Presidenfs Address. 5 



you can get that iuformation from botanists, but I regard 

 everything connected with a disease as a special subject 

 of medical study, to which the practitioner ought to be 

 able to bring a mind well cultured as to phytology. It 

 would be easy for me here to retort that insanity in most 

 cases can without difficulty be proved by the testimony of 

 the friends of the insane, and that, after all, the most 

 skilful alienist physician would in many cases be very help- 

 less without such testimony being afforded him ; and that, 

 as it is only the proofs of the existence and not the hind 

 of the insanity which require to be scheduled, therefore 

 the study of mental diseases in all their phases is only a 

 needless burden imposed on the medical student who has 

 an eye to general practice. But surely in such a case 

 the reply would be forthcoming that we must train all 

 our faculties and acquire all collateral knowledge, such as 

 psychology, ontology, logic, and deontology, that we may 

 intelligently deal with the disease ; and is not a similar 

 answer as valid regarding botany in the above instances. 



4th. Were it only as a healthy recreation, botany is a 

 great advantage to the medical student. The lecturer 

 stated that he would select his assistant not from amoug 

 the students who had obtained gold medals for herbaria, 

 but from amoug those who could show most names in the 

 dispensary case-book. Now, apart from the gross mis- 

 representation of botanical science and teaching which is 

 involved in the above statement, it would probably be found 

 that the diligence and energy displayed by the successful 

 competitor for the herbarium medal had also procured for 

 him the largest number of cases in his dispensary book, 

 and these more carefully and accurately diagnosed, just in 

 consequence of the botanical training through which he 

 was passing ; and as it is important that an assistant 

 should be possessed of vigorous health, such a condition 

 would be more likely to be found in the botanist than in 

 the other. Besides all this, the physician who has no 



tagium will, if living animals be inoculated witli them, breed in these animals 

 the specific disease." The splenic fever of farm stock has been proved by other 

 observers to be due also to a microphyte ; and the Spirilla, which is a distinct 

 botanical species, though not actually proved to be the cause of relapsing fever, is 

 yet found multipljnng in the blood of persons affected \nth that disease (Simon). 



