24 Royal Irish Academy. 



Mr. Cusack gave remarkable evidence before a Committee of the House 

 of Commons in 1843, on the excessive mortality amongst Irish, practi- 

 tioners, especially from the prevalence of typhus fever in this country. 

 A demand, based on these considerations, vs^as made for an improve- 

 ment in their pecuniary position, which was partially — though unhap- 

 pily only partially — successful. 



Dr. Stokes always protested against what he calls "the unhappy 

 and calamitous division of the profession into medicine and surgery." 

 Sooner or later, he held, that factitious and unreasonable distinction 

 would be obliterated. " The human constitution," he says, '*is one; 

 there is no division of it into a medical and surgical domain ; the same 

 laws and the same principles apply to the cure of a fractured bone 

 and the cicatrisation of an internal ulcer." What he regarded as most 

 essential, however, was not the fusion of the two branches of the pro- 

 fession, though to this he looked forward, as likely both to further the 

 progress of science and to elevate the moral and political status of the 

 profession, but the fundamental identity of the education of both. 

 Advantages, as he says, no doubt arise from a practitioner devoting 

 himself to this or that branch ; but, if he seeks for eminence, he will 

 first educate himself generally. Especially he dwells on the necessity 

 to the surgeon of a thorough study of fever, from which more men in 

 the British IN'avy died during the great French War than from all 

 other causes, including the sword. It is, without doubt, in a great 

 measure to the influence and arguments of Stokes that we owe the 

 marked movement in the Dublin School towards an identical training 

 for the physician and the surgeon. 



Dr. Stokes foresaw and predicted the increasing degree in which 

 the medical profession would be brought by the demands of modern 

 civilization into relation with the Government of the country. In 

 particular, as he points out, the growing sense of the importance of sani- 

 tary measures, and the gradual development of the central and local 

 organizations for the improvement of the public health, must tend in that 

 direction. It was mainly due to his influence that the University of 

 Dublia established, in 1871, the Certificate of Qualification in State 

 Medicine for such Medical Graduates as have made a special study of 

 the extensive group of subjects included under the name of Preventive 

 Medicine. His views as to the necessity of joint action of the State and 

 the Profession were, in some degree, carried into effect by the creation 



