100 



sent of the mother, until she is quick with child, though such acts 

 are in a high degree offensive to good morals and injurious to society.* 

 The Legislature of Massachusetts subsequently made provision for 

 the punishment of the offence of which the defendant was guilty. 



93. Here the Committee will close their report with a contrasted 

 reference to the opinions of two authorities, high in the estimation 

 of their respective countrymen. 



In discussing the treatment of "fevers and other diseases having 

 a definite course to run," Ranking, in his Retrospective Address, 

 speaking of the contributions on the subject for the past year, 

 remarks : — " We may, however, acquire this one idea from their 

 perusal, that these cases get ivell but are not cured. Nature is the 

 agent in the benefit produced, and he is the best physician who most 

 clearly acknowledges her power and interferes least with her opera- 

 tions. He is the worst who is ever attempting to force her to bend 

 to the potency of his drugs." Prof. Dickson, in his beautiful intro- 

 ductory before his class at the University of New York, says, on the 

 contrary, "Our fevers willWW, in a large proportion of cases, if not 

 arrested artificially ; our inflammations tend rapidly to disorganiza- 

 tion, and our profluvia to exhaustion, among the hardy and hard- 

 living inhabitants of our wide spread territory, with the great 

 majority of whom we shall not be able to avail ourselves of those 

 all-important adjuvants of a milder and less efficient system of prac- 

 tice, to be found in a well-regulated regimen, judicious nursing, and 

 assiduous care." 



With an earnest expression of the deep regret which the Com- 

 mittee has felt that the valuable services of this distinguished pro- 

 fessor and amiable gentleman have been lost to them by a call as 

 honourable to himself, as his services in the cause of science have been 

 useful to his profession ; a regret in which the Association will, no 

 doubt, fully participate, the Committee will here bring their labours 

 to a close; after bespeaking, of the Association, its kind indulgence 

 for the imperfect and faulty manner in which they have been per- 

 formed. 



W. T. WRAGG, 



Chairman. 



• Mete. Mass. Rep., vol. ix. 



