Dr. Oren WINSLOW SADLER of Pittsburgh, although yet on the sunny side of fifty, has won a success and a standing in his profession that come to few; and the good he has done in the past and is doing in the present, may be regarded as but an earnest of his larger usefulness in the future. He has that rare gift, the full courage of his convictions, and, like many others, has been compelled to work out the problem of his life amid difficulties placed there by others, and against opposition as needless as it was unjust. There cannot but be points of interest in that life, which is here briefly detailed.

Dr. Sadler first saw the light of day in Brewerton, Onondago county, New York, on January 2, 1843. He traces his ancestry back through an excellent New England family to an old England stock, John Sadler coming across the ocean and settling in Massachuetts about the first of the last century, while other members of the family are known to have arrived at even an earlier date. Dr. Sadler has in his possession a number of heirlooms in which he takes no small pride, as some of them date back to the Mayflower herself. William Sadler, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, with three brothers, Scott, Giles and Arteus, in 1820 settled near Onondaga lake, near the then small village

of Syracuse; the country roundabout being a wilderness. They came of a sturdy and resolute race that hardships could not dismay, nor the dangers of the pioneer days frighten. With resolution and devotion they began the long labor with the forests, and hewed out for themselves homes, and made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Dr. Sadler's father, William Dexter Sadler, grew to manhood amid hardships and the privations allotted to the early settlers'sons, yet through the efforts of a noble mother, he was enabled to receive a fair educacation. At the age of twenty-five, he was married to Nancy Spire, the daughter of one of the neighboring farmers.

When Dr. Sadler was but three years of age, his father, with the pioneer spirit inherited from his ancestors, removed to Millburn, Lake county, Illinois, going by the Erie canal and great lakes to Kenasha, Wisconsin. Here he built him a new home by hard work and indomitable energy, and by the continued labor of years, secured a comfortable competence, and, among other good results, was thereby enabled to send his two sons to college. The father, with his worthy wife, is still living and is doing a successful business in partnership with his son, Alphonso, in Marshalltown, Iowa.

The oldest son, Oren Winslow, spent his boyhood at home on the farm and

in the public schools, developing in body, mind, and an ambition to make the best possible use of the powers that he felt to be within him. After attending school for some time, he in turn taught and afterwards gave some time to a commercial college. He tried one year of business life, but found that he had not been born for a career of that character. After some serious thought and investigation he was more and more decided that his natural desire for a medical life was an indication of the direction in which his life work should be performed. Accordingly on April 1, 1865, he was duly installed as a student of medicine in the office of D. B. Taylor, M. D., a skillful practitioner, who was devoted to his profession and his practice, and who gave excellent help to the young man under his direction. From thirteen to sixteen hours per day poring over anatomy, materia medica, chemistry, and the medical. dictionary, kept the young man employed and gave him a foundation of depth and breadth upon which to build. After a thorough summer's work of this character he entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he attended every lecture and "quiz," and worked a full course of analytical chemistry in the laboratory—one of the most thorough in the United States, and was granted a diploma. Then came another year of office study, when he entered the Chicago Medical school -the first one in the United States that raised its term of lectures from four to five months. He made this choice because he hoped to find there carried

out his principle of thoroughness, rather than to look for it in those colleges that bid for students by an offer of short terms and an easy graduation. Although there was no chair of opthalmology in the college, a course of clinical lectures was given at the Cook County hospital near by, by Joseph S. Hildreth, who had been a student of the most eminent opthalmologists of Europe, and who had been in charge of the eye department of the United States Army hospital in Chicago during the war. The course was optional, and though the earnest young student did not neglect the other branches, he employed many extra hours on the eye, and was among the nine of thirteen who passed a successful examination, and received the extra diploma of the chartered eye and ear infirmary, in addition to the regular one of M. D. from the college on commencement day.

After graduation Dr. Sadler settled in Dodge county, Minnesota, and was successful from the very first. At a meeting of the Minnesota State Medical society, held at Owatouna, he was elected a member, and upon organization of the Dodge County Medical society, at Mantorville, he was made its secretary. The wisdom of his choice in making medicine and surgery his life work, was soon justified in the standing he took in that profession and the results that followed his early efforts. Some very serious cases fell into his hands, and the skill that was evinced by their recovery heralded his fame abroad and widened and extended his practice. It was here that he won his

first honors in surgery. After a difficult and dangerous operation a physician who had assisted, although retired from active practice, remarked of him, "He dare do anything." The seeming daring, however, did not come through recklessness, but from a thorough knowledge of what was to be done, and how to do it. Anatomical geography of man is the foundation of courage in surgery. A student once asked an eminent professor of surgery, "What can a doctor do to give him courage and steady his hand in important and dangerous operations ?"

and he gave it some serious consideration. The idea of "specialists" was then hardly known, except in large cities, and a chair of opthalmic and aural surgery in the colleges was unknown, except in two or three instances. How to secure practice was the great question that confronted him. To visit the doctors from office to office to announce his purpose and solicit their support and contribution of that part of their business, smacked, as he thought, too much of conceit and beggary-was derogatory to his sense of "dignity and honor "-a course, it may be said, that

Professor Ford, the anatomist, once said: "He who wishes to be a good surgeon must know his anatomy so well that the location of all parts are as plain to his mind's eye as if a man were made of glass, and every part be seen in its place."

Dr. Sadler's knowledge of eye surgery had been kept in practice, and through its delicacy, its certainty of condition and rational treatment, added to the certainty of brilliant results when scientifically understood and skillfully managed, proved more to his taste than any other branch of medicine. With an ambition for a larger field for his chosen specialties and growing powers, he decided to move to the east. He chose Titusville, Pennsylvania, then the centre of the great oil regions, and in 1872 the transfer was made, and he commenced practice in the new field. The question as to the character of his practice urged itself more and more upon his thoughts,

nized by the code-loving part of the profession. The only uncensurable method under the code was to enter society, contribute to its needs and fancies, and, where opportunity offered, pose as an occulist and aurist-a course that would have outraged his sense of self-respect and good taste. Young, educated under the code, living up to its teachings and practicing its precepts, what course seemed to be left but-to adopt a phrase that will be understood

to." wait and grow up with the country?" Yes, wait until the public in its desperation should search up and down for that modest, code-like genius hid under a bushel, and drag him out to the light of a suffering world.

"Announce your business modestly and truthfully through the public press," suggested a friend (Dr. Sibbit) as a sensible way out of the maze of difficulty.

Yes, was the answer in substance if not in words, but that is advertising, and