Following Holmes’ resignation of his professorship at Harvard, the physicians of New York hosted a public dinner in his honor. Each guest was given a mock telegram from “The American Rabid Telegraph Company,” quoting lines from Holmes’ poem, “A noontide lyric,” and reproducing a cartoon by L. S. Ipsen, showing Holmes carrying bones and books, greeted at Delmonico’s by Fordyce Barker. In the background is a policeman, representing Governor Benjamin F. Butler, in front of the Boston State House where investigative hearings into the use of anatomical specimens from inmates at the State Almshouse at Tewksbury were underway. Mock telegram with lines from a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) and an illustration by L. S. Ipsen
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