PROCEEDINQS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. I, pp. 1-14. April 14, 1S99. 



FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



[Read to the Academy January i8, 1899.] 



It has seemed best to prepare this report in such way that it 

 may serve not onl}^ for the information of persons present at this 

 meeting, but also as a permanent record to be printed in the 

 Proceedings. With a view to such pubhcation it has been 

 made to cover the transactions of the Society and its Board of 

 Managers, as recorded in the Secretary's minutes, but without 

 following the language of the minutes. 



It has seemed best also to precede the account of the Acad- 

 emy's work with a brief statement of the conditions and events 

 which led to the Academy's organization. 



I. NARRATIVE OF EVENTS ANTECEDENT TO THE FORMATION 

 OF THE ACADEMY. 



Of the associations from which the membership of the Acad- 

 emy is drawn the one earliest formed is the Medical Society of 

 the District of Columbia, which was organized in 1819. The 

 subject matter of its work is and has been medical science, in- 

 cluding sanitation. More than fifty years afterward the Philo- 

 sophical Societ}^ of Washington was organized, beginning its 

 work in 187 1 and choosing 'science ' as its subject without ex- 

 pressing any limitation. Although the field of the younger 

 society nominally included the field of the older, there was 

 practically no duplication of work as medical papers were rarely 

 presented to the Philosophical Society. 



Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., April, 1899. (i) 



