8 



present? Is disease being prevented? Is life being prolonged? 

 Is pain lessened? When disease arises can it be more skilfully- 

 treated or more rapidly controlled ? It is almost superfluous for 

 me in this assembly to answer these questions or to point out how 

 intimately our progress has been associated with and dependent 

 upon Harvey's great discovery. As illustrations, need I speak 

 here of the diminished mortality from consumption, which, by the 

 recognition of and attention to ordinary sanitary laws, has during 

 the last quarter of a century been reduced in England and Wales 

 28 per cent.? or of the diminished mortality from ague or from 

 typhoid fever? Is pain lessened? Need I refer to ether and 

 chloroform, or to nitrite of amyl which is now finding a more 

 extended use than in simply relieving angina pectoris ; or to the 

 hypodermic injections of remedies such as morphia and ether? 

 When disease arises can it be more skilfully treated or more 

 rapidly controlled ? Need I speak of the effects of the bromides I 

 in epilepsy and allied disorders ; of the specific effect of quinine in 

 ague, or of the equally specific effect, in proper doses and with 

 suitable diet, of the salicyl compounds in acute rheumatism ; 

 of the diminished mortality from pneumonia; of the use of 

 the aspirator in pleuritic and pericardial effusions; of our in- 

 creased skill in the localisation of cerebral disease and the brilliant 

 results which are now achieved by surgery in connection there- 

 with? All these are modern advances of which we may well 

 be proud. The names of those, many of them happily still living 

 among us, to whom we owe this increased knowledge, are known 

 to you all. It is unnecessary therefore to commemorate singly 

 those distinguished Fellows of this College whose names connected 

 with the advance of medicine will be cherished by posterity not 

 only as Benefactors of this College, but of mankind at large. 



