26 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
will be won, from which workers who are fighting with disease 
may advance to make fresh conquests. Truth is truth 
whether it accords with our theories or routs them. Let 
every man amongst us strive to attack the problems set before 
him in an earnest and truth-loving spirit; let us be careful 
at all times not to go beyond our facts, but should we find 
that we have been led into error, let us be the first to 
acknowledge it; let all controversies be carried on in an 
impersonal spirit ; let each man look upon his brother worker 
as a friend working in a common cause, anxious for the light 
of truth to be thrown on all his work; and let us be more 
ready to receive criticism than to give it. We are all 
acquainted with the basis on which we build up our own 
theories, but we are not always cognisant of the facts on 
which our neighbour maintains his tenets and beliefs ; had 
we his light we might have his belief also. 
Whatever may be said of the medical members of a society 
which has gathered into its fold scientific men of every con- 
dition and degree, it must be admitted that they have always 
been among the first to utilise for their beloved profession, 
and in the interest of the healing art, in which all men are 
so doubly interested, every scientific factor that has been 
placed before them by the brilliant workers in this and 
in other societies. That they have been hampered in their 
researches by the very people who twitted them with the 
fact that they are non-scientific is undoubtedly true, but 
empiricism in the evil sense of the word has little footing 
in the training of our students, and I maintain that we have 
ample proof of the truth of this in the recent marvellous 
discoveries in the regions of preventive medicine and 
physiological treatment. 
