180 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION' I. 
micro-organisms, their isolation, cultivation, and life history, and the 
determination of their exits and extrances. To science we owe the 
proof that infectious disease represents simply the fight between 
the organism and the germ, that infection and spread depend mainly 
upon constitutional vulnerability, that some ages and persons possess 
more or less immunity, that abrasions of mucous membranes and 
variations in the local germ flora rnay be necessary to permit 
of successful attack, and that bound up in the products of germ 
life are the anti-toxines which destroy their virulence. And to 
science also we are indebted for the preparation of some at least 
of these anti-toxines and the attainment of some measure at least 
of artificial immunity. By antiseptics and aseptics, also, science helps 
us to prevent germ invasion, by disinfection to limit germ exit, 
by general sanitary measures to destroy external breeding-grounds, 
and by adding force to the organism to confer immunity. Herein, 
then, lies one of the greatest possibilities of the art of preventative 
medicine, and one of the most sustained and promising efforts of 
science at the present day. But for the perfect success which is to 
usher in the sanitary millennium when there shall be no more infectious 
disease, see what is necessary ! We must have dealt satisfactorily 
with all the disease germs already outside our body, and we must be 
able to render entrance and exit of fresh germs an impossibility, or, what 
will come to the same thing, confer racial immunity. There is no present 
possibility of any of these herculean tasks being performed. 
But you will naturally be asking, Is there to bo no writing of 
prescriptions, no place for drugs in the future treatment of disease? 
Unfortunately, yes. There will still be disease due to inheritance, to 
ignorance, and to disobedience, and the scientific physician will still 
have to call into his aid all the means in his power in order to make 
the pendulum swing once more in the direction of health. And 
though his mam influence will be educational and preventative, he will 
still avail himself of drugs, not with the idea of replacing obedience to 
natural health laws, but with the hope and aim of assisting nature. 
But 1 herapeusis, of necessity, must ever remain the most backward 
and difficult of the medical sciences. Yet there are many indications 
that its advance is in no way unworthy of the progress of its sister 
branches. Possibly vegetable and mineral have already yielded most 
that is best in them, but in serum therapeutics and organ 
therapeutics we see that we have still much to learn from the secrets 
of animal life ; whilst man’s synthetical skill has already produced in 
the laboratory remedies which have been found at the bedside to have 
something more than the promise of specific action upon specific 
organs and functions. And when the great branch of treatment by 
suggestion shall have been rescued from the quack and charlatan, and 
placed upon a scientific footing, the physician of the future will have 
no reason to confess inferiority in methods or results to other experts 
in other branches of knowledge. 
Let me touch briefly on certain health questions of general 
importance, and 1 have done. No outlook upon health would be 
other than seriously incomplete if it did not include some reference 
to the drink problem, the sexual question, crime, and insanity. 
The drink problem is ever with us. Is there any word from 
science upon it ? In my opinion the answer is that, like opium and 
