vli 



JUNE 12th, ig06. 



Tho nionllily mooting of the h'oyul So- 

 ciety ot Tasnianiu was li&ld at tli« Tas- 

 maiiian Museum on Tues<lay, June 12, 

 1908. His Excellency Sir Gerald Strick- 

 land who was accompanii'il by Lady Ede- 

 liiie Strickland, and aecomT>anii'd by Mr. 

 (U-9. Browne, I.S.O., presided, and tho 

 Cliief .Justice, Sir John Uodds, K.CM.G., 

 wa.s among th&se pj'eseut. Apologies 



lor absonoe wei-e receiv&d from the 

 lUshop of Tasmania, Colonel Legge, and 

 Sir Elliott Lewis. 



Mr. J. W. Tarlefou was elected a mem- 

 ber of the i-ociety. 

 iiiological Ancestry of Human Disease's. 



Dr. Gerard Smith read a highly tech- 

 nical paper entitled "The Biological An- 

 cestry of Some Human Diseases." He 

 said that they had no doubt heard of a 

 recent cryptic utterance made by Sir 

 Fivederick Treeves, which was an expres- 

 sion of the new school of medical thought, 

 Sir Fi-ederick Treeves had said that "if 

 there were no diseases, the human race 

 c(uld not exist." That was a statemenc 

 which, although it embodied a truthful 

 jjhiloisophy in respect to our mental atti- 

 tude with respect to the reasons and cau- 

 sation of disease, yet it went too far for 

 our present comprehension. He (Dr. 

 Smithi wished to present a lesser theory, 

 taking in a certain limited class of bodily 

 di.sordens. It was that di^^ease in man was 

 healthy life misplaced. Disieases were not 

 rightly termed abnormal, but normal, 

 processes going on under conditions -wlizcli 

 had changed, and constituted diseMses only 

 becaiise tlie organism in which they oc- 

 cur is m an incomjjletely developed istate, 

 and in a condition of instability and 

 cliange. Proceeding, Dr. Smith laid it 

 ('ov.-n that the last organs to deveLo]> iii 

 the cruder cf evo^'ution were the first to 

 fail, whether by disease or advancing age, 

 or, in other words, that physiological re- 

 cency meant pathological; weakness. It 

 would be expected that an organ which 

 had been am.ong the earlieet developed 

 would be less likely to be unstable. The 

 loiTiger an organ had performed its func- 

 tions in an aclequRte and patisfactory 

 mannev, and h^d therefore attained by 

 survival of a high standard of perfec- 

 tion, the les.5 likely ivoukl it be to fail 

 in its function. In snite of ill-treatment, 

 the stomach, one of the earliest developed 

 organs, was the least liable to disease; 

 whereas the lu.ngs, heart, etc., which 

 were oif more recent development, were 

 more liable to disease. ThiS', he con- 

 sidered, was in harmony with his theory, 

 the ovgpns being as it were in a state 

 of transition or instability, with the 

 result that .normal prcecrses would go 

 on under conditions nC' Icnger favourable. 

 By throwing back to an earlier stage of 

 their evoluticn cells would be put out of 



harmony with their sui-roundings, so to 

 speak, and thus cause disease. 



Democracy and Socialism. 



Mr. E. C. Nowell 7'ead a lengthy paper, 

 in the coni'se of which he attempted to 

 give defi.nitions of demoicracy and social- 

 ism He dcsci'ibed the Athenian polity, 

 showing that in the ancient democracy 

 the whole people exercispd direct control 

 of the affairs of the Stale, bolh legisU 

 live and executive. No sucb system ex- 

 isted nowadays, except in Switzerland. 

 Tbere was, with the e.xception mentioned, 

 no modern democracy in the exact sense 

 of the term. Mr. Nowell next dealt 

 with so'cialisin, quoting largely from 

 Profei-.sor Flint's t^tandard work on tho 

 subiect, and also from the works C'f other 

 Briti-h and European writers. Accord- 

 ing to PrO'fesscr Flint, socialism sought 

 to re-construct and reorganise the whole 

 social system, and to effect a va^t im- 

 provement i,n every department of human 

 life. It aimed especially at a thorough 

 reorganisation of industry and property, 

 at such an alteration of the conditions 

 and arrangements as to the prc'duction, 

 disti'ibutiou, and enicyme.nt of wealth as 

 would abolish poverty and reirove the 

 discontent of the operative classes. 



Mr. Nowell also dwelt on the various 

 types of socialism which have been devel- 

 opv3d — at least in theory — co^mmunism, 

 collectivism, co-operation, and State 

 socialism, etc. He concluded by giving 

 a summary of the arguments advanced 

 by American writers in favour of social- 

 ism, and quoted an interesting extract 

 from a recent article by Mr. Upton 

 Sinclair, which showed how the perfec- 

 tion of machinery had reduced the 

 amount of human labour requisite to 

 pro'duce articles mO'?t extensively con- 

 sumed. 



Mr. E'. D. Dobbie, who opened the di - 

 cnssion on Mr. Nowell's paper, saw vo 

 objection to t.he use of the wcrd dem-"- 

 cracy ?s applied to modern States. Tt 

 was true that it had lest in a meaisure its 

 original significance. PS used in refsTence 

 to the Greek States, but its application 

 with a modified significanice to modern 

 State^^ wa.s quite legitimate and perfectlv 

 intelliarible. The r)eople no longer exer- 

 cised direct control over the .affairs of the 

 State, but they were none the I'P-s' tlie re- 

 noisitory of oolitical nower. The great 

 feature which diistinguished modern from 

 ancieiut democa'acy was the system of re- 

 presentation. Indeed, without the re- 

 presentative system modern democracy 

 would be impc6sible, on account of the 

 size of the States. Soci?.lism, he^ con- 

 sidered, waB an unmistakable protest 

 against the present system, and indicated 



