JOHN MARTIN GILE

This appreciation of Doctor Gile was prepared by Mr. Albert O. Brown at the request of the trustees of the College and on their behalf.

John Martin Gile was born in Pembroke March 8, 1864, and died at Hanover July 15, 1925. His profession wis medicine which he both taught and practised. For nearly a generation he upheld the noble traditions of one of the earliest of the medical schools. He was of a long line of resident professors in that school who not only gave instruction in their art but in its pursuit carried relief and healing to the homes of the north country. In that illustrious succession he was among the foremost.

To examine the origin and review the career of an eminent man is an attractive and useful employment. But because of long and intimate relationship the case of Doctor Gile has unusual interest. He could trace his descent back through ix generations of freeholders to the settlement of New England. His early possessions of value were a father and a mother, the one a deacon and the other a leader in the church, a home in the incomparable valley of the Merrimack which has produced so many distinguished men and the privileges of an ancient academy.

The ancestral farm was able to meet all demands upon it until they were increased by the expenses of a college course. Then recourse was had by the young student to expedients not all of which, it is feared would commend themselves to the undergraduates of the present day. He cut wood on the lot and drew it to local brick yards for use in firing kilns. In hotel service, at the seashore and in the mountains, he made vacations profitable. Nor did he scorn odd jobs in term time. He even experimented, as other students have done, though briefly, with the doubtful business of boarding himself. But he emerged from college triumphant, the proud possessor of a Phi Beta Kappa key.

In the medical school he was proficient. Then followed five years of hospital practice, at Tewksbury, in Colorado and again at Tewksbury. At the end of this preparation he was ready for his life work which was to be so full, so successful and so extraordinary.

Doctor Gile, as teacher and practitioner, devoted the best years of his life to Dartmouth College. Twenty-eight classes passed under his instruction as lecturer and professor in the medical school. In the opinion of those who sat at his feet his work as a teacher was worthy of the highest praise. Under him a method, tutorial in substance if not in name, was employed with the utmost success. Engrossed in his subject, surrounded by a handful of students likewise engrossed, he taught them, out of abundant knowledge, the latest and best in the healing art. His instruction was in class room and hospital, by precept and example, with lucidity of speech and facility of action. Such was its excellence that few if any failed in the final tests. Upon graduation he procured hospital assignments for as many as desired them and helped to establish all in practice. Nothing better illustrates the kindness of his heart and the loyalty that pervaded every act of his life than the fact that he followed the fortunes of his graduates the world over and aided them in case of need.

After the clinical years were discontinued at Dartmouth he was helpful about transfers to institutions where those years were retained. He was greatly disturbed by the shortening of the medical course here but preferred it to the alternative of a B rating for the school. He knew, and regretted the fact, that within the broad environs of Hanover there was enough of misfortune and crime and squalor to provide abundant material for clinical instructions, the American Medical Association to the contrary notwithstanding.

While Doctor Gile removed to Hanover primarily to accept an appointment in the medical school he had reason to expect that some, and in time much, practical work would come his way. But he could not have contemplated, even when his imagination was most vivid, the enormous volume of after years. Nor could its wide distribution have been foreseen.

His reputation, first established at home, advanced with lengthening steps to the borders of the broad region he was to serve. It went beyond and was accepted with ample recognition in the great centers of population. Never was reputation better supported. It rested upon the broad basis of full and successful performance. For, meanwhile, through faithful effort, his practice had developed from its meagre beginning into its glorious fulfilment.

Doctor Gile was a minister of the sick, a medical missionary, wherever he went. His motor car, stopping in villages through which he passed, far removed from medical aid—and there are many such in the north country—was a beacon of hope to those who were ill. Never did he turn a deaf ear to their appeals but placed his great skill, his sound judgment and his steadfast courage at their disposal. Emulating the Great Physician he went about "healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."

The extent of his later practice, chiefly devoted to surgery, measured by the area covered, is believed to have been unequaled and, estimated by the number and variety of cases treated, seldom to have been surpassed. To him a hundred miles of rough road was a slight undertaking. Even three or four hundred miles with five or six major operations, at widely separated points, were not beyond the limits of a day's work. His iron constitution inherited from a vigorous ancestry, developed on the farm and conschoolboy sports and preserved by careful living permitted this.

After the duties imposed by the world war were added, however, his task was not lightly borne. When he had taken over the important work of many younger practitioners who had been called to arms, had assumed the care of numerous hospitals whose staffs had been depleted, had himself been enrolled as an officer in the medical reserve corp and had become medical aide to the governor, Doctor Gile's burdens became oppressive even for him. Lengthened and more frequent journeys and multiplied operations in the process of time did their inevitable and thorough work. And it may be said with truth that the sad event of the fifteenth of July was a casualty of the war and none the less so because induced by overexertion and exposure at home rather than abroad.

Doctor Gile stood high in the estimation of the wide circle of medical men to whom he was known in person or by reputation and received many honors at their hands. He was a member of the New Hampshire and Massachusetts Medical Societies, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Medicine. He was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and belonged to the New England Surgical Club, the presidency of which he held with full appreciation of the trust. From another and most highly esteemed source he received a mark of distinction, a reward of merit, that must have afforded abundant satisfaction. In June 1924 his alma mater in just recognition of his attainments conferred upon him the honor that she bestows only upon the most eminent few in the field of exact observation and correct thought, the Doctorate of Science.

At no time did Doctor Gile abandon his profession to engage in a foreign enterprise. Only once did he add an important undertaking to its exacting duties. In 1910 he presided acceptably at the state convention of the political party of which he was a life-long member. In the same year he was elected to the executive council.

That body was established, in the language of our ancient constitution, "for advising the governor." In many things it has equal authority with that official and in many others a negative upon him which is absolute and final. A councilor is to the governor of the state much the same as a trustee to the President of the College. As a practical matter the office is largely what the incumbent makes it and Doctor Gile made it important.

There sat with him at the council table a member of his college class and of his college fraternity, his long time and close friend, the Honorable Harry T. Lord, also recently deceased. Mr. Lord had been educated in the law and had advanced through the house of representatives and the senate, of which he had been president, to the council. He had held other high offices and was a public ser- vant not only of experience but of capacity. Both men acknowledged allegiance to the same great party but within that party, which was then divided against itself, they were often as widely separated as the poles. Nevertheless their mutual respect and their friendship suffered no dimunition and in after years each approached more nearly to the other's point: of view. It is the way of honest men.

Of the five councilors, only one of them beyond middle life, who took office in 1911 and retired in 1913, Doctor Gile was the last to survive. But the goyernor of that period remains to recall his advisers and to say that among them all, in every essential of the business of administration, Doctor Gile was the foremost. Naturally he was especially interested in the treatment of prisoners and the care of defectives,

Doctor Gile's interest in public affairscontinued unabated but he declined again to accept office. The governorship was urged upon him. His profession was his reply. That required all his time and afforded, as he thought, as ample opportunities for service as any other occupation, public or private. But his declination was always in the present tense. He spoke of the future with less assurance. It was known that public life had its attractions and it was believed that when his surgical days were over he would not longer be averse to public office.

Some months prior to the last election,, in a southern capital, in a hotel bearing a distinguished name and rich in political associations and traditions, he talked of state affairs. He spoke of a candidacy that was being urged upon him but ii was only to say that he could not then undertake public service. The inference was one of postponement rather than of final determination.

Doctor Gile was well calculated to succeed in New Hampshire politics. He was a neighbor to half the state and no stranger to the other half. His fine face and his courteous manner inspired confidence. His speech was persuasive. If by word or act he failed to convince he also failed to offend. Moreover, his administrative qualities and his business judgment, frequently tested and fully proved, fitted him in an eminent degree for the chief executive office of the state, to occupy which he had at least a remote and contingent ambition.

Many influences combined to make Doctor Gile an exceedingly efficient and valuable trustee of the College in the period of its most rapid growth. His long and intimate knowledge of the College, his sensibilities as to its needs, his sound judgment, his eternal vigilance, his accessibility and his zeal placed him in the front rank of all those who have been entrusted with the management of the institution from the day it was founded. As an adviser of the President, whenever called into that relationship, as was often the case, his services were of inestimable worth. It was rare judgment based no doubt in part upon knowledge acquired in the lumbering experiences of his boyhood and youth, aided by keenness of insight as to market conditions, that enabled him to negotiate so advanta- geous a sale of the soft wood growth on the College Grant. At the time of the contract that growth, it should be remembered, had reached its maximum in quantity and quality and prices were at their peak.

For fifteen years Doctor Gile served the College as Dean of the Medical School and for a long period as head of the staff of the local hospital, in both positions acceptably and well. He made many sacrifices for the College entirely voluntary in their nature. Time and health were freely placed upon the altar. In reference to a proposition promising great financial and professional advantage but involving city residence he said, "Dartmouth is too much a part of my life for me to think of going away from Hanover. " This was one of many equally definite if less obvious manifestations of his loyalty to that college which, among institutions, for forty years was the chief object of his gratitude and affection.

Doctor Gile's home life, religious life and civic life were ideal. For half of the three score years allotted to him he lived in the midst of the College community and so lived that all respected and admired him and those who came within the sphere of his immediate acquaintance loved him. As he died, though in the happy days of a northern summer, a grief fell upon the people that was genuine and deep and for many could not be assuaged.

John Martin Gile 1864-1925