The Dash of Dr. Todd

Eighteen twenty-five dash eighteen sixty-eight: a mans life summed up on a gravestone, as though his birth and death are the only cardinal facts of his existence. Certainly, a Mozart concerto is much more than the first and the last notes or even the total number of notes contained in the work. It is the manner in which Mozart arranged those notes, the themes they demonstrate, and the sentiments they elicit that give the composition its beauty and importance. In the same sense, the dash on the gravestone really represents the whole fabric of the life of the deceased and consists of a complex weft and warp of events, emotions, and actions all the threads that produced, day by day, the cloth of that mans life. At least some of those threads are undoubtedly worthy of note in the existence of any man. The story that follows is the dash of Daniel Locke Todd, M.D.