MEDICAL SCIENCE IN ONTARIO. 



granted diplomas, eatitling ttem to become licensed, and "duly" quali- 

 fied to enter upon their professional calling. 



The number of medical men now in practice iff Ontario is estimated 

 to be about two thousand. Estimating the population to be, in round 

 numbers, two millions, this would only give one physician to every two 

 thousand inhabitants, — not too many, one would say, in a sparsely 

 settled country, such as Canada. The tendency, however, is far too 

 prevalent, for medical men to swarm at the great centres of population, 

 to their own manifest disadvantage, while, many of the outlying districts 

 are left destitute of the comforts of the physician's aid. The reason 

 for this is obvious. On the one hand, the people in very new parts of 

 the country are poor, and unable to give any adequate remuneration for 

 the physician's services; and, on the other, there are very few young 

 men, — generally a rather sanguine class, — who are willing to sacrifice 

 the hope of winning one of the great prizes of the profession, for the 

 "hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick." Where, however, young 

 men, on leaving college, have the pluck to face the hardships of a new 

 settlement, for a few years, and enter, fearlessly, upon the practice of 

 their profession, the people become proud of the "Doctor," often reward 

 him with municipal honors, look up to him as an oracle of wisdom, and, 

 in the end, give him substantial evidence of the constancy of their 

 esteem. No new man can supplant the " old Doctor," who, generally, 

 becomes an affluent and most influential man. Of course, there is an 

 opposite side to this picture; but so there is to all pictures, and, gene- 

 rally, where the opposite occurs, the fault lies with the medical man 

 himself. 



Since the Imperial Act of Confederation passed, establishing^ the 

 Dominion op Canada, medical delegates from all the Provinces met 

 in the " ancient capital," at the call of the Quebec Medical Society, 

 and, subsequently, (last year) in the city of Montreal, and formed a 

 Medical Society for the Dominion, called "The Canadian Medical 

 Association." It is hardly possible to estimate the amount of good 

 that may be expected to arise from this step. On this subject, in a 

 paper read before the medical section of the Canadian Institute, on the 

 12th December, 1868, I remarked, " The formation of the Canadian 

 Medical Association, and the success, in point of numbers, and debating 

 ability, of those attending its first meetings, is, to my mind, a subject 

 for the liveliest congratulation. The work, however, so far, has been 

 of an initiatory, or preliminary character almost exclusively, and, 

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