animal died in about three hours. Expirements on pigeons showed that gram 0.15 killed the birds in about fifteen hours. The autopsy shows the heart arrests in systole. Gram 0.25 kills a pigeon in about twelve hours. The experimenters conclude that vernonin is very similar in its action to digitaline, but that its toxicity is twenty-five times less marked than that of digitaline. Contrary to what has been supposed, the root of the plant does not contain emetine.—Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., June 16, 1888. Local News. Ar a recent meeting of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Mr. Priestley Smith, Ophthalmic Surgeon to Queen's Hospital, was appointed Erasmus Wilson Lecturer at the College for the coming year. AT the International Congress of Ophthalmologists to be held at Heidelberg early in August, Mr. Priestley Smith, in association with Professor Snellen of Utrecht, will open the discussion on Glaucoma. We congratulate our townsman upon the distinctions thus offered him. They are doubtless the outcome of that originality which has always distinguished his work. New Books, etc., Received. Diseases of the Skin: their Description, Pathology, Diagnosis, and Treatment. By H. RADCLIFFE CROCKER, M.D. Lond. Illustrated. London: H. K. Lewis. 1888. A Manual of General Pathology, designed as an Introduction to the Practice of Medicine. By J. F. PAYNE, M.D. Oxon, F.R.C.P. With 150 Illustrations. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1888. Nerve Prostration and other Functional Disorders of Daily Life. By ROBSON ROOSE, M.D., F.R.C P. Ed. London: Lewis. 1888. The Intestinal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. By A. JACOBI, M.D. Detroit, Mich: George S. Davis. 1887. The Abortive Treatment of Specific Febrile Disorders by the Biniodide of Mercury. By C. R. ILLINGWORTH, M.D. Ed., M.R.C.S. London : Lewis. 1888. On the Treatment of Rupture of the Female Peritoneum, immediate and remote. By G. G. BANTOCK, M.D., F.R.C.S. Edin. Second edition. With 12 illustrations. London: Lewis. 1888. A Handbook of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. By FREDERICK Sketches of Hospital Life. By HONNOR MARTIN. London: London: Sampson THE BIRMINGHAM MEDICAL REVIEW. SEPTEMBER, 1888. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO THE CLASS IN QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM, BY PROFESSOR LAWSON TAIT, F.R.C.S., LL.D., ETC. Gentlemen, I HAVE to congratulate myself to-day on the fact that I appear in an absolutely unique position, the first appointed Professor of Gynecology in any medical school in Great Britain, and I trust that the example so well set by the authorities of this College will speedily be followed in other and larger schools. I have a knowledge of the fact that in the largest medical school in the world, that to which I owe my own training, the Professor of Midwifery has been for many years desirous that his subject should be separated from the newly arisen specialty of Diseases of Women, and a special Chair of Gynecology should be created. There are very many reasons why this policy should be extended, and some reasons can be urged against it which must be fairly met. To some of these reasons, on the one side and on the other I propose briefly to address myself, for they bear weightily on the methods of practising that art in which you are here to be trained. Another outcome of that training should be the learning those methods of it which shall conduce at once to the advancement of your profession, the welfare of G your patients and your own success in life. If your training is to be of much use to you it must have these objects and they must be regarded in the order in which I have placed them. You know very well that from the earliest times the practitioner of the art of medicine has been the butt of the jester and the object of the cynic's shaft. In the primitive life of the African savage the medicine man is apt to suffer if his nostrums do not bring about the desired result, and in modern society even the President of the College of Physicians may be the subject of a charge that he has not understood the case if an august patient should die. Indeed, in these days of telegraphs and evening newspapers, the public is carried through the whole of the episode of an Emperor's illness, and the varying dexterity with which that surgeon and the other can change a throat canula is the subject of newspaper articles and the criticism of club gossip. But with all this, when the jester is ill, or when the cynics suffer they call us in with the utmost celerity, and whilst their gratitude lasts they are profuse with their thanks and sometimes are magnanimous in their payments; meanwhile their fears are relieved, for they know very well that other help there is none save in the hands of the arts of medicine and surgery so far as they have gone. It is a strange habit of the human race, especially that part of it which speaks the English or American language, that what they really most value they mostly joke about, and no matter what they say about us when they are well, they profoundly believe that when they are ill we can do something to relieve their sufferings, something perhaps to save them from death, and they know at all times, at least this, that we are very like the rest of the race, for the most part honest and benevolent, extremely anxious to do the best we can for our patient, for that is the only way in which we can secure our own welfare. We are in fact a great body of citizen specialists concerned with that interest of the community which embraces all that conduces to health and the prevention and cure of disease, just as the soldier is a citizen specialist concerned with all things affecting the protection and honour of his country; the politician, a specialist who engages himself in securing its best methods of government, and the pastor, one who earnestly labours for its moral elevation. In every one of these special walks of life, and in all the innumerable others there are differences of methods and various schools of thought, each of which commands larger or smaller bodies of followers. Each of these have their arguments strong to themselves and weak to the others, and their differences are often irreconcileable. But without these differences no true progress would be possible, and though in the case of everyone of them we may occasionally see cause for right in the manner of their differences, in the differences themselves we can see nothing but satisfaction, for it means at least this, they are all striving for improvement, and improvement will be, must be, a necessary result. Whatever may be said in criticism of the differences between the various schools of medical thought, still more of the pronounced differences of individual opinion between practitioners of medicine, this is certain, that within the realms of our art lies all that is known concerning the physical sufferings of humanity and all that can be made out for their relief. The very fact that we are all individually concerned to do the very best we can for those who are placed under our care involves the conclusion that we are collectively concerned to do all we can to advance the art we practise. That we all more or less fail to achieve what we desire is due to the fact that we are human and fail humanly, just as soldiers and politicians and even theologians occasionally fail. That the art of medicine is still imperfect is quite as true as that warfare is yet uncertain, and that politics seem pretty much, even yet, a game more of chance than skill, and that the very fundamental principles of theology seem yet to admit of the widest possible difference of opinion. None of these important and special divisions of human labour are yet one bit nearer perfection than is medicine or surgery, and I doubt if any of them is so progressive as either of the sister arts we have to teach and study in this building. That which I am specially concerned with here, surgery, can boast of recent triumphs as great, I venture to think far greater than either the arts of warfare or politics, or even the science of religion itself. Certainly my own special department, gynecology and abdominal surgery, has a record of advance in recent times which reads more like a fairy tale than matter of fact possibility. For most of the great changes which affect what we can see of the earth we have to go to very simple causes. I doubt very much if any influence which has altered the earth's crust is so potent as that very simple fact that pure water absorbs carbonic acid gas, and that water so charged dissolves lime and gives it up again. Nothing has changed the earth's surface so much as the simple never tiring work of the earth-worm. So an immense impetus to the advancement of medicine and surgery has been given by the facility of locomotion afforded by the introduction of railways. They have altered everything, and they have very much altered the practice of our art. The one great argument which may be urged and has been urged against the creating a chair such as I have now the honour to occupy is that it is a recognition or a development of specialism, a word which conveys a sense of horror to the minds of some well-meaning people whom I think sadly misguided. Let us go back for a moment to the beginning of this century and contrast affairs medical as they were then in this district and as they are now. In those days there were as there are now, general practitioners and specialists, though the varying distinctions between them were not as well deserved then as now. The advance of specialism came upon our profession with the Charter granted to the College of Physicians in 1518, and that to the Barber surgeons in 1541 by the 8th Henry. The apothecary was the general practitioner, and the physician was called in because it was thought he could give some special opinion, which he rarely could: what he gave was some specially complex prescription. The surgeon was called in because it was thought he could perform some special operative service, which, so far as we can find, had better never have been |