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the treatment of disease, were discarded for more rational therapeutics.

Diseases were studied and classified, and the invention of instruments of precision aided in their diagnosis. Materia medica was enriched by the addition to its list of remedies of many valuable drugs, both from nature and from the chemist's laboratory. With increased knowledge of anatomy and improved methods of operating surgery made rapid strides. Let me recount some of the most important discoveries of this century.

Vaccination. This discovery, made just at the close of the 18th century, did not bear any fruit until the 19th. Prior to the inoculation of vaccine virus, it is estimated that fully one-tenth of all deaths in Europe were due to the ravages of small-pox. When an epidemic arose in a city there was no protection, save flight, against the dread disease, and it raged unopposed until its appetite for human life was satiated by thousands of victims. It conquered proud armies and laid waste fair cities. It respected neither wealth, rank nor beauty, but with equal zest licked with its tongue of poison cheek of prince and cheek of beggar, jewelled queen and wrinkled hag.

A plain country doctor arose to meet this haughty destroyer, and the world hissed and sneered at his presumption, even as the Philistines of old jeered and laughed when the simple David appeared against their mighty warrior. In the monotonous routine of country practice, Edward Jenner observed that farmers and dairymen, who had contracted a sore on the hand from the cow's teat, were protected in some mysterious way from small-pox. Others had observed this before Jenner, but it was reserved for his master-mind to grasp the tremendous import of this simple fact, and by a process of reasoning and experiment convert it into the grandest benefit that has ever been conferred on suffering humanity.

Anaesthesia.-A little more than forty years ago, a quiet, unassuming physician, Crawford Long by name, lived in Jackson county, Georgia, and pursued there the practice of his profession. He noticed that a person who inhaled sulphuric ether for its intoxicating effects suffered no pain when in his drunken exhilara

tion he struck a blow with his bare fist upon a hard wall. He reasoned from this that surgical operations might be painlessly performed if the patient was brought profoundly under the influence of the drug. Acting on this idea, he etherized a patient and operated successfully. Unfortunately he has never obtained the recognition of the world at large as the discoverer of anæsthesia, because he did not at once publish his discovery, and the laurels were snatched from his brow by Drs. Jackson and Morton, who operated in 1846 on a patient under the influence of ether. Dr. Marion Sims, however, has proved, beyond doubt, that the credit of priority belongs to Dr. Crawford Long. Soon afterwards Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, discovered the anaesthetic property of chloroform. It is impossible to estimate the benefit which Dr. Long and Dr. Simpson have conferred on the human family. Not only has anæsthesia banished all the suffering connected with surgical operations, but it has rendered practicable and simple many operations which could not be undertaken prior to its discovery. By diminishing shock and by allowing the surgeon to proceed more slowly and carefully with his work, anæsthesia has greatly lessened the mortality of surgical operations.

Ovariotomy. The propriety of removing ovarian cysts was discussed a century and a half ago, but it was reserved for Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Kentucky, to first perform this operation; this he did in 1809 and saved his patient. His brilliant discovery has been the means of relieving the suffering and saving the lives of hundreds of women. For fifty years after McDowell's discovery, the operation languished, because the conditions on which success depended were but little understood, and the methods of performing it were imperfect. About twenty years ago, however, the operation began to grow in favor, and now it is performed almost daily in large city hospitals, and the mortality reduced to between 2 and 8 per cent.

In chemistry and materia medica wonderful advances have been made. To the chemist's art we owe our present knowledge of the properties of drugs and the isolation of their active principles. Quinine, morphine, atropine, strychnine, chloral,

chloroform, ether, antipyrine, cocaine and a host of other most valuable remedies have been discovered during this century.

The introduction of hypodermic medication thirty years ago marks another era in medical progress. At first it was limited in its application, morphine alone being used. Now we give many other remedies by hypodermic injection. Its advantages are: Ist. Rapidity of effect. 2d. Certainty of effect. 3d. It causes no disturbance of the stomach. 4th. By hypodermic injection drugs can be administered to a patient who is unable to swallow. The hypodermic injection of morphine is the most certain, rapid and powerful means we have for the relief of pain. Nothing, however, is more dangerous than the indiscriminate use of the hypodermic syringe, for patients contract the morphine habit much more easily where the drug has been employed hypodermically than when administered by the mouth. The use of other drugs by hypodermic injection is also invaluable. Those of us who have had occasion to treat profound shock, or heart failure from any cause, or alarming hemorrhage, will remember with pleasure the priceless comfort our hypodermic syringe afforded us.

Antisepsis.-The germ theory of disease is an outgrowth of the perfection of the microscope. The microscope has revealed the presence of minute living organisms in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and in all fermenting or putrefying substances. We are surrounded and covered by myriads of these little microbes. A careful study of them by the microscope has enabled us to classify many of these microbes and to ascertain their functions. Different kinds of micro-organisms require different conditions for their growth and propagation-thus some thrive only in a saccharine or starchy soil, while others prefer an albuminous substance. By their growth and development micro-organisms give rise to fermentation and putrefaction, changing by their vital actions the chemical nature of the soil in which they grow. According to the germ theory of disease, all contagious and infectious diseases are due to the growth in the human body of some special micro-organism. Each disease is believed to have a special and distinct kind of microbe as

its cause. The truth of this belief has been demonstrated for certain diseases, viz., charbon, Asiatic cholera, tuberculosis and hydrophobia, and it is highly probable that in time the microbian origin of all other contagious diseases will be demonstrated. This theory of disease was accepted by Mr. Lister in order to explain wound infection. He assumed the presence of poison-generating microbes in the air, water, bedding, on the surface of the human body; these microbes easily gain access to a wound, and by their presence set up either local inflammation or general blood-poisoning. In accordance with this view, Mr. Lister devised his antiseptic method of treating wounds. By the use of various carbolic solutions, he destroys all the germs which are already on the surgeon's hands and instruments, or which have gained access to the wound. He then dresses the wound in such a way that no germs can find their way to it without passing through a carbolic atmosphere which will prove fatal to them. Though Lister's method has been variously modified, his principle is recognized and carried out by nearly all the leading surgeons of the world.

Under antiseptic methods surgery has undergone a complete revolution. Operations, formerly considered almost inevitably fatal, are now performed daily, the parts often healing by first intention. Pyæmia, septicæmia, erysipelas and hospital gangrene are now almost unknown.

In obstetrics the introduction of antisepsis has lessened very materially the mortality of parturition; for instance, the mortality in the lying-in wards of the Vienna General Hospital was 28 per thousand twenty-five years ago; now it varies from 2 to 5 per thousand. These figures are from Prof. Carl Braun's statistics.

Cocaine. Only two years ago the world witnessed another great discovery in medicine: I allude to the anæsthetic property of cocaine. In the latter part of 1884, Dr. Koller, of Vienna, discovered the remarkable anæsthetic effect of a solution of cocaine on the conjunctiva. Soon afterwards it was ascertained that it was not only anæsthetic to all mucous surfaces, but also to the skin and other structures when given by hypodermic injection. It is truly a most wonderful drug. Minor surgery is by its use

greatly simplified. A few months ago Dr. Corning, of New York, devised a method by which major operations could be performed painlessly by cocaine. Briefly stated, his method consists in confining the blood by means of an elastic bandage to the part to be operated upon. Acting on this plan, Dr. Varick, of Jersey City, performed an amputation of the thigh on February 13th, 1886, using cocaine alone as an anesthetic. The patient was perfectly conscious, and experienced no pain whatever until the bone was divided.

Time fails me, gentlemen, to speak in detail of the discoveries in pathology, physiology and therapeutics.

In its rapid growth medicine has thrown out numerous branches-ophthalmology, laryngology, gynecology, neurology, etc. Special study in these various branches has greatly increased our knowledge.

In conclusion, gentlemen, I will say that a review of medical history shows us that in no other profession is there so little room for genius. In medicine, plodding, untiring perseverance will inevitably win, and the man who trusts to genius will lag behind in the race for professional success. A country doctor discovered the preventive for small-pox. A country doctor performed the first ovariotomy. A country doctor discovered the anaesthetic property of ether. The country doctor, gentlemen, has wielded a powerful influence on the progress of medicine.

Cultivate habits of industry and habits of observation, and you will certainly achieve success, not only in your college career, but also in that broader arena, the world.

DOUBLE EMBRYO IN A SINGLE BLASTODERM.-Professor Legge, in a communication made to the Eustachian Society of Camerire, states that he has had the good fortune of meeting with, in a fowl's egg, at about the third day of incubation, two embryos in a single blastoderm, joined together at the summit. -Medical News.

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