September 7, 1893] 



NATURE 



449 



whole of France resolved to accept sacrifices equil in extent to 

 those entailed by the defeat, in order to insure a national recovery. 

 This seniinient dominated at the foundation of the French 

 Association. Schools in every grade have been multiplied, 

 as also new chairs. Their faculties have been created, at 

 least for medicine, but have not given results expected of them. 

 The real object sought was to retain in a certain number of 

 university centres the crowd of students which encumber the 

 Faculty of Medicine of Paris without profit for themselves or for 

 it. " This encumberment seems not to havj diminished at 

 Paris, and our provincial faculties might without harm see their 

 scholastic population trebled." As a matter of fact, the newly 

 created chairs, laboratories, and faculties have in a remark- 

 able manner muliiplied sources of employment and created 

 outlets for young men. It is certain that many have commenced 

 working in order to make themselves positions in the teach- 

 ing world. They have subsequently seriously taken up 

 scientific study and disinterested scientific work. "Young 

 men of science desire, and naturally so, that their work should 

 be immediately remunerated. This is a novelty in our old 

 university." These pretensions are to some extent legitimate, 

 and the budget must provide for them, but the budget is begin- 

 ning to resist, and the day is approaching when the State will 

 only ask 'for, and will only accept, the absolutely necessary 

 services, whde on the other hand insuring to those who devote 

 themselves to scientific instruction a honourable position and a 

 satisfactory future. 



"The public powers must become persuaded that instruc- 

 tion in every degree and in every direction of employment 

 is and must be treated as a career." 



.\s may be seen, we have reached a critical period when the 

 plethora is become excessive, and a situation which has become 

 painful has to be remedied somehow; " The raising of the 

 standard of the position of men of science ii one of the spon- 

 taneous consequences of progress, at once natural and 

 neces ary." 



The applications of science carry with them certain advan- 

 tages ; one of these well calculated to entice generous natures, 

 is the degree of esteem accorded to a profession. Certain pro- 

 fessions enjoy more favour in given periods than others — 

 military men during the First Empire, lawyers under the 

 Restoration, engineers towards 1848, and under the Second 

 Empire during the periol of railway building. The turn of the 

 doctor has perhaps come. " I am inclined to think so when I con- 

 sider the extraordina y number of doctors who sit in the elected 

 consultative bodies, and the important vdUs that they play therein. 

 Dr. Bouchard then cited their influence on Parliamentary legis- 

 lation in the matters of vaccination, the use of antiseptics, and 

 sanitation. In no way does the parallel progress of scientific 

 dignity an! pubhc esteem manifest itself more strongly than in 

 the matter of specialties. Knowledge is no longer encyclo- 

 paedic. A doctor can no longer become learned but on condi- 

 tion of becoming a specialist. Surgeons have been the first 

 specialists. They have extended to so many objects their 

 fecund activity, and enlarged their domain to such an extent, 

 that surgery, having absorbed everything about it, will soon 

 cease to have a separate existence. It dismembers itself into 

 specialties which multiply day by day. "I see approach- 

 ing the day when there will be no longer either doctors 

 or surgeons, and when there will exist for those who dedicate 

 themselves to the art of healing a general pathology with 

 general therapeutics, including amongst other things the laws 

 and processes of operative intervention." Starting from this 

 general fund of knowledge, doctors will classify themselves 

 according to the natural groups of maladies to the study and 

 treatment of which they may dedicate themselves. " It will be 

 necessa-y that the Stale and the teaching bodies should com- 

 prehend, foresee, and provide for this evolution which ii certain 

 to be accomplished. It is necessary, above all, that those who 

 dedicate themselves to the medical profession should re- 

 ceive a common and general solid instruction which will 

 enable each one to woik out later on, with fruit, his specialisa- 

 tion." 



He then cited the pisition which oculists have attained in the 

 public esteem. They have constituted a science. The art of 

 the oculist has become ophthalmology, "the most brilliant, sure, 

 and, I was about to say, most perfect branch of m:dicine." He 

 considers in the same way the pasition attained by the dentist. 

 In changing their titles oculists and dintists wish to mark the 



NO 1245, VOX,. 48] 



arrival of a new age, the accession of their arts to the real 

 scientific period. 



After a few words upon the position of men of science, Dr. 

 Bouchard stated, as showing the wide field still open lor 

 modest efforts, that of the 36,000 communes of France 29,000 

 have no doctor. It is a field opened up for active and devoted 

 work. 



But neither ambition nor the satisfaction of worldy require- 

 ments, nor even the thirst for self-sacrifice suffice to explain 

 the intensity of the movement which carries along to scientific 

 occupations so many men belonging to the intellectual and moral 

 elite of the nation. People go towards science because of its 

 attractions and fascinations. If geometry can excite a very p.ission, 

 why not the study of physical phenomena, the determinriim 

 of biological laws ? " Medicine has seductions which may raise 

 a smile, but which all those who have dedicated their existence 

 to it understand." To grasp the causes of disease, discern their 

 modes of action, is theqiestion which has been posed since llie 

 origin of medicine ; it is ^he problem which for the last 2000 

 year^ and more has tormented the greate-t intellects of the 

 medical profession. These causes have been revealed to us for 

 a great number of maladies by a man who was not a doctor. 

 This revelation dates from but yesterday, and it is only since 

 yesterday that we have been able to introduce into experimen- 

 taiion this factor up to the present unknown — the morbific 

 cause {la cause morbifiqtie'). From this day dale; the great 

 reform in medicine. The modes of work of the old school 

 were then compared with those of the new. They did what they 

 could, what they would always have been obliged to do. They 

 worked out the natural history of malady. They have seen the 

 dawn of a new day. They have become acquainted with the 

 role of the microbe in the universal transformation of matter, 

 whether dead or alive, organic or inorganic, an idea so great and 

 so fecund that each science in particular owes to it a pait of its 

 progress, while to it medicine owes its very renewal. Herein 

 we nave the true reason of this allurement which carries away so 

 many liberal minds to the study of medicine. He then pointed 

 out the parallel development of the study of septicism, and of 

 the intimate relations of the vaiious organs in their functions, 

 and finished by indicating as the principal directing ideas of 

 contemporary medicine, infection, diathesis, auto-intoxication, 

 useful r$le of the internal secretions, nervous reactions, i^rovok- 

 ing and impeding healthy actions. He finished with some 

 remarks as to the riJ/^ of the Association — one of its great ob- 

 jects being to produce a scientific decentralisation. This 

 decentralisation has been attained ; it is in the minds while 

 waiting to be affirmed by our Institutions. Meanwhile we 

 continue our yearly peregrinations. "Nous sommes en train dc 

 decouvrer la France.^^ 



The address was remarkably well received. 



The Secretary of the Association afterwards read a report on 

 the work done during the last season, and the Treasurer rendered 

 an account of the financial state of the Association, showing a 

 balance in its favour of about 800,000 francs ; Dr. Bouchard then 

 declared the twenty-second ses.-ion of their congress opened. 



In the evening there was a reception held by the Maire at the 

 Hotel de Ville, which was well attended. 



At five o'clock on the same evening the bureaux or staff of 

 officers of the different sections were fixed, and the agendas for 

 the meetings to be held next morning. There were no addresses 

 from the presidents of the sections. 



Of the seventeen sections, Nos. I and 2 were devoted to 

 Mathematics and Astronomy, 3 and 4 to Civil and Military 

 Engineering, 5 and 7 to Physics and Meteorology, 6 to Che- 

 mistry, 8 to Geology and Mineralogy, and 9 to Botany. Sec- 

 tion 10 dealt with Zoology and Physiology, II with Anthro- 

 pology, 12 Medical Sciences, and 13 Agriculture. Geography 

 was considered in section 14, Political Economy in 15, Peda- 

 gogy in 16, and Hygiene in 17. To all these sections a large 

 number of important communications were made. 



Excursions. 



Sunday, August 6, Salins and Source, of the Lison River. — 

 Leaving at 6.30 a.m. by special train, Salins, situated about 

 twenty-three miles south-south-west of Besan9on, was reached 

 at 7.30 a.m., afttr running through a hilly country showing the 

 limestone formation of the Jura and fully cultivated. Salins is, 

 as the name indicates, situated in a salt district, and the salt 

 springs have been woiked from very early if not prehistoric 



