774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ments. And these traits of individual nature, needful concomitants 

 as we see of the militant type, are those which we observe in the 

 members of actual militant societies. 



-^^ 



THE cultiyatio:n^ of medical science. 



OPENING ADDRESS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CONGRESS. 



By the Pkesident, Sir JAMES PAGET. 



AS I look around this hall my admiration is moved not only by the 

 number and total power of the minds which are here, but by 

 their diversity, a diversity in which I believe they fairly rej)resent the 

 whole of those who are engaged in the cultivation of our science. For 

 here are minds representing the distinctive characters of all the most 

 gifted and most educated nations : characters still distinctly national, 

 in spite of the constantly increasing intercourse of the nations. And 

 from many of these nations we have both elder and younger men ; 

 thoughtful men and j^ractical ; men of fact and men of imagination ; 

 some confident, some skeptic ; various, also, in education, in purpose 

 and mode of study, in disposition, and in power. And scarcely less 

 various are the places and all the circumstances in which those who 

 are here have collected and have been using their knowledge. For I 

 think that our calling is preeminent in its range of opportunities for 

 scientific study. It is not only that the pure science of human life 

 may match with the largest of the natural sciences in the complexity 

 of its subject-matter ; not only that the living human body is, in both 

 its material and its indwelling forces, the most complex thing yet 

 known, but that in our practical duties this most complex thing is pre- 

 sented to us in an almost infinite multiformity. For in practice we 

 are occupied, not with a type and pattern of the human nature, but 

 with all its varieties in all classes of men, of every age and every occu- 

 pation, and all climates and all social states ; we have to study men 

 singly and in multitudes, in poverty and in wealth, in wise and unwise 

 living, in health and all the varieties of disease ; and we have to learn, 

 or at least try to learn, the results of all these conditions of life, while 

 in successive generations and in the mingling of families they are 

 heaped together, confused, and always changing. In every one of all 

 these conditions, man, in mind and body, must be studied by us ; and 

 every one of them offers some different problems for inquiry and solu- 

 tion. Wherever our duty or our scientific curiosity, or, in happy com- 

 bination, both, may lead us, there are the materials and there the oppor- 

 tunities for separate original research. 



Now, from these various opportunities of study, men are here in 



