medical School. In 1849 he became a fellow of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. During the War of the Rebellion he was one of the Board of Medical Examiners for the Commonwealth. RESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 265 He was a director of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, a member of the Boston Society of Natural History, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was one of the prudential committee of the Boston Society of Medical Improvement, and an honorary fellow of the New York Medical Society, a member of the Medical Society of the State of New York, and a fellow of the Trustees of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of the State of New York. The universal feeling of regret for Dr. Warren's loss naturally found expression in numberless resolutions passed by the societies of which he was a member. Of these there is space in this memoir for but one series; and for the insertion of these it is trusted that a sufficient excuse will be found if any be needed-in the important position of the body that adopted them, in the length and intimacy of the relation of its members with the deceased, and in their minute delineation of his character as a man and a surgeon. At the regular quarterly meeting of the physicians and surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital, held at the house of Dr. H. J. Bigelow on the 26th inst., Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, the chairman, offered the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted: 56 Resolved, That the members of this Board are deeply sensible of the loss they have sustained in the death of their late associate Dr. J. Mason Warren, in the maturity of his faculties and usefulness. "Occupying an enviable position at his entrance upon professional life, he carefully cherished both his personal and hereditary reputation, and did honor to a name already illustrious. From the outset he surrendered himself to his favorite pursuit with a zeal so exclusive that everything connected with it seemed to assume, in his view, an importance sometimes partaking almost of exaggeration. For more than twenty years the Massachusetts General Hospital reaped the benefit of this concentrated professional devotion, which the illness of the last year or two of his life hardly abated; and remembering that he undertook no duty that he did not perform with conscientious exactness, this Board recognizes the extent of its obligation to him, both in the value of his daily services and in the reputation he has added to the institution of which his father was a founder. He was an accomplished surgeon, and brought to the deliberations of his colleagues an inherited and prompt decision, not the result merely of strong conviction, but tempered and guided by a mind instinctively logical as to the recurring facts of every-day surgical practice; based on a breadth of view such as long experience only can give, and comprehending not merely the material pathology, but the mental condition and the surrounding circumstances of the sufferer. He devised new and valuable operative methods, of which the free dissection in the case of cleft palate was perhaps the most important; although, in omitting to specify with anatomical detail the parts divided, he enabled a foreign surgeon to lay doubtful claim to an operation which he had himself really devised and first successfully performed. "In surgery life often hangs upon the difficult decision what it is best to do. To do it afterwards is comparatively easy. As a good executive surgeon, possessing most of the lesser and more common attributes of modern surgical excellence, Dr. Warren was a cool and skilful operator, and possessed a desirable boldness or confidence so far that no timidity or hesitancy ever warped his judgment away from an operation of serious or critical character. Yet he was neither bold nor cool from any constitutional indifference or insensibility to giving pain; nor was he ever led into an operation hastily or indiscreetly by an undue desire for novelty or notoriety. Indeed, the extent of his surgical practice placed him beyond the reach of influences like these. But to a surgeon, his superiority was in his sound judgment and his great experience, — higher and rarer qualities than that mere mechanical dexterity in operating which in the ruder days of science was identified with it, as it is now often by the public at large and sometimes even by physicians. "We cannot forget his gentle and high-bred courtesy of manner, never obsequious, nor in his case incompatible with a keen relish for social enjoyment; of late years combined with HOSPITAL RESOLVES. 267 somewhat less reserve, perhaps, than formerly, but always diffusing a genial influence, and gathering dignity from the purity of his character and the gentlemanlike quality of his sentiments. At the occasional discussions of his colleagues he did not shrink from a necessary expression of opinion; but he never expressed uncalled-for dissent, and often disarmed or qualified the opposition of those who differed from him by his uniform and manly urbanity. Those who were in frequent professional relations with him for many years will find it difficult to remember a word of disparagement or even criticism of his professional brethren, while it is easy to recall his earnest advocacy of the claims of those allied to him by ties of friendship or obligation. His interest in our own Board always continued; and when, at its last meeting at his house, only a few months ago, he said that while he lived he should be always happy to see us assembled there, he- though he alone of all those present must have known that his mortal illness was upon him. Skilful in his calling and wise in counsel, he exerted by his social position, his fine temper, his breeding and the elevated tone of his mind, an influence in our Board and in our profession here, the loss of which will be long and profoundly felt. "Resolved, That we recognize in our late colleague many of the attributes of a practitioner which are of greatest value to the community. "In practice he was conservative and cautious, not prejudiced against novelty; on the contrary, quite ready enough to give it attention, but with sagacious discrimination; open to conviction as well against as for it; and in his relations with others, guiding unsteady minds, both of educated and uneducated persons, among the ever-intruding new and futile remedies, the unprofitable or pernicious expedients and advice, with which the path especially of the surgical sufferer is too often beset. "But the measure of a usefulness to which his health alone set the limit was dependent upon qualities as well of the heart as of the head. The welfare of those with whom he dealt professionally seemed ever to preoccupy his mind. He visited them so cheerfully and assiduously, both at the hospital and elsewhere, even long after his disease had seriously impaired his strength and rendered all bodily exertion painfully laborious, |