618 AMERICAN INVENTIONS 



P;iteiit Ottioe sense) it can liaidly reject the claim on the iironnd that 

 the invention might be usert for iinnioral i)uriioses. 



J said in the beginning' that I can not on this occasion give any snf- 

 iicient account oftlie progress of invention and discovery in medicine 

 and sanitation during the century just gone, Tlie great step forward 

 which has been made has been the establisliment of a ti'ue scientific 

 foundation for the art upon the discoveries made in pliysics, chemistry, 

 and biohjgy. One Imndred years ago the practice of medicine and 

 measures to preserve health, so far as these were really efficacious, 

 were in the main empirical — that is, certain effects were known to 

 usually follow the giving of certain drugs or the apx)liciition of certnin 

 measures, but why or how these effects Avere produced was unknown. 

 They sailed then by dead-reckoning, in several senses of this phrase. 



Since then not only have great advances been made by a continuance 

 of these empirical measures in treatment, but we have learned much as 

 to the mechanism and functions of different parts of the body and as 

 to the nature of the causes of some of the most i)revalent and fatal 

 forms of disease, and, as a consecpience, can apply means of preven- 

 tion or treatment in a much more direct and definite way than was 

 formerly the case. For example, a hundred years ago nothing Avas 

 known of the difference between typhns and typhoid fevers. We have 

 now discovered that the first is a disease pro})agated largely by aerial 

 (contagion and induced or aggravated by overcrowding, the preventive 

 nutans being isolation, light, and fresh air; while the second is due to a 

 minute vegetable organism, a bacillus, and is propagated mainly by con- 

 taminated water, milk, food, and clothing; and that the treatment of 

 the two diseases should be very different. 



The most important improvements in practical medicine made in the 

 I" nited States have been chiefly in surgery, in its various branches. 

 We have led the way in the ligation of some of the larger arteries, in 

 the removal of abdominal tumors, in the treatment of diseases and 

 injuries peculiar to women, in the treatment of sj)iual affections and of 

 deformities of various kinds. Above all, we were the first to show the 

 uses of ansesthetics — the most important advance in medicine made 

 during the century. In our late war we taught Europe how to build, 

 organize, and manage military hosx)itals; and we formed the best 

 museum in existence illustrating modern military medicine and sur- 

 gery. Our contributions to medical literature have been nmny and val- 

 uable; and our Cxovernment possesses the largest and best working 

 medical library in the world. We have more doctors and more medi- 

 cal schools, in i)roportion to the population, than any other' country, 

 and, while this is not good evidence of progress, I am glad to be .able 

 to say that the standard of acquirements in medical education has been 

 and is now rising, and our leading medical schools are now being- 

 equipped with buildings, with apparatus, with laboratories, and, most 

 important of all, with brains, which enable them to give means of 

 practical instruction etpial to any to be found elsewhere. 



