Medicine in the United States, and its relations to coöperative investigation.

  • Billings, John S. (John Shaw), 1838-1913.
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicine in the United States, and its relations to coöperative investigation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the British Medical Association : You all know that the repre- sentative of the American medical profession first se- lected by your executive committee to deliver the Address in Medicine to-day, was the late Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., of New York, whose death last March is, therefore, a great and direct loss to you as well as to America. Every English physician knows Dr. Flint by reputation and through his writings ; but only those few of you who were so fortunate as to know him per- sonally, can fully appreciate the magnitude of the loss which the medical profession has sustained in his death. This is not the time and place to attempt to pronounce a fitting eulogium upon him and his work, and I shall, therefore, only say that my deep personal sorrow for his removal is mingled with sympathy for the members of this Association, who have been thus deprived of the pleasure of hearing him state in person some of the re- sults of his long and wide experience. The loss is not a total one, it is true, since he had, fortunately, completed his address on The Medicine of the Future, which has been published, and has, no doubt, been read by all of you; but in this case the printed page is by no means a satisfactory substitute for the spoken word. In accepting the request, with which I have been hon- ored by your Council, that I should attempt to take his va- cant place on this occasion, it is with a full understanding of my inability to fill it that I stand before you. The request came at a time when I was hard pressed by official duties, and had neither leisure nor oppor- tunity to undertake any special research; hence, to avoid violating one of my favorite Scotch maxims, viz., That which you do not know, tell that not to any one, it was necessary to select some subject to which I had already given consideration, and which at the same time would probably be of interest to English physicians. Reflection on these restrictions soon brought the field