JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



JUNE, 1915. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



IV. — The President's Address: On Some of the Micro-biological 

 Problems of the Present War. 



By G. Sims Woodhead. 



{Read February 17, 1915.) 



If, this evening, I leave well»trodden paths and wander in un- 

 accustomed places, I would ask you to bear with me as with one 

 who, from the call of unexpected duties, has had little time to 

 devote to his ordinary avocations, and who has been compelled to 

 turn his attention to the consideration of problems quite other than 

 those with which he is usually occupied. 



On the night that I was nominated to the honourable position 

 in which you placed me two years ago, I heard a member say, 

 " Oh ! now that our new President is a bacteriologist and a 

 doctor I suppose things will take a medical turn." I accepted 

 this both as advice and as a warning, and, trying to keep before my 

 mind the association of medicine and the Microscope, I have had, 

 during the whole period, an evergrowing perception of how much 

 modern medicine owes to the association. 



For the past six months, however, when I should have been con- 

 tinuing, or perhaps even completing, certain work on the rate and 

 conditions of growth of bacteria, the results of which I thought 

 might be placed before you in the form of a presidential address 

 this evening, I have had to devote much of my time and energy to 

 practical sanitation — to ensuring the ventilation of hospitals for 

 wounded soldiers, to the inspection of billets for Territorials and 

 huts for new army recruits, and to the supervision of the drainage 

 and construction of these hospitals and huts. Such work can be of 

 little interest to the members, as members, of this Society, however 



June 16th, 1915 Q 



