VII. 



The British Association Addresses, 1893. 



SUCH authoritative expressions of opinion on current questions of 

 scientific interest as always characterise the Presidential 

 Addresses delivered to the British Association and its several 

 Sections, are of importance in indicating the tendency of research ; 

 but it is not often that these general discourses contain much new 

 matter. We are, therefore, not expressing any feeling of disappoint- 

 ment, when we remark upon the conspicuous lack of new facts and 

 unfamiliar ideas in the addresses relating to Natural Science 

 delivered last month at Nottingham. Everyone interested in 

 Physiology, Petrology, Field Natural History, Arctic Exploration, 

 and Anthropology, will have read the carefully-prepared digests of 

 current thought and research with profit ; and if there is little in 

 them that is absolutely new, there are at least some personal 

 expressions of opinion of the deepest significance. 



Dr. Burdon Sanderson, the President, dealt with the present 

 aspect of the problems of Physiology ; and the whole address, full 

 of the history of progress in the science, seems to have been designed 

 to lead up to the climax — a plea for the establishment of a " British 

 Institute of Preventive Medicine." 



" It is possible that many members of the Association are not 

 aware of the unfavourable — I will not say discreditable — position that 

 this country at present occupies in relation to the scientific study of 

 this great subject — the causes and mode of prevention of infectious 

 diseases. As regards administrative efficiency in matters relating to 

 public health, England was at one time far ahead of all other 

 countries, and still retains its superiority ; but as regards scientific 

 knowledge we are, in this subject as in others, content to borrow 

 from our neighbours. Those who desire either to learn the 

 methods of research or to carry out scientific inquiries, have to go 

 to Berlin, to Munich, to Breslau, or to the Pasteur Institute in 

 Paris, to obtain what England ought long ago to have provided. 

 For to us, from the spread of our race all over the world, the pre- 

 vention of acute infectious diseases is more important than to any 

 other nation. May I express the hope that the effort which is now 



