Transactions (Volume 26) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The President's Annual Address. (Ordered Published by Vote of the Association.) OUR ADVANCES AND SUCCESSES IN MEDICINE, OUR FAILURES, THE CAUSES WHICH HAVE CONDUCED TO THE LATTER, AND THE AGENCIES WHICH WILL PRO- MOTE THE FORMER. By A. E. Gobe, M. D., Paris. A S presiding officer of the State Medical Association among other duties, it is provided by our Constitution and By-Laws, that I shall deliver an Annual Address. I have selected for my theme or rather themes for discussion this evening, first, our advances and successes in medicine; secondly, our failures, the causes which have conduced to ths latter, and the agencies which will promote the former. It is not unusual for medical men of the present day to boast of the advances we have made over the practice, and methods of our Fathers. The same boast can be made in every department of human research and industry, for we live in the noonday splendor of the Nineteenth Century, which has diffused light and knowledge over the entire earth, to an extent beyond that of any ten centuries of the past. The astronomer of to-day can look much further into space than those of a hundred years ago, and new systems of worlds, enlarging our conceptions of the infinite extent and grandeur of the material universe, are being constantly revealed to his view. A century ago chemistry was a mass of undigestedfacts, to-day it is one of the most exact sciences. In the last fifty years, geology has developed from a few discovered truths into a most pleasing and interesting study. By reason of our increased skill in the construction of machinery,, and the application of steam, our speed in passing from point to point over the earth has been increased ten fold. Even the lightnings of Heaven have been called to our aid, and made to...