JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL, 1914. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



V. — The President's Address. 

 By G. Sims Woodhead. 



(Bead January 21, 1914.) 



Through your kindness, gentlemen, it falls to my lot to occupy 

 a position of which I feel I may justly be proud, but I recognize 

 that, the latest, I am probably one of the least worthy of the 

 series of men honoured by your choice. Former Presidents have, 

 in return for the honour you have done them, conferred great 

 distinction on our Society : many of them have contributed 

 lavishly to the improvement of the Microscope, and much to 

 the development of the science of Microscopy ; and I cannot 

 but be impressed by my inability to maintain the high standard 

 set by my predecessors, and to prove myself worthy of the 

 great traditions of this corporation. Only since I became a 

 member of this Society have I realized how dependent upon others 

 I have been for the apparatus with which to carry on investiga- 

 tions in the one department of study (Pathology, or the science of 

 disease) to which I have devoted my professional life. As I have 

 come to realize this, and as one branch of that study depends so 

 largely for its successful prosecution on the use of all that pertains 

 to the Microscope, I have decided, with your permission, to give 

 some account of what Medicine, and therefore Humanity, owes to 

 the Microscope. 



My colleague, Sir Clifford Allbutt,* defending the thesis that 

 medicine and surgery are but internal and external medicine, 

 and that external medicine advanced by leaps and bounds at 



* The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to the End of the 

 Sixteenth Century. London, 1905. 



April 15th, 19J4 I 



