ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL.

909 sided and erroneous reverence for the deductive method. Medicine was not the only science which was involved in this error, but in no other science had the consequences been The so glaring or had so hindered progress as in medicine. history of this science, therefore, claimed a special interest in the history of the development of the human mind. Having briefly sketched the early development of medicine, its difficulties and trials, the lecturer proceeded to the consideration of some of its triumphs in modern times. Since the commencement of the present century truly their profession had advanced with leaps and bounds. Surgery was never stationary ; but when its history came to be writtenand this had never yet been done-it would be found that the surgery of the nineteenth century had not been uniform in its progress in all departments ; that its advance had not been continuously in one line, but that its progress had been materially affected by the prevailing bias ot the professional mind of the day. Anatomical at one time, physiological at another, the tendency of surgery at the present day was influenced in one direction by the mechanical spirit of the age, and in another by the advanced pathology, which was one of its chief medical characteristics.

ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL. DR. M’ARDLE said that the subject of his address was the relationship of physiology and anatomy to the study of medicine. Taking the first of these, physiology, which treated of the functions of the working of that marvellous organism, the human body, all would see at once the advan. tage of a thorough knowledge of this subject ; for if they knew not the proper mode of action of an apparatus, how could they detect the cause of failure if it ceased to act, or acted irregularly? Who but a person possessing a knowledge of physiology could comprehend how defects of breathing could be brought about by various forms of heart disease ? And so it was in innumerable other cases. To trace the physiological connexion between diseases of distant organs formed part of the every-day work of the enlightened practitioner. Having touched on the value of physiological study, the lecturer alluded to anatomy as having another bearing apart from the necessity of knowing it. As a step towards physiological study it was of the greatest importance to the practical surgeon, for without being acquainted with the position of important structures, his knife might increase rather than diminish the injury or defect he was called upon to rectify. -

MEDICAL

SCHOOL, ROYAL COLLEGE OF

SURGEONS. DR. FOOT in his address remarked that the knowledge which as students they had to gain arranged itself under two heads-scientific knowledge and practical knowledge. The former comprised some acquaintance with the sciences of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry; the practical referred to the art of medicine, surgery, and midwifery. The late Professor Parkes insisted most strongly that the value of anatomy as a discipline was far higher and more precious than its direct utility. And anything which had been urged in favour of the study of anatomy applied with even greater force to that of physiology, to which their attention was turned in their second year. Physiology was a science which went hand in hand with anatomy. The conviction was constantly gaining firmer ground among the representatives of modern medicine that physiology, more than any other natural science training, was destined to furnish the physician with that clue to diagnosis and treatment. The foundation of modern science might be trulv said to rest on anatomy and physiology. These two subjects were its principal props, and they, along with physics, chemistry, and pathology, formed the scientific portions of their study. There was no small danger nowadays of neglecting the art whilst struggling after the science of medicine, though medicine in its ultimate development must always be more of an art than of a science. The age was becoming every day more purely scientific, and was occupied more with ’, subjects and giving names than with understand arranging ing and managing objects. There was a growing to aim more at knowledge of words than of things.

tendency

MEATH HOSPITAL. DR. J. W. MOORE, having referred to the want which existed of suitable accommodation for convalescent patients, and to the Home at Bray presented to the Hospital by Lord Brabazon, next spoke of the nursing arrangements of the Hospital, and quoted a passage from the work of Miss Florence Nightingale to realise what a nurse ought to be. The question had a wider bearing. It was, indeed, essential to the well-being of the sick in the hospital wards that they should be tended by day and through the night by nurses carefully trained and of ripe experience. But how were they to provide nurses for the community at large, unless to each of their hospitals there was attached a training institution with a fully equipped staff? First, there should be "a trained lady-superintendent, who is herself the best nurse in the hospital, the example and leader of her nurses in all that she wishes her nurses to be;"secondly, there should be trained head-nurses, the so-called " sistersor "ward sistexs" of the London hospitals, part of whose duties it should be to train the pupil nurses or "probationers"-a term which was most appropriate, for, in the words of Miss Nightingale, " nursing is a probation as well as a mission." Unfortunately, they had no such training institution or school in the Meath Hospital, and the physicians and surgeons were compelled to seek for nurses to attend their private and extern patients at other and, in this respect, more favoured institutions. Concluding his address with words of welcome to the new students, he said that grave were the responsibilities of the calling to which they were about to devote their lives. He would not damp their ardour by dwelling upon those responsibilities, but he did trust that both they and himself were alike sensible of the solemnity of tte work in which dav by day they were engaged ; it was as though, like the Hebrew high priest of old, they stood "between the dead and the living," ever striving to stay the ravages of disease, and to rescue from death the hostages of a frail humanity.

THE MATER MISERICORDIÆ HOSPITAL. THE introductory address was delivered by Dr. JOSEPH The lecturer, after some speculation on REDMOND. the art of healing and its localisation in the first instance in Egypt, on the testimony of Herodotus, briefly reviewed the rise and progress of the science of medicine, and remarked on the present position of medicine as compared with the past, quoting with approval the words, "The days are gone for associating the calling of medicine with disease; our association is with health." The most important investigations of the past year have unquestionably, he said, been those which relate to bacterial pathology, and in those France has led the van in the person and genius of Pasteur. Referring to tubercle, the lecturer said that as early as 1865 M. Villemin showed that tubercle was capable of inoculation from the human subject into the lower animals. Our knowledge of the disease passed through various stages till Creighton drew certain notable inferences in regard to the causes of consumption. But all these views, more or less speculative as they were, Dr. Koch, in his " Etiology of Tubercular Disease," has reduced to the severity of a science. His investigations result in the startling statement that " oneceventh of the deaths of the human race is due to tubercular die in active middle disease, while fully one-third of those who " age are carried off by the same cause." Koch proves to demonstration that the formation of tubercle is as much due to the growth of bacilli as are the common eruptive fevers. A further discovery of this scientist is the presence of bacilli in the matter expectorated from the lungs of persons affected with phthisis-matter so infective as to expose to great danger persons inhaling the same air with consumptive patients. Previously to these researches several physicians were of the opinion that certain scrofulous affections, diseased by a microphyte-a species of the joints, &c.,Thiswere caused theory still stands in need of verification, which a series of well-considered experiments in the lower animals may supply. Dr. Koch. when in charge of the German Scientific Commission in Egypt, found, on examination, considerable numbers and varieties of bacilli in the clejections of cholera patients. The bowels accordingly were

bacilli.