[ 45 ] 



Ifrom 2)u6t to 2)u0t 



H C^cle ot %iU. 



By J. Sidney Turner, M.R.C.S., F.L.S* 



AS medical men, we are ever face to face with Nature's 

 problems, and are constantly being called upon to unravel 

 some of her deepest mysteries. It is our task to repair 

 her working machinery when it becomes rusty and out of gear — to 

 deal with the abnormal rather than the normal. I have therefore 

 chosen a subject which contemplates the natural order of things, 

 and which may, at least, afford us some change of thought. It 

 will necessarily be but a brief sketch of what might well be made 

 to 'fill a volume. 



Man has been tersely defined as a " cause-seeking animal." 

 The Alpha and Omega of life have ever been fascinating problems 

 for speculative thinkers, but the truest philosophy is that which 

 seeks only to discern the knowable. 



The Book of Nature, written for all time and all people, is 

 ever open to us, and, although it at first seems to be written in an 

 unknown tongue, like some richly-illuminated old missal, wherein 

 we can only admire the form of the letters and the beauty of the 

 colouring, it requires no translation but that which the earnest 

 student, if guided by love of truth, may accomplish for himself. 

 Thomas k Kempis says, " If thy heart be right, then will every 

 creature be to thee a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine." 

 No two persons see exactly the same world ; it is greatly in our 

 power to make it a Heaven or a Hell. Happy indeed is he who 

 seeks the pleasures of life — not the fleeting ones that perish, but 

 those intellectual pleasures that have in them germs for future 

 development. Can we do better than inculcate in our youth a 

 love for Nature ? Be sure that, where such exists, tender chords 

 of sympathy will be found ever ready to vibrate in harmony with 

 the Eternal Truth. 



Who amongst us is not the better for having some hobby ?" 

 Who may not, in some humble way, add to the growth of that 



* Address given at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the South Eastern 

 Branch of the British Medical Association, June 13th, 1894. 



