40 On Medical Science : [ Jan., 
condition of Medical Science, free from objectionable details, may 
fitly find a place in a Journal designed for general circulation.* 
We have before us the papers read at the Dublin meeting of 
the British Medical Association, the communications to various 
provincial meetings of the same body, ‘contributions to the Journals, 
and last, but by no means least in value, the addresses delivered at 
the opening of the winter session at the different medical schools, 
metropolitan and provincial. The conclusion to be drawn from 
these various sources of information as to the recent progress and 
present condition of Medical Science is a most encouraging one. 
In no former period of equal length have such advances been made 
as in the last half-century in the detection of diseased action or 
morbid change, and if equal progress has not been made in the Art 
of Medicine, in the application of Science to the prevention of death 
or the relief of suffering, still even in that respect the advances 
have been immense. ‘The practitioner now undertakes with con- 
fidence the treatment of diseases which his predecessors regarded 
as incurable, and the modes of treatment have, in many instances, 
been simplified and made less painful. 
A recapitulation of some of the additions thus made to the 
‘ means of combating disease ought to be specially interesting to 
the readers of a Journal like ours, for it has been strictly and 
exclusively by the means of research furnished by experimental 
science, that our knowledge of disease has been extended, and if 
wise empiricism, or happy imagining (the inspiration of genius), 
has, rather than scientific research, furnished the improved methods 
of treatment, Science has provided the means of utilizing the 
thoughts thus suggested. 
But leaving these generalizations, let us proceed to a few details, 
and first of the improved methods of research. Of these the 
foremost has been the extension of the power of vision by the 
microscope. ‘The additions to our stores of knowledge, both of 
healthy structure and of morbid changes, thus acquired, would fill 
volumes ; and we have not space for the enumeration of even a few 
of them. 
Next, in point of value, should be placed the discovery which 
to some extent does for the sense of hearmg what the microscope 
* We think it right to say that, in making such a survey, we take as our guide 
and as a sketch-map of the country over which we intend to travel, an address 
recently delivered before the North Wales branch of the British Medical Associ- 
ation, by its president, Mr. Thomas Eyton Jones, of Wrexham. In choosing such 
a guide, we are not alone influenced by the intrinsic merits of the address, as a 
lucid aud comprehensive abstract of the recent progress of medicine, but we have 
pleasure in showing that not only in onr great cities, the centres of mental activity, 
is inedical science studied with earnestness, but that the men living in remote pro- 
vincial towns, and practising among widely scattered populations, are able to keep 
pace with, and to rival their more favourably situated brethren. 
