74 FREER. 



nebulous field of proteins began to assume shape and form. Ph^'sio- 

 logical chemistry was now placed upon a firm, scientific basis and the 

 rapid application of its results to the general problems of the medical 

 Bcience was made possible. Physics, with its equally great development, 

 has contributed as much as chemistry to the general advance. The 

 study of electricity has given us resources which daily find application 

 in physiology, biology, and in the practical branches of surgery and 

 medicine. The work in optics produced the modern microscope with 

 all its accessories and together with photo-chemistry the investigations 

 on liglit have given us photography. The science of mathematics has 

 grown equally with its sister subjects and joined with chemistry and 

 physics has laid the foundation of what is practically a new branch of 

 learning, physical chemistry. The latter to-day is called upon to explain 

 phenomena and point the way to new research in almost all branches 

 of medicine. Modern biology, with the aid of the microscope, has made 

 us familiar with new classes of flora and fauna, and hence with bac- 

 teriology, protozoology, helmintholog}^, and mycology. Histology and 

 pathology have gone hand in hand, giving us new developments and new 

 points of view each day. Physiology now makes use of all tlie resources 

 of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology, and, together with anat- 

 omy and pharmacology, has become a branch of science to which special- 

 ists devote all of their attention. 



As you all know, the development of this topic could be continued ad 

 infinitum. Almost every branch of science has done its part in ad- 

 vancing medicine and bringing it to its present eminence. Medicine 

 itself has produced the modern hospital where disease in all its forms 

 can be studied and treated with the entire instrumentarium to-day avail- 

 able to us, and where the knowledge gained from experimental work in 

 the laboratory can be applied. 



What wonder then that the standpoint of modern medicine has altered. 

 It is not the influence of this or that dogma or superstition, it is not the 

 inner consciousness that this or that practice, previously held, is now 

 untenable, nor is it the belief that to be progressive we must constantly 

 change, that has brought us to our present standpoint. No, it is the 

 great advance of scientific work and the methods of thought in general 

 which have placed medicine where it is and made it, perhaps, the 

 hardest taskmaster in the world. The human body, in health or disease, 

 is subject to the exact laws of physical science and in striving to fathom 

 the relation of these laws to life, medicine will continue to develop in 

 the future as it has in the past. Beliefs and views we hold to-day must 

 give way to others founded on still more extended scientific research, in 

 the continual endeavor to reach that perfect knowledge we will never 

 attain. There can be no differing schools of true medicine: there can be 

 but one medicine, founded upon the laborious achievements of exper- 

 imental, scientific investigation. 



