INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 33 



of "health" in the abstract, has of late years come to take larger pro- 

 portions in the eyes of men than ot old. Formerly the consideration 

 of it, and the provision for it, were left very much to the physician, 

 that is to say as much of th*e question as was thought worthy of atten- 

 tion ; as it was the duty of the physician to get men back from sick- 

 ness to health, so in each particular case, it was his function to re- 

 commend measures tending to prevent a relapse from health into 

 sickness. To this extent, no doubt the expectation was justified up 

 to the measure of the opportunity and ability of the physician, but 

 there was not much consideration given either by the medical pro- 

 fession or by the laity to the general subject of the prevention of 

 disease. There is no profession, except perhaps the clerical, in some 

 of its branches, which has earned a character for self sacrifice so 

 fairly and fully as has the medical profession. But it is hard to see 

 our duty, or to look for it, where our interest does not lie, and phys- 

 icians, in common with other men, had become so accustomed to 

 the sight of sickness, that they regarded it as a necessary evil, one 

 " to which flesh was heir." It would seem that the idea of disease 

 prevention took its strongest and clearest, though not its earliest hold 

 on the minds of men who were not physicians. Some of the most 

 ardent and successful workers in the field of preventive medicine 

 have not been members of the medical profession — Hygiene, although 

 it has not by any means gone out ot the hands of the physician, is not 

 left to him exclusively, and all may deal with it without exciting on his 

 part any professional jealousy. Nay, we may be sure that there are in 

 this Association, those, not of its medical members, who are as able as 

 any to point out to us the claims upon our attention of preventive 

 medicine ; and no doubt the time shall come when general knowledge 

 on the subject of the preservation of health shall so increase, that 

 under the attention given to the details of private living on the one 

 hand, and the duty of public co-operation for health purposes on the 

 other, the sickness and mortality from which society now suffers, 

 will be in greatly lessened proportion. In the meantime the amount 

 of preventible disease is very great, yearly desolating families, pro- 

 ducing suffering the most severe, and often the most loathsome, and 

 running a course to a fatal issue, regardless of the anxious solicitude 

 of friends, and unchecked by the best skill of the physician. It is 

 worth our time, therefore, to take occasion to inquire what, on the 



