that follows is wider than that in France and Belgium, wider even than the desolation of grief, and something worse-the hardened heart, the lie in the soul-so graphically described in Book II of the Republic-that forces us to do accursed things, and even to defend them!"
Osler again lauds the humanities when he likens them to hormones, "Now, the men of your guild secrete materials which do for society at large what the thyroid gland does for the individual. The Humanities are the hormones." He likened other subjects to medicine and used them in medicine. "The Humanities bring the student into contact with the masterminds who gave us these things-with the dead who never die, with those immortal lives not of now nor of yesterday, but which always were."
Osler next paid another tribute to the Greeks, "As true today as in the fifth century B.C. the name of Helles stands no longer for the name of a race, but as the name of knowledge; or, as more tersely put by Maine, 'Except the blind forces of Nature nothing moves [intellectually, he means] in this world that is not Greek in origin.'" This would be accepted still in the Western world. He goes on to mention the horror of many discoveries of good men, nitroglycerine, gases, poisons, etc.
Osler concludes this great oration by returning to medicine to bring the humanities and medicine together for all time, "There is a sentence in the writing of the Father of Medicine (Hippocrates) upon which all commentators have lingered-the love of humanity associated with the love of his craft! philanthropia and philotechnia-the joy of working joined in each one to a true love of his brother. Memorable sentence indeed! in which for the first time was coined the magic word 'philanthropy,' and conveying the subtle suggestion that perhaps in this combination the longings of humanity may find their solution and Wisdom-Phfiosophia-at last justified of her children."
