Address delivered at the opening meeting of the Debating Society of Army Medical Officers, Aldershot, April 2nd, 1883 / by Robert Lawson.

  • Lawson, Robert.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered at the opening meeting of the Debating Society of Army Medical Officers, Aldershot, April 2nd, 1883 / by Robert Lawson. 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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    Debating Society of Army Medical Officers, Aldershot, APRIL 2nd, ^883^ By EOBEET LAWSQN, Inspector-General of Hospitals, Fellow, and late President, Epidemiological Society; Fellow Statistical Society. Brigade-Surgeon Muschamp and Gentlemen, In appearing before you on this occasion I have to express my high appreciation of the honour you have done me in request- ing I should inaugurate the opening of this Society of Army Medical Officers, for the purpose of reading papers on professional topics, and promoting discussion thereon, with special reference to military medical practice. This Society, if carried on with adequate spirit, cannot fail to be of much advantage, not only in increasing the information, and giving order and precision to the opinions of those who rightly use it, but also in improving their management of the medical affairs of the army, both hygienic and curative. The ideal of a debating society is that the members should have acquired a sufficient amount of information on the subjects which it is formed to discuss, to enable them to appreciate the facts and reasoning of the author of a paper read before them, to test the |p validity of his conclusions, and, when the topic has already secured attention, to compare the author's views with those held by previous writers and observers upon it, so that their differences being sub- mitted to an intelligent criticism, matters which are inoperative in bringing about the result, or merely accessory to it, may secure that weight only to which they are entitled, and the issue between the opposing views be narrowed, as far as the information at the time will admit. There are, as you are aware, not a few questions in medicine on which the evidence is still so incomplete as to lead to considerable variety of interpretation by men of different turns of mind; but there are also others, some of them of much importance, the accumulated evidence upon which, if rightly 'interpreted and