182 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION I. 
impossible were there no consensus of scientific opinion as to the 
direction in which it should proceed. But what is to be said when the 
medical profession has taken up this challenge of the law authorities, 
and come to an authoritative agreement upon the point? Surely 
that continued adherence to a fallacious test, with the injustice and 
cruelty that must attend it, is the fault of legal not of medical 
science. 
Here I must conclude my imperfect sketch. Of its imperfec- 
tions I am only too conscious ; still I am hopeful that even it may 
stimulate thought and further inquiry, and thus lead to some practical 
good. For the result of following the guidance of science in matters 
of health must be increasingly beneficial. jMo doubt the factors of 
ill-health are so much with us that none of us can hope to see 
established upon earth the city of Hygeia. peopled with citizens in 
perfect health ; yet the sanitary millennium lies before us, not behind, 
and all succeeding years will witness a continuous, if gradual, decrease 
in the amount and degree of disease. But even after the long years 
of physiological plenty have followed the centuries of inherited defect, 
ignorance, and disobedience — even when there is growth that is perfect 
and life that is wfithout a flaw — there will still remain a decay that is 
harmonious, and the dissolution that ends life’s partnership. And the 
members of the new firm? Who can tell? Certainly not the 
scientist, though he can formulate a rational basis for belief, and 
within such belief include a future that has no bounds to its possi- 
bilities. 
Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame — 
This glorious canopy of light and blue? 
Yet ! ’neath a curtain of translucent dew, 
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus, with the host of Heaven, came, 
And lo ! Creation widened in man’s view. 
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, 
Whilst flower, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, 
That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind ? 
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife ? 
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? 
