772 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 281. 



office in Chicago, or a Fifth Avenue home. 

 Midway between heaven and earth it lies, 

 and as your desires are so your future 

 shall be. Whoso shall sell his dreams for 

 lucre makes base coinage of his soul, and as 

 I urge upon you the transcendent glories of 

 Sciosophy, so do I warn you against Scio- 

 sophy's degenerate double, which is ' Hum- 

 bug. ' And as Sciosophj^ brings wealth 

 above all vain imagining because it is 

 Wealth of the Soul, so does Humbug bring 

 soul poverty below all conception. You 

 will know Sciosophy from Humbug by this 

 mark and perhaps by this alone, that Htmi- 

 hucj pays, and among all grades of Scio- 

 sophists as in all ranks and classes of men, 

 Humbug has its Initiates, its Adepts and 

 its Prophets!" 



David Stare Jordan. 



THb SOCIOLOGICAJL STA TUS OF THE PHYS- 

 ICIAN.* 



In preparing this address I have liked to 

 think of it as a possible preface to chapters 

 which other men, who love their work and 

 to whom it is a profession of faith in a pur- 

 pose of usefulness, and who are wiser and 

 more apt than I, might write ; for the rela- 

 tions of the physician to the social problems 

 of his day and generation, while individual 

 in their character and single in their pur- 

 pose, are capable of manifold expression. 



The term 'sociology,' first used by Au- 

 gust Comptef less than sixty years ago, 

 may be briefly and broadly defined as ' the 

 science of the laws of human relationships ' 

 and, as often happens in the presence of 

 cognate intellectual processes working to- 

 ward the same end, the suggestion of a con- 

 cise definitive appellation furnishes a rally- 

 ing point to which the various workers 

 converge and from which they go out, 



* Delivered before the Congress of American Phys- 

 icians and Surgeons, held atWashington, D. C, May 

 1, 2 and 3, 1900. 



t Cours de Philosophie Positiv, 1842. 



strengthened by a sense of companionship 

 and encouraged to more extended effort by 

 a better comparative knowledge. 



The title sociology, therefore, beginning 

 with an application in terms of positive 

 philosophy, has come, in the short period of 

 half a century, to include not only theories 

 as to the organization of society, but prac- 

 tical considerations of the value, the appli- 

 cation, the use, the control, and finally the 

 prevention of certain social conditions. 



The range of sociology, in its modern 

 form, may be said to extend from investi- 

 gation of the power value of psychic phe- 

 nomena in the unit, to consideration of 

 physical economics in the mass. 



The original ideas of society as the pro- 

 duct of extrinsic causes or of society as a 

 force-aggregation upon a materialistic basis, 

 have gradually given place to a recognition 

 of the continuity of the ethical idea in an 

 aggregation of human units, the majority of 

 whom are relieved, in whole or in part, 

 from the demands incident to a primitive 

 struggle for existence. 



It is precisely at this point in the develop- 

 ment of sociology that a member of the body 

 politic, who has long existed and who has 

 indeed for several centuries had a definite 

 sociological status, becomes an increasingly 

 co-operative factor. 



The science of society which has come in 

 the growth of its responsibility to the human 

 mass to find the need of a more accurate 

 study of the entity of the human unit, turns 

 to the doctor of medicine for advice and 

 counsel. 



To the members of the medical profes- 

 sion, whose devotion, primarily, to the needs 

 of the unit, leads them to concentrate their 

 energies upon a succession of individuals 

 and who, consequently, find tliemselves iso- 

 lated more or less from the social commu- 

 nity and placed apart as specialized workers, 

 the newer and broader sociology brings, not 

 only the stimulus of association and sym- 



