August 20,1S70.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
151 
there was hut one remedy—a single gate by which all 
should enter the profession; a single but searching ex¬ 
amination for the licence to practise.” 
For attaining this, he insisted upon the necessity for the 
great mass of practitioners being directly represented in 
the Medical Council and he regarded the recent action 
of the Government as acknowledging the existence—out¬ 
side the Medical Council—of an interest and a power 
that it was the business of the Association to augment 
and consolidate. 
Passing from the question of educational reform, Dr. 
Charlton went on to say that, when that shall have 
been settled, the Association would still have before it 
the wider field of sanitary reform, the prevention of zy¬ 
motic disease, the cleansing of our cities and the purifi¬ 
cation of our rivers. In these matters some of our 
most time-honoured institutions are pre-eminently de¬ 
fective. With all our liberality of thought, and our 
boasted tendency to progress, it must be confessed 
that we in England are, in many respects, wonder¬ 
fully conservative. We hold pertinaciously to an in¬ 
stitution simply because it is an ancient form of pro¬ 
cedure peculiar to our own country. We often cannot 
bring ourselves to acknowledge that what was advan¬ 
tageous in older and ruder times is quite unsuitable to 
the present state of society. 
We have, however, the subject of hospital improve¬ 
ment, so ably advocated at the Leeds Meeting by Captain 
Douglas Galton. We have, too, the coming struggle as 
to the extension or the repeal of the Contagious Diseases 
Acts, where a band of strong-minded women and weak- 
minded men are striving to reverse the verdicts of the 
wisest and the best of the medical and legal profession. 
There will be no lack of objects for the energies of the 
rising generation and when, in after years, they shall 
peruse the records of what was done at this Newcastle 
meeting, they will, we trust, return a kindly verdict that 
we did our best, according to the lights we were then 
permitted to enjoy. 
After the usual vote of thanks, the Secretary read the 
Report of Council, showing that there were now 4258 
members on the books. The subsequent proceedings 
were tedious and somewhat disorderly. 
On Wednesday, after the members of the Association 
had breakfasted with the Sheriff of Newcastle, the second 
general meeting was held and Mr. Whipple, of Ply¬ 
mouth, was elected President for the ensuing year. The 
address in medicine was then delivered by— 
Dr. Sibson, who characterized the present age as be¬ 
ing marked by experiment and exact inquiry, directness 
of aim and skilled power to do the work required, with 
completeness and economy. The labour of the past was 
surpassed, but not superseded; w r hile nothing that had 
been done was lost, invention would still awaken inven¬ 
tion, discovery would follow discovery. Each advance 
was a fresh starting-point for the future labourer. It 
was, indeed, everywhere taken for granted that, good as 
this or that work might be, better work—more simple 
and more to the purpose—still remained before them. 
The ship, the bridge, the rail, the telegraph and the 
gun of the present day, as compared with the past, were 
types and marks of the advance in the skill, precision 
and energy of the time. Medicine, too, partook of the 
movement that was going on around them. The know¬ 
ledge of disease was becoming at the same time more 
accurate and more large. Each year gave them a better 
knowledge what medicines could do, what they could 
not do. If the spirit of scepticism had shaken the belief 
of a few in the medicinal means at their command, that 
spirit had aroused inquiry and cemented belief which 
was rapidly shifting into knowledge that would be 
secure. Those great old forms of medicine—the tinc¬ 
ture of the muriate of iron, the sulphate of quinine, 
opium, the iodide of potassium, the infusion of digitalis, an 
occasional shot, but not a battery or running fire, of calo¬ 
mel—all those things, in fact, that had served their fathers 
well, would serve the present generation better. They 
knew what these could do when they were wanted, a j 
well as when they were not wanted, so thht, with gathered 
power, they applied them at the proper moment. Then 
science reached forth its arms, adding recently-discovered 
remedies to those of the day just gone by, chloroform, 
bromide of potassium and the still more newly-discovered 
hydrate of chloral. So knowledge of disease ripened, 
until the aim in its treatment became more precise and 
vigorous. Men asked themselves at each step they took, 
why they did this or that. Reason had taken the place 
of routine, while rational medicine had become at last the 
common property of the profession. Side by side with 
the use of medicine, not second to it, was the so-called hy- 
gienicjtreatment of disease, the study and regulation of the 
vital forces. The influence that every physician exer¬ 
cised upon the mind and, through the mind, upon the 
body ; the soothing or stimulating of the nervous power; 
the calming of exaltation or the stirring up of apathy ; 
the quieting of the over-busy brain or the spurring of 
the flaccid will; the repose of over-used powers or the 
awaking of suspended vital functions ; the subduing of 
the over-sensitive skin or the stimulating of it when wan, 
muddy and lifeless; the limiting of supplies to an over¬ 
fed frame, or the repair of the body wasting with disease, 
by the proper kinds of food and stimulants ; the bring¬ 
ing into play and, as it were, into fresh existence, muscle 
that had become wasted and paralysed by disease,—these 
-were all among the aims that the physician sought to ac¬ 
complish. These were among the means that he sought 
to employ irrespective of, but by no means without the 
use of medicine. These were the agencies that they all 
held in their power; that each of them exercised daily in 
coping with the various forms of malady, ailment, and 
constitution. There was a method of treatment, that of 
rest and ease, belonging to this great class, which he had 
himself been employing with deep interest in acute 
rheumatism and acute gout for some years. Therefore, 
it might be of interest if he narrated the results of his 
experience in that method of dealing with a disease that 
did so much to cripple the heart, limit the bodily powers 
and shorten life. During the last four years he had 
submitted all his patients in St. Mary’s Hospital—af¬ 
fected with acute rheumatism and acute gout—to a rigid 
system of absolute rest, protection from external injury, 
gentle pressure, equal warmth and the removal of pain 
chiefly by treatment from without. Those two diseases, 
often so apparently identical, differed, as they would 
know, in this, that, while rheumatism attacked those 
whose blood and tissues were previously healthy, being- 
produced by over-work and exposure, gout seized upon 
persons whose blood and tissues were already infected 
and contained uric acid in excess. In acute gout, there¬ 
fore, he always gave iodide of potassium and sometimes 
colchicum, in the hope of getting rid of the special 
poison; but in acute rhematism he gave no internal me¬ 
dicine during the actual stage of the disease, unless it 
was called for by some special reason. He gave his 
patients no coloured or flavoured liquid to make them 
think they were taking medicine when they were not 
doing so, because he did not think it quite right and did 
not find it needful to employ such a system of fiction. 
If they did so, they complicated their observations, de¬ 
prived themselves of the help that the patient could give 
them when he understood the aim of the method of 
treatment. Whatever might be the line of treatment 
adopted for disease, the influence of treatment on the 
disease itself was less than the physician was apt to 
think. The great majority of diseases tended to get 
well. They had, so to speak, a lifetime of their own, 
with its periods of growth, maturity and decline; they 
were the passing tenants of the body which they occu¬ 
pied, often with great injury, for a limited time. Treat¬ 
ment could not change their nature, could not expel 
them at once, could not quench them, could not mate¬ 
rially shorten or prolong their existence. But treatment 
