494 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION 11. 



Section H. 



SANITARY SCIENCE, AND HYGIENE. 



President of the Section, Mr. Joseph Bancroft, 21. D., oj Brisbane. 



Thursday, August 30. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



VARIOUS HYGIENIC ASPECTS OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE. 



To know something of Medical and Sanitary affairs is one thing, 

 but to compose an interesting and readable paper worthy of your 

 attention, necessitates abilities to which I lay no claim, and much 

 as I may desire to present to you any tolerable sketch of these ever 

 increasing branches of knowledge, at which many of the most 

 enlightened intelligences in Europe and America are now labour- 

 ing, I must rather be content to say something of experiences 

 gained in the Australian colonies, leaving the far greater stores of 

 investigations to be illustrated by abler hands. To be able to cure a 

 sick man is a power of the highest order, no knowledge seems 

 greater or more desirable, but to lay down rules of guidance 

 intelligible to the masses by which disease may be avoided is a yet 

 higher attainment, and worthy of the name Sanitary Science. The 

 removal of a frightful ailment, and the restoration of a diseased 

 person to health, seems more of the nature of a miracle, and for 

 which service no payment appears too great, but to say to your 

 patient as Elisha did to Naaman, " wash and be clean," is a pre- 

 scription for which at first sight no fee should be claimed, and it 

 is not to be wondered at that the Health Officer working at purifi- 

 cations, ventilation and disinfection, is looked upon as occupying 

 an infei'ior position, and as he does no particular medical and 

 surgical duties, that his services may be dispensed with whenever 

 he stands in the way of small economies. 



In this Address, Sanitary topics therefore, will be perhaps more 

 necessary to dwell upon than Medical and Surgical advancement, 

 which latter being better able to claim a just reward for its ser- 

 vices needs less help from Governments or Learned Societies 

 striving for the advancement of Science, wliich is the object of our 

 meeting to-day. 



The more continued efibrts of our Colonial Universities will, 

 however, do much to prove to the rising generation of men and 



