PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — HARRIS. Iv 



modern communit}'? Apart altosothcr from the way in 

 which science makes for technical efficiency, it is a means 

 second to none in the training of the intellectual powers. 

 In the first place it trains us in accuracy of observation, 

 in reliability of drawing; conclusions, in habits of jirccise 

 thinking generally; and these are not small things. 



Accuracy of observation! Some of us have not the faculty 

 of observation at all. When we have observed, then comes 

 the drawing of conclusions, the educing of laws from our 

 data: this is none other than the age long quest for th^ 

 causes of certain effects. Each science that is differentiated 

 out of the mass of accumulated facts is one more specific 

 example of the successful pursuit of the causes of phenomena. 

 Is not each fresh case I have to see, one fresh prol)l{'m in 

 the applied sciences of medicine or surgery, an exercise in 

 the connecting of certain signs with certain underlying 

 causes or antecedents? To do this unerringly is not at 

 all easy. Some say, "Oh, he is a good enough medical 

 man, but he is no surgeon," as though anybody could be 

 a physician. The proper relating of seen symptom with 

 unseen condition is the problem of problems in medical 

 diagnosis, and it requires the highest development of our 

 powers of observation and of interpreting correctly the 

 meaning of the data collected. The whole training of the 

 medical student is towards this end; and in practical medicine 

 you find as great a field for the exercise of scientific analysis 

 and synthesis as in any of the other sciences. One has 

 constantly to disentangle causes from causal conditions; 

 causes from contributing circumstances, positive from nega- 

 tive factors, facts from opinions, and so on. 



I am quite aware that there is a school of thought which 

 objects to any one thing being called a cause; but this would 

 be very troublesome if applied to practical medicine. One 

 of the earliest things the student has to learn is to distinguish 

 a fact from an inference about a fact, a phenomenon from 



