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ADDRESS
BEFORE THE
PHIUDELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY.
DELIVERED
JANUARY 30, 1862.
             BY

    JOSEPH CARSON, M. D.,

AT THE CLOSE OF HIS OFFICIAL TERM AS PRESIDENT.
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY.
         PHILADELPHIA:
COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JAYNE STREET.
             1862. 
 
ADDRESS.
GENTLEMEN OF THE PHILADELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY :—
  At the conclusion of the official term, when resigning to my
successor the presidential chair,  in which I have been placed by
your complimentary suffrage, I feel it to be proper that I should
return an acknowledgment of  the high honor you have conferred,
and express to you the satisfaction I have experienced in presiding
over your  deliberations.   Surrounded as I have been by friends
and professional compeers, the intercourse has been productive of
the greatest pleasure.  Our meetings have been characterized by
harmony and an earnestness of purpose befitting gentlemen having
in view such elevated objects as self-improvement, the advancement
of their profession, and the promotion of esteem and courtesy.
  The past year has been a trying and eventful one.  It  has  seen
our country, from a state of profound peace, successful enterprise,
and  prosperity,  plunged  into  intestine war, alarm, and apprehen-
sion;  yet have we been permitted, amidst the ferment of surround-
ing distractions and excitement, to  meet in  counsel upon  the
interests of our calling, and to calmly and conscientiously discuss
questions connected with  the welfare  and happiness of humanity.
With a spirit true to the design of  its organization, our Society
has pursued its course of  labor and emulation in the path of duty,
evincing on the  part of its members zeal in  the exercise of that
benevolence which  is founded upon "universal good will toward
men."  In the performance of  the last special duty which devolves
upon  me,  the delivery of the Address expected of  the retiring
presiding officer, you will permit me to present some reflections 
4
upon the  profession in which  we are all  deeply concerned, and
which as the business of our lives we proudly cherish.
  It must be clear to every one who has examined the subject, that
the medical art has existed  from the earliest period.   Whether
traditionary or historical,  the testimony is conclusive,  that what-
ever may have been its form, it has always had being.  Originating
in the necessities of the human race, it has been maintained and
improved in accordance with man's wants and exigencies, with his
physical and intellectual progress, until, assuming  the  large  pro-
portions and the importance it now presents, it ranks among the
learned  professions.
  With regard to medicine,  one feature  is prominent,  which is
identity.  From its commencement in remote ages to the present
time, an unbroken individual  existence is exhibited.  It  has  been
handed bodily from people to people with all that had been attained
of knowledge and experience, an  inheritance from an expiring
nation to  its successors.  In  this  particular there is  an essential
difference between it and  its  sister professions.  Theology, which
is the exposition of the doctrines of our holy religion,  which is en-
gaged in presenting the relations of the life that is to that which is
to come, dates its origin not two thousand years ago, and has been
based upon a new revelation; while the profession of law, which is
occupied in expounding the obligations of man to man,  or of man
to his government, has been as multifarious as the manners, habits,
and enlightenment of the various communities that have appeared
and  flourished, and is in  our day the offspring of constitutional
authority.
  The objects with which medicine is occupied, whose  study and
investigation constitute its legitimate end, are connected with the
exploration  of the natural world.  In the observation  of nature
lies the foundation of medical science.  This has  ever been, and
continues to be, her especial occupation, and the closer it has been
adhered to, the more numerous and reliable have been  the truths
elicited.
  Placed as the human race has  been upon  this earth, the first
efforts of intelligence must have been  in connection with the per-
ceptive  powers; the information gained  by the exercise of the
senses first supplied the food  for comparison, for thought, and the
expansion of  the  intellectual  faculties.   Man slowly  penetrated 
5
into the mysteries of nature, and adapted the knowledge that he
acquired to his necessities.  His faculties led him to the trial of
expedients for their relief, and with the capability of applying the
resources by which he was surrounded to his purposes, he gradually
acquired self-reliance.  One frailty has always been prominent, in-
separable as it is from the  delicacy of his organization, and the
never ceasing impression  of  the physical influences to which he is
exposed, a liability to  sickness and  death.  To combat such ten-
dency, and to antagonize the malign  impression of exterior agents,
as well as to remove disease,  have ever called  forth his efforts, and
quickened  his acumen.  In the earlier periods of his career,  when
awe and veneration for  unknown and incomprehensible sources
of power overwhelmed his judgment, and  vividly impressed his
imagination, belief in the supernatural may have led to superstition,
to credulity, and to an appeal  to the extravagant devices, which were
used, not unfrequently, to cover up the real means of alleviating
sickness and suffering; but with advancing intelligence the  truth
could  not  be  disguised or overlooked, that remedies were  to be
derived from the natural world, and that upon the appropriation of
them, and their skilful  use, depended the success that was desirable.
The medical art then gave an original impulse to the examination
of nature,  and hence it is that medical science thus arising is to be
ranked among the natural sciences, or, more properly, as into it
have been directed the results of investigation in the departments
of natural science which have been made subservient to it, we may
regard it as their embodiment.
   Among  medical men it has been too much the case to regard the
natural sciences as extraneous to their professional pursuits, and to
suppose that he who indulged in them placed himself without the
pale of legitimate  medicine.  Upon examination  and reflection,
however, it will be found  that the line of research and investigation
is the same, and  that the  means  of exploration and  the course of
reasoning,  to  be effective, are identical.   The physician, in  the
strictest sense, must be imbued with the spirit and habit of thought
of the  naturalist, or he is not a  physician,  he is degraded to the
quack or the charlatan.   Be it admitted that natural history has
been  divided  into specialities; that each has  attracted assiduous
application, and has  been  placed in bold relief by enthusiastic cul-
tivators, who have even devoted a lifetime to its investigation, still, 
6
•
in the nature of the subject, and in the method of its study, our
science  is  pre-eminent as a natural science.   Zoology  includes
within its domain the study of man with that of animals, not solely
with the view to his position in  the scale of beings, arranged  in
accordance with genera and species, but  with respect to his especial
structure, the inherent nature and arrangement of  his organs and
tissues, and their physiological manifestations compared with those
of inferior animated existences.   By  the extension  of  inquiry,
pathological transformations, and phenomena, with the modes  of
counteracting  them, are so identified  with this  great  branch  of
natural science as to be necessary for its completion. The elucida-
tion of the nature and the course of structural aberrations, aided by
all the appliances which co-ordinate science has placed at the dis-
position of the inquirer, has been appropriately called the Natural
History of Disease.  Everything that  has been discovered,  or  is
known in the natural sciences,  is due to observation, experiment,
and induction.
  We are accustomed  to recognize Hippocrates as  the " Father  of
Physic;" this is to be  understood and accepted'figuratively.  He
did not create medicine. His entire lineage was medical; he studied
the science profoundly, was its  zealous and devoted cultivator and
expositor; he improved it and added much as the results of his own
observation and research, not only at home but abroad.  His jour-
neyings indeed cannot be supposed to have been  made without an
end or a purpose; they were undertaken that he might inform him-
self upon the nature of "simples" as well as to obtain information  in
regard to the experience of others and the discoveries that had been
made in the cure of diseases. He collected materials for his  essays
upon "Epidemics" and "Airs, Waters,  and  Places," and took the
pains to copy the inscriptions in  the temple of Ephesus.  He co-
ordinated his information  and separated medicine from the  hypo-
thetical abstractions of the philosophers, principally in connection
with the origin, the nature, and the changes of matter.   He lived  in
an historical age, the contemporary of Herodotus, of Thucydides and
of Socrates, when medicine attracted much attention and had its
practitioners separated from the  priestly  office, when mythology
was  giving way before philosophy.  To use the language  of Dr.
Adams,  "Philosophy, it would appear, freed medicine from the
delusions of superstition by substituting the errors of hypothesis  in 
7
 their place, and the important office which he, who was called  the
 Father of Medicine, conferred upon the art, was by discarding both
 superstition and hypothesis, and substituting the results of actual
 observation in the room of both."
   He held the.opinion that philosophy is not so necessary to medi-
 cine as medicine is to philosophy, and insisted  upon the fact that
 disease was cured either by aided or unaided processes of nature.
 He fixed the natural history method of investigation upon the study
 of disease and the means of its removal, thus giving "Rational
 Medicine" to his followers.  It is not in accordance with my design
 to further comment  upon the labors of the Coan sage;  but one re-
 mark is pertinent; his aphorisms constitute a summary of medical
 truths which have stood the test of ages of experience, and few of
 them can be gainsaid  at the present time with all  our light and
 knowledge.
   Four hundred years, then, before  the Christian era, we find our
 science in the  foremost rank of  intellectual  pursuits, respected not
 merely in  consequence of its practical utility, but as an agent in
 conducing to the development of the mighty truths of nature, which
 were destined  to disenthral the understanding, and rivalling  the
 aesthetic arts which  at the  period culminated  in such wonderful
 beauty and perfection  as almost to induce the belief they were the
 work of inspiration.
   As an emanation from the Hippocratic School, and necessary as
 a  link in the chain of exposition which now engages  us, we may
 fairly regard the scientific labors and reputation of Aristotle.  He
 was born at a period when it was in most effective operation.  He
 was the son of an Asclepiad who, we are told,  was the author of
 several treatises connected  with natural science, and  it may be
 assumed that the occupation and studies of the father account for
 the early inclination manifested  by the son for the investigation of
 nature.  Aristotle was a naturalist as well as a philosopher and
 dialectician, and that he pursued the true method of research, de-
 scription, and reasoning in  his  History of  Animals, and natural
 history communications, may be gathered  from the fact  that the
statements  made by him have been indorsed by no less authority
 than Cuvier, who says of him, " He lived but to the age of sixty-two,
and made  two thousand observations  of extreme minuteness, the
exactitude of which'cannot  be disputed by the severest criticism;" 
8
 and again recurring to the subject of his reliability, declares " that
 all the general propositions made  by him are inductions, resulting
 from the observation and comparison of particular facts; never does
 he resort to a priori reasoning."
   It has been the custom  to attribute to Lord Bacon the invention
 of the inductive system of philosophizing, and hence the extraordi-
 nary advances that have  been made since his time in science and
 philosophy.   He was profoundly  versed in  ancient learning, and
 thoroughly understood its  merits as well  as its deficiencies.  He
 saw the road which led to truth as  clearly as mortal vision  could
 perceive it, and fully  comprehending to what extent reason had
 been perverted to  the support of error in the  form of subtleties,
 laid down with graphic  precision the principles  by which real
 knowledge is attained.  The transcendent author of the "New Or-
 ganum" tells us that  " there  are  and can  exist but two ways  of
 investigating and discovering  truth;" the first to which he alludes
 is the hypothetical  and deductive, the second, "the true and unat-
 tempted way," the  inductive.
   Can he be called the inventor of the inductive  method?   Had
 all the science and  knowledge that then existed and which charac-
 terized the civilization of the age to be repudiated, and, starting
 anew with his precepts before it, had the enlightened world  to re-
 inform itself, to be  reassured upon all truth and  all experience, to
 pour its acquisitions into  the alembic of his philosophy and redistil
 them ?   Was that  grand  discovery of the circulation of the  blood
 occasioned by an attentive solicitous perusal of the writings  of his
, contemporary fellow-countryman on the part of Harvey, or was  it
 the genuine offspring of a mind fully imbued with the laws of nature
 and her schemes of operation, purely the result of observation, ex-
 periment and induction, a scintillation of the Hippocratic school  of
 medicine ?
   Let us  accord to Bacon all that may be  due him, as  one  of the
 wisest and greatest intellects in  any age, yet was he  other than
 the luminary that  defined the course  by which all  reliable  know-
 ledge had been and was most surely to be arrived at, and disclosed
 the shoals of error and misconception on which many a genius had
 been stranded ?  In the whole scope of his writings and reflections
 he is nearer  to Aristotle than to any one who had preceded him,
 whom in  the universality of his labors he would seem to have 
9
taken as his model.  From Aristotle, the Pagan philosopher, he
might dissent, but from his  principles as a naturalist he could not.
  Between the age when Aristotle flourished and Bacon lived to
reaffirm  the  essentials  of right reason,  centuries had passed, no
unimportant  period in the annals of mankind.  Empires rose and
disappeared, through which  our science  has been transmitted, and
with truth may it be asserted, that notwithstanding the vicissitudes
of time and place which have been encountered, it has not suffered
from neglect or  lack 6f interest with those to whose  guardianship
it has been intrusted.  Natural History continued to be cultivated
by the successors of the Stagirite.   His disciple, his friend, and heir
to all his literary treasures was the earliest systematic botanist, to
whom we point in tracing out the history of that department;  the
"Historia Plantarum" of Theophrastus is a monument of labor and
research, as much deserving commendation in connection with the
epoch of its issue as will be in future time the contributions of Lin-
naeus, of Jussieu, or of De Candolle.  As a result of progress in this
direction, medicine avowedly and  boldly appropriated natural his-
tory to herself, in confirmation of which assertion the work of Dios-
corides on the Materia  Medica may be adduced, the prototype of
even the latest  treatises; pre-eminent among them is that of the
ever-to-be lamented Pereira, the modem Dioscorides.
   When  Grecian culture and philosophy had passed  to Rome,
whose forum echoed with her dialectics, medicine did not tarry.
The science  that had lost its favored domicile and  home sought
elsewhere' shelter and protection.   Celsus and Galen are taken as
the representatives of the state of medicine,  when Rome attained
the pinnacle of her power and cultivation.  It is not necessary to
discuss the question to what sect belonged these prominent exposi-
tors of medical learning.  The visionary speculations of ancient
schoolmen had given rise to  numerous fallacies which had disap-
peared ; and the sole antagonism that existed  was between the em-
piric  and the dogmatic sects, a distinction which  had originated
with the school of  Alexandria. Celsus is  interpreted as  inclining
to the former, while Galen professed to be a follower of Hippocrates,
who was claimed to be the founder of the latter.  It is certain that
the improvements and discoveries  made by either were based upon
observation and experiment.  As a writer of classical  propriety,
ease, and elegance, Celsus has left his impress upon medical Ian- 
10
guage and terminology, from which other science has  been a bor-
rower; and Galen maintained authority until his productions, with
other ancient writings, were buried in the cloister, to be reissued to
stimulate awakening Europe to investigation and advancement.
  But a new branch of  natural science was destined to arise  and
pour a flood of light  upon the operations and processes of the
material  universe.  Another nation had started from  obscurity.
Courageous, adventurous, and bold, it  extended its  domain from
the Arabian Gulf to the  pillars of Hercules. Airy and imaginative,
yet subtle and ardently inquiring, the striking phenomena of nature
were not only the objects of speculation, but invited minute exami-
nation and discovery.  In connection with the arts and sciences, the
Arabians cultivated medicine successfully, they have given accurate
descriptions of disease,  and  they pushed  their researches into the
constitution of matter, and its metamorphic changes.   Chemistry,
from the germs that previously existed,  became an enduring de-
partment.  The improvements  and additions  that were made  to
medicine by the Arabians are no  small  portion of the resources
with which it has  been transmitted to modern times; many medi-
cines which hold their place  as  popular remedies were contributed
by them,  and chemical medicines, in opposition to those which were
used nearly in  their natural state,  produced an important revolu-
tion  in the practice  of  physicians.  The  separation of  pharmacy
from medicine  proper  had no  doubt  conduced  materially to  the
result of directing inquiry into the  path of chemistry.  If only one
had remained of all the discoveries  originating from Saracenic skill
and ingenuity,  the art of distillation, which, in its  bearing upon
subsequent investigations, has proved so  valuable,  we  would be
forced to the acknowledgment of an important obligation.
  Medicine has been indisputably the foster-mother of the natural
sciences, and liberally has she been recompensed for the care and
the attention bestowed upon them.  From the  revival of letters to
the present  time, the continued  study of them has developed re-
sources in every portion of the habitable earth.   It is to the honor
of the profession that the greater portion  of the accurate botanical
information  now possessed,  and frequently the discovery of the
most esteemed  medicines in use, are due to the enthusiastic labors
of its members.  The spirit of exploration with medical men has
known no obstacles, and in defiance of  the risks  of inhospitable 
11
climates, of toil and hardships, the tropical forests of the world, as
well as scarcely accessible snow-clad mountains, have been perse-
veringly invaded.  We  could not specify, within our limits, each
deserving contributor to the medical branch of this department; it
is sufficient to affirm, that, to the impulse given  by Linnaeus, the
medical practitioner and  teacher, and the zealous efforts of his
pupils, are we much indebted.  The materia medica contributions
are not the least honorable of the scientific laurels of that promi-
nent and assiduous cultivator of natural science.
   From the uninterrupted prosecution  of chemical  investigation,
medicine has derived even greater benefits.  That spark which was
fanned and kept alive in  the hands of an oriental  people has, in
the advance of civilization among nations hardly then known, been
developed into a blaze of revelation.   Where the ancients employed
the crude products of vegetation under the name of simples, we, by
the resolution of them to a simpler state, are enabled to employ their
proximate elements. Energy and power have been elicited by pro-
cesses which skill  and practice have invented,  and refinements of
exhibition have been introduced which have cast into the shade the
anticipations of the most enthusiastic.  Each medicinal article  has
been interrogated to reveal its secret composition, with the  effect of
establishing  the fact, that nature's laws are as  beautiful and har-
monious as her outward  manifestations.  Medical chemistry  has
illustrated medical  botany, whose  families have been proved to be
connected  not only by structural  correspondence, but by yielding
similar elementary products.  A scheme of  scientific divination
has thus been given us.
   Nor has this branch stopped here in its return of favors.  By
directing attention  to  the constituent elements of the solids and
fluids  of the  body, and to the analysis of the materials that are
separated by  the organs in the  performance of  their healthy or
morbid secretory functions,  it has opened a way of investigation
which has  greatly contributed to accuracy in the diagnosis of dis-
ease, and to the assumption of therapeutic measures highly advan-
tageous.  With how much veneration will the name of  Prout be
always alluded to, as the indefatigable and expert promoter of this
line of research!
  That our science has  invariably advanced when  its prosecution
has been strictly in accordance with right method is amply con- 
12
firmed by the events of more  recent times.  In the study of the
physical and structural peculiarities of the organs, and their abnor-
mal deviations, this especially has been  the case, while the science
of life, or biology, is  so closely connected with the  improvements
made in other branches, as to receive a reflection from them.  All
that has been positively ascertained in this recondite and most dif-
ficult section is attributable to the closest observation, most guarded
experiment, and fair induction.   Of how much consequence to sci-
entific medicine were the labors of Bichat, in defining and describ-
ing the tissues, is known to every one in the profession.   It was a
step in the right direction, which  entailed results the most impor-
tant, and has been cited by an eminent non-medical writer as illus-
trative of an epoch in the account of the progress of civilization.
From the teachings of Bichat,  physiology and  pathology have re-
ceived the most positive elucidation, while in throwing light upon
the arrangement  and  characteristics of  a former world, they have
aided Agassiz in his most brilliant discovery, and led to his ichthy-
ological classification.
  The starting-point in the determination of the functions of parti-
cular  nerves originated with Bell, but for the further disentangle-
ment  of the functions of this complicated organic machinery, the
development of the sympathies, we  are  indebted to the  methods
instituted  by Magendie, by Hall, and Bernard.  Who  is not in-
formed  as regards the extraordinary patience, care, and  reticence
that characterized Louis in the decision of a correct pathology for
typhoid fever, compared with the vaunting proclamations of Brous-
sais upon his own infallibility ?   Example upon example might be
given of the establishment of  irrefragable  truths by' the correct
modes of pursuing inquiries and interrogating nature, which have
been employed by leading minds in our profession.  Two  others
will suffice for the confirmation of my position.  The detection of
the protective  power of vaccination was as completely the result of
observation, experiment; and induction, as has ever  been exhibited
in the march of medical science, and the same may be affirmed of
the development  of the principles of auscultation.   Both were in
conformity with the natural history method,  as decidedly as the de-
monstration  of the existence of  a sexual system among vegetables.
  It  is not necessary  for our  purpose to enter upon an elaborate
exposition of the impediments to the progress of our science in con. 
13
nection with the history of particular  periods, when it was either
stationary or made little advance in the proper channels  of exten-
sion.  Deference to authority,  narrow-minded bigotry, prejudice,
and  slavish pertinacity in error, conjoined with defective instru-
ments  for  investigation, constitute the causes  of tardy  develop-
ment.  Conjoined with these were  the surrounding circumstances
pertaining to  the  age, and which  illustrate the mental  condition
then predominant.   Still, this  may be asserted,  that medicine has
always been upon a level with the  times, and must necessarily be
included  in an exact elucidation of them.   Despite the uniform
current in which discovery and positive knowledge have unavoid-
ably flowed, hypotheses have appeared in every age like false lights
to delude and lead astray the unwary traveller.   The hypothetical
doctrines of those rival  men  of genius  and learning, Brown and
 Cullen, had their  prototypes, and with them  are  now regarded
 among the curiosities of the literature of the profession.  But fur-
 ther, assumption not predicated upon the data  requisite to sustain
 it, inevitably  meets, sooner or later, the fate which it deserves.  It
 may speciously be upheld a limited period by eloquence or auda-
 city, but in the end passes to oblivion.   Was it by the  natural
 history  method that Hahnemann  discovered that the itch is the
 foundation of chronic diseases, that cinchona bark produces inter-
 mittent fever, and hence is the remedy for its removal, and that infini-
 tesimal doses of medicines are more potent than the usual quantity
 —thus,  by observation, experiment, and induction, establishing his
 claims to be a reformer in medical science; or were the pretensions
 so strange and so extravagant, set up by him  in opposition to all
 reliable knowledge, and  in the very face of reason and common
 sense, the delusions of  his own heated and erratic  imagination?
 Pretension succeeds pretension, and thus will it ever be.
    But while  receiving adequate returns in the form of improvement
 and discoveries, resources and enlightenment in the prosecution of
 her function, medicine has abundant claims to consideration from
 the reaction of her pursuits and the application of them beyond her
 immediate circle.   Each of the sciences that have been sedulously
 cherished as her  own has had an  important bearing upon the pro-
  cess of the human  family and its advance from barbarism to civili-
  zation.   To  them are we indebted largely for the food and raiment
  as  well as the sources of material comfort now  enjoyed, from which 
14
 have sprung elegance, luxury, and refinement, while in their  influ-
 ence upon the increase of knowledge and the expansion of mental
 power and comprehension, they have done good service.  Agricul-
 ture and horticulture, the mechanical and useful arts have  been
 aided by these sciences,  and by affording the means of cultivating
 man's high-born qualities he has been raised from degradation as a
 mere machine of toil and placed in his true position, a created, soul-
 possessing being only inferior to  the angels.  How interesting is
 it to refer to that simple  discovery of distillation by a people whose
 glory and renown have long since been transferred to the narrative
 of the past,  and trace in it the assistance furnished  towards the
 detection of latent heat in the hands of Black, a teacher of Medicine
 of the justly celebrated  school  of Scotland, and subsequently the
 application made by Watt in the form of steam to that locomotive
 power which has triumphed over  time and space and brought con-
 tinents into close proximity!   Did not Humboldt place on record
 his appreciation of our science, when, preparing himself to grapple
 with the laws of nature,  to explore her operations and phenomena
 in almost inaccessible localities, to acquire more actual physical
 knowledge than had ever previously entered the mind of a single
 individual, he sedulously studied the elementary branches of medi-
 cine ?  That great naturalist, philosopher, and benefactor of his  race
 thus wisely laid the foundation  for his aspiration, and terminated
 his long career with the production of his Kosmos.
   The medical profession has ever been regarded as one fulfilling
 offices of mercy and benevolence, approaching the suffering and the
 afflicted in the darkened  hours of their existence, and while minis-
 tering to the ailments of  the body  or of the mind, whispering hope
 and consolation.   It has in charge the vital interests of mankind
 connected with the most  responsible duty that can be imposed, the
 preservation of health and consequent well being, on which the en-
joyment of every other blessing  is  dependent.  It has entered
 effectively into schemes of utility for  the mitigation of the evils of
society, and been interwoven with public enterprise for the melio-
ration of  vice and degradation.  To  its suggestion,  advice,  and
active co-operation, the philanthropic and the good have been im-
measurably  indebted.  But  with all  these important services, its
mission has not been completed, for it  has been the conservator of
sound learning and the promoter of intellectual culture.  Its whole 
15
history is associated with the records of the increase of information,
and it has  progressed pari passu with every department of know-
ledge, psychological, ethical, and physical.   It has given assistance
in unfolding and enforcing the doctrines of religion, and counselled
the jurist in the dispensation of justice.  It has illuminated the
antecedent  conditions of our globe  and conduced to the display of
plans of construction only possible with omnipotent wisdom.  These
have constituted the mission, and all of these the entire mission of
the medical profession.
  Fellow members of this society, a weighty responsibility is placed
upon each one of us.  We are engaged in carrying out the purposes
of the exalted and honorable profession of which we are the repre-
sentatives,  and should heartily unite as colaborers in the great end
of sustaining its position and  promoting its usefulness.   United as
brothers in support of our organization,  we can make it eminently
conducive  to improvement and  mutual advantage.   By the inter-
change of  sentiments upon all subjects pertaining to the profession,
we can preserve it from taint, while by communicating the results
of our experience and the fruits of our studies, we can promote uni-
versal efficiency.  By the exhibition of courtesy, kindness of feeling,
mutual encouragement, and sympathy, we can diminish the asperi-
ties of life  and the wear of anxieties inseparable from our vocation.
It should never be forgotten by us that while acting in concert for
the public good, we are intrusted with the office of interpreter of
nature and her laws, that in the spirit of the  naturalist our minds
are to be moulded, and that while receiving, extending, and apply-
ing the great  truths which come from the Author of the natural
universe we  should strive worthily to fulfil our part in  the great
mission confided to our profession. 
^£gf