6 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
Royal Physical Society. This has already been done on 
previous occasions, by retiring presidents, but I have referred, 
and should like further to refer, very briefly to a few of the 
men who, members of this Society, were both physicians and 
scientific men, and whose names will always be held in rever- 
ence by those who seek after truth. I do this for the reason 
that after my return from Berlin this year, discussing the 
Congress with a somewhat eminent literary man, I was twitted 
with the so-called fact that medicine is almost entirely an 
empirical art, and that medical science, if such a science 
can be said to exist, is little more advanced than it was 
fifty or even a hundred years ago. I very naturally attempted 
to prove a direct negative, and though I was scarcely success- 
ful in this, I at least obtained from my friend the admission 
that the science of medicine is not merely a name. Of 
course it may be admitted that if by empiricism we mean 
a system based on a series of observations and facts, then 
medicine must to a large extent be empirical—but so must 
all science: no man can argue without facts, and even the 
logic of induction rests on deductive logic. Put the matter 
as we will, we know only because we have observed, and the 
position that we are compelled to take is, that where there 
are so many scientific minds bringing forth fruit in other 
fields directly associated with medicine, such minds when 
brought to bear on their own special work cannot but be 
influenced in their methods and observations, in deduction 
and in induction, by their training and work in other fields of 
science, a profession and a training that has given to this 
Society and to the world such men as J. Y. Simpson, who 
became a fellow in 1829; as Edward Forbes, who joined in 
1831; as John Goodsir, as J. Hutton Balfour, as T. Spencer 
Cobbold, and a host of others whose names are familiar to 
all, could not allow these men to grope along tunnels of mere 
empiricism, if by the application of scientific methods there 
was any hope of obtaining a clearer light on the etiology, 
pathology, and treatment of disease. 
One of your earlier presidents has said: “for though some 
think that such societies are for the exhibition of ingenious 
papers, or the mere unravelling of a piece of anatomy, there 
