BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF MEDICINE VOLUME III. JUNE 1897, TO APRIL 1899. EASTON, PA. : THE CHEMICAL PUBLISHING CO. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF MEDICINE is not responsible for the sentiments expressed in any paper or address published in the BULLETIN. MODERN MEDICAL EDUCATION. ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. By J. C. WILSON, M.D., Professor of the Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine in the Jefferson Medical College, etc., etc. Fellows of the Academy: I thank you for the honor you conferred upon me at your meeting in Atlanta in choosing me to preside over your deliberations in Philadelphia at this, your twenty-second session. To be elected President of the American Academy of Medicine is, under all circumstances, a most distinguished appointment, but coming as it did to me, unsought and unthought of, at a time when the wide usefulness of our most unselfish organization has become apparent to the whole profession of the land, at an epoch in its history when many who have held aloof from its struggles during its years of growth, are entering its ranks in the day of power, is a compliment of which I may, without unbecoming elation, be justly proud. Your brief annual meeting affords me the pleasure of a direct personal relationship with you of only short duration, but the duties of the office have occupied my attention during the year, and have impressed upon me with increasing force the great usefulness of the work already accomplished, and the far greater importance of that which remains for you to do. Nor do I discern any end to the field which the founders have laid out for us to till, seeing that new problems in medical education, medical ethics, and medical sociology will continue to arise, and that growing success will bring to us widening opportunities, new difficulties and responsibilities at once more arduous and more important. Since the first meeting of the Academy in this city, September 6th, 1876, remarkable changes have come to pass. The scope of medicine itself, the character of medical teaching, the requirements for graduation have, in the short period of the minority of a native-born citizen as fixed by law, undergone an evolution little anticipated by the handful of earnest men who, under the leadership of Traill Green, of Easton, then banded themselves together to organize an association whose objects are: 1. "To bring those who are alumni of classical, scientific. and medical schools into closer relations with each other. 2. "To encourage young men to pursue regular courses of study in classical and scientific institutions before entering upon the study of medicine. 3. "To extend the bounds of medical science, to elevate the profession, to relieve human suffering, and to prevent disease.” In the interval since the date of that remarkable meeting, the science of bacteriology, then viewed askance by the leading teachers and practitioners as something new and strange, has become a dominant influence in medicine. It has revolutionized pathology, it has recreated the art of healing in every department, and has given us a new surgery, in whose footsteps, with urgent stride, follows a new medicine of not less brilliant promise. It has enabled the gynecologist to realize and surpass the brightest hopes of McDowell, Marion Sims, and the Atlees. It has rescued hygiene from empiricism and placed it upon a sure basis of scientific facts. It has elevated the specialities above the narrowness of circumscribed work, and shown the specialists that for the practice of their art much more is needed than an easily acquired operative technique and a little manual and intellectual dexterity. It has demonstrated the absurdity of much of our traditional drugging and given us new systems of healing, fruitful with present achievement, and pregnant with promise of greater things, while it has indirectly revived and de fined the scope of measures of treatment, such as diet, baths, and climate, for which we do not send to the apothecary. It has warned the investigator in the laboratory that the study of the causes of diseases which are ever ready, sure, swift, and certain of effect, is to-day a much more promising field of research than the too curious analysis of the special qualities of uncertain and variable drugs. In point of fact, bacteriology, the youngest of the medical sciences, scarcely known as a science to those who organized this body, has swiftly pressed to the front and now controls almost every department of the complex organization of the medical sciences. While these changes have been going on, other developments of great importance have been taking place. Histology has assumed a definite place in the curriculum, and anatomy can no longer be studied without the microscope. The teachings of physiology, yearly more definite and precise, bear with every advance a closer relation to the requirements of practice, so that no alert practitioner feels secure unless he can read his latest treatise upon physiology carefully through at least once a year. Physiologic chemistry has made corresponding advances. Embryology must be taught as indicating the structural bases of forms and the primary relations of tissues, while comparative anatomy is essential to a complete knowledge of the anatomy of the human subject. Some knowledge of medical jurisprudence was at one time thought necessary for the expert, but to-day every practising physician must be informed of the mode of procedure in judicial inquiries, since he may at any moment be called upon to act for others and himself in a case involving questions of mental alienation, testimentary capacity, the responsibility for injuries by accident, or homicide. These changes in the scope of medicine have not taken place without corresponding and far-reaching changes in the organization of the medical profession, and in its relations to the public at large. Very often these changes have been like the growth of the knowledge to which they owe their origin, gradual and almost imperceptible, but very often they have been abrupt and violent. Progress means readjustment and this cannot take place without occasional perturbation and commotion-a fortunate circum |