RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE, AND THEIE BEARING 

 ON MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 1 



By Prof. Michael Foster, 



Secretary of the Royal Society. 



I. 



When fifty -four years ago the school of Charing Cross Ilospital 

 gathered itself together for its winter work, among the newcomers 

 was a pale-faced, dark-haired, bright-eyed lad, whose ways and works 

 soon told his fellows that he was of no common mold. To-day I am 

 about to attempt the fulfillment of the duty, which the authorities of 

 the school have done me the honor to lay upon me, of delivering the 

 first of the series of lectures which the school has wisely instituted to 

 keep alive, in the minds of those to come, the great services which that 

 lad's strenuous and brilliant life rendered to the healing art. The 

 trust of the Huxley Lectureship provides that the lecturer shall dwell 

 on "recent advances in science, and their bearing on medicine and sur- 

 gery." I venture to hope that I shall be considered as not really depart- 

 ing from the purpose of the trust if I attempt to make this first lecture 

 a sort of preface to the volume, or rather the volumes, of lectures to 

 come; and since a preface bears a different paging, and is written in 

 a different fashion, from that which it prefaces, I shall be so bold as, 

 with your permission, to make the character of my lecture to-day dif- 

 ferent from what I suppose will be that of the lectures of my successors. 

 It will, I imagine, be their duty to single out on each occasion some 

 new important advance in science, and show in detail its bearings on 

 the art of medicine. Each succeeding lecturer will, in turn, be limited 

 in the choice of his subject, and so assisted in his task by the choice 

 of his predecessors. I to-day have no such aid. It seems fitting that, 

 for the purposes of this initial lecture, the word "recent" should be so 

 used as to go back as far as the days of Huxley's studentship. If it 

 be so used, I am brought to face advances in science affecting medicine 

 and surgery so numerous and so momentous that any adequate treat- 



'The Huxley Lecture. Delivered at Charing Cross Medical School, London, on 

 October 5, 1896", hy Prof. Michael Foster, Sec. R. S. Printed in Nature, Nos. 1407 and 

 1408, vol. 54, 1896. 



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