10 president's address. 



is, unfortunately, no defined course of education 

 required from those wlio seek to practise it. No 

 one, I think, who has once undertaken its cares and 

 responsibilities, can fail to feel that it is strictly a 

 branch of the surgical profession; and cases are 

 constantly presenting themselves to the notice, and 

 for the opinion of every practitioner, which cannot 

 but convince him that dental surgery and surgery 

 are too closely allied to bear separation. It was, 

 then, from a conviction of this kind, long and gene- 

 rally entertained among many distinguished mem- 

 bers of the profession, and from a feeling that the 

 time had arrived when it was very important that 

 some steps should be taken calculated to secure to 

 our body, so mixed, and so made up of discordant 

 elements, a higher and a recognised position, which, 

 whilst it raised the tone of our department of prac- 

 tice, would at the same time check the influx of 

 many persons into our ranks, whose connexion even 

 nominally with our profession is a subject of regret 

 to all respectable practitioners, that a Memorial to 

 the CoUege of Surgeons was prepared in December, 

 1S55, and submitted to a certain number of members 

 of our profession for their signatures, in order that 

 it might be laid before the Council of the College 

 for consideration on the occasion of their next 

 meeting. 



It was not thought necessary by those who pre- 

 pared this Memorial to procure to it the signatures 

 of all the leading members of the profession, as the 



