156 THE RISE OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES CHAP, xn 



ence, research and theory. For this purpose evidence is 

 needed alike from the physician, the surgeon and the family 

 medical man, whether in town or country. Such a compre- 

 hensive scope has provided a useful counterpoise to that 

 undue specialisation which has resulted from the increase of 

 knowledge. In the words of a former president, the late 

 Edmund Owen, " the society's kindly and paternal spirit 

 has come down as a precious heritage from Lettsom, and 

 through him from Fothergill." The society is notable in 

 medical history as probably the first to be constituted on 

 what may be called a democratic basis, serving the scientific 

 interests of the medical profession as a whole. 1 



1 The Medical Society of London has often been confounded with the two 

 small societies previously described, none of them having at first a distinctive 

 name. Hence few if any of the Medical Society Orators and other historians 

 who have dealt with this period have escaped errors, which have been copied 

 from one author to another, but which it would take too long to particularise. 

 The tangle has had to be patiently unravelled with light from original sources. 

 See MS. Minutes of Med. Soc. Lond. ; Lettsom, Hints, iii. 257 ; Mem. Lettsom, 

 i. 31, etc. ; Pettigrew, Med. Port. Gallery, iv. mem. Pettigrew ; G. Thompson, 

 Mem. Fothergill, 1782 ; Foth. Works, ii. i, 376, iii. 164, 181 ; Med. Register, 

 !779 1783 ; W. B. Carpenter, Centenary Oration, Roy. Med. Soc. Edin., 1837 

 (his mistaken inference is repeated by Dr. R. Peel Ritchie, Early Days of the 

 Royall Colledge of Physitians, Edin., 1899) ; J. F. Clarke, Autobiog. Recoil, of 

 Med. Profession ; Orations before the Med. Soc. Lond. by Dr. C. H. F. Routh, 

 1859 ; Dr. Symes Thompson, 1882 ; Edmund Owen (Trans, xx. 309), and 

 others ; and before the Hunterian Soc. by Dr. Fotherby, 1869, and Dr. G. 

 Newton Pitt, 1896 ; [J. B. Bailey], Med. Institutions of London, 1895 ; MS. 

 Account of the Library of the Med. Soc. Lond., read before the Library Associa- 

 tion, I9T4, by the present Registrar of the Society, Mr. G. Bethell. 



