Excerpt from The Creighton Quarterly Shadows, Vol. 26: September, 1934-June, 1935

Even as an old man he would rise amidst a salvo of cheers and flourish a paper to signify that his bouquet of words was there.

Again, however, medical recognition paralleled that of litera ture, for Harvard appointed Holmes to the chairs of anatomy and physiology with the privilege of instructing in microscopy and several other things besides. In truth it was as he so quaint ly remarked, no chair at all; it was a whole settee.

To the world which sees him as the poet, writing in his study or conversing wittily with his friends, it would seem the greatest of incongruities to apprehend Holmes in an Anatomy room that was cold and cheer-less, lighted by high windows, filled with cadavers in all stages of dissection, and reached by a long dark stairway up which the asthmatic doctor had to labor. Holmes was deft in dissection, and his assistant said no one ever went into such raptures over a splendid specimen as did he. The class he taught had four long lectures before his, which came at the most difficult time of the day, but their interest was always re aroused by the wit and dynamic presentation of Dr. Holmes. They would crowd through narrow doors into his amphitheatre, and when the-y were seated, the professor would enter, greeted always by applause. Many of his remarks are handed down to this day. He would describe the coils of a gland as similar to a fairy's intestine. Holding up the sphenoid bone one day he looked at it quizzically, said, Gentlemen, this is the sphenoid bone, wherewith he deftly threw it out of the window! He always felt he and all professors taught too much and said he was ashamed of stressing the many twigs of the tympanic nerve.

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