The advances in medicine during the past thirty years : being the presidential address delivered at the opening of the 135th session of the Medical Society of London in October 14th, 1907 / by J. Kingston Fowler.

  • Fowler, James Kingston, Sir, 1852-1934.
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The advances in medicine during the past thirty years : being the presidential address delivered at the opening of the 135th session of the Medical Society of London in October 14th, 1907 / by J. Kingston Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a special interest, having in my student days been a sufferer from it and having on an observation made on my own case founded my first paper on a medical subject. It was entitled “ On the Association of Affections of the Throat with Acute Rheumatism.” It is now generally recognised that tonsillitis is frequently followed by acute rheumatism and its recognition, leading as it has done to the early administration of antirheumatic remedies in that and other allied affections of the throat, has, I feel confident, prevented in many cases the subsequent occurrence of rheumatic fever. Dr. F. J. Poynton, our senior honorary secretary, whose work has thrown so much light upon the pathology of acute rheumatism, and in whose presence I speak with diffidence, states that striking examples occur which show that the throat is one of the channels of infection. The introduction of the salicylate treatment of acute rheumatism was a great advance in therapeutics and of its value there can be no doubt. My own impression is decided that the incidence of pericarditis has considerably diminished since its introduction. On the general question of the pathology of the disease I venture to express my opinion that the views which Dr. Poynton and Dr. A. Paine have put forward, based as they are upon most careful researches and confirmed by many independent observers, will in the near future meet with complete acceptance, and that the organism which they have isolated and named the Diplococcus rlieumaticus will prove to be the specific cause of the disease. It is just 30 years since Dr. W. M. Ord, who was at a later period President of this society during my term of office as honorary secretary, read at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society his paper on “ Myxoedema, a term proposed to be applied to an Essential Condition in the ‘ Cretinoid ’ Affection occasionally observed in Middle-aged Women.” It may, I think, be affirmed that no one at the time had realised that a gland which has no excretory duct may furnish an internal secretion essential to metabolism, yet some of the most interesting problems in the medicine of to-day are connected with the effects of internal secretions. The chapter in the history of medicine which deals with the diseases of the thyroid gland is brilliant and fascinating and has been almost entirely written in our own time. First comes the recognition of the symptom-complex, then it is given a name,