Report of Committee on State Board of Health, President's address-Mutual Relations of the Public and the Regular Profession, R. Hubbard, M.D., Bridgeport, Report of Committee on Matters of Professional Interest in the Report on Vital Statistics, C. W. Chamberlain, M.D., Hartford, REPORTS FROM COUNTY SOCIETIES. Hartford Co., L. S. Wilcox, M.D., Reporter, Atrophy of the heart, L. S. Wilcox, M.D., Hartford, PAGE. 3 7 40 Traumatic amaurosis, W. T. Bacon, M.D., Hartford, Urethral hemorrhage, E. P. Swasey, M.D., New Britain, Compound depressed fracture of skull, loss of brain substance, B. II. Harrison, Fairfield Co., W. A. Lockwood, M.D., Norwalk, Reporter, N. E. Wordin, M.D., Bridgeport, H. Powers, M.D., Westport, Hemiplegia alternans, W. C. Burke, jr., South Norwalk, Treatment of empyema by aspiration, Jas. E. Barbour, M.D., Norwalk, Windham Co., L. Holbrook, M.D., Reporter, Hypertrophy of brain, T. M. Hills, M.D., Willimantic, Use of ergot, C. J. Fox, M.D., Willimantic, Litchfield Co., L. H. Wood, M.D., Reporter, PAGE. 125 132 137 139 139 146 156 161 163 164 168 170 Tolland Co., W. L. Kelsey, M.D., Reporter, ESSAYS. Puerperal convulsions, L. S. Paddock, M.D., Norwich, 171 Therapeutics of throat and ear diseases, S. H. Chapman, M.D., 181 Uterine contractions as a hæmostatic, E. P. Swasey, M.D., New Britain, 190 OBITUARIES. William Scott, M.D, Hartford County, B. D. McGuire, M.D., Middlesex County, The Connecticut Medical Society does not hold itself responsible for the opinions contained in any article, unless such opinions are indorsed by a special vote. The next Annual Convention will be held in Hartford, the 4th Wednesday in May, 1879, and remain in session during Thursday. PROCEEDINGS CONNECTICUT MEDICAL SOCIETY-EIGHTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. The President and Fellows of the Connecticut Medical Society met in the Common Council Chamber, City Hall, New Haven, May 22, 1878, at 3 P. M. The President addressed the Fellows as follows: Gentlemen and Fellows of the Connecticut Medical Society: Although I did not know, until I received, a few days ago, from the Secretary, the programme of exercises, that I was expected to address both the meeting of the Fellows and the Annual Convention of the Society; still, I should deem myself ungrateful did I not thank you for the highest honor in your power to bestow, notwithstanding it imposes upon me duties and obligations which I declare, in no spirit of affected modesty, I feel imperfectly qualified to perform. I congratulate the Society upon the privilege of again meeting in this delightful seat of learning, where it has so often before assembled, and where it may properly be said to have originated. It is a good New England custom that assembles the family on the occasion of the Annual Thanksgiving under the parental roof, and one which the Connecticut Medical Society has, in a measure, very properly imitated. The able and exhaustive address of Dr. E. K. Hunt on the Relations of this Society to the Benevolent Institutions of the State, and the admirable history of its formation and progress by Prof. Bronson, as well as numerous incidental allusions to these topics by various members in their addresses and dissertations, make superfluous by me more than a brief retrospection. Another year, added to the more than threescore years and ten, finds our venerable society more vigorous than ever, and furnishing with its fruits the evidence of substantial progress. Institutions for the benefit of suffering humanity already in existence have been sustained and fostered, and others, with similar beneficent aims, have been established upon a reliable foundation principally, if not wholly, through its agency. The State Medical Society has ever been the friend and promoter of education, and among the earliest and most important of its duties was that of examining candidates for the practice of medicine and surgery, by a board annually appointed from its members, and legally empowered to issue licenses to practice to such as they deemed properly qualified. It also, thus early in its history, established a standard of qualifications, making, on the part of the candidate, the attainment of his majority, the evidence of a good moral character, and certificate of three years' study with some reputable physician or surgeon, save in the case of college graduates (when two years were accepted), as pre-requisites to examination. This method of qualifying students for practice was in vogue until the establishment of the Medical Institution of Yale College (by Act of the Legislature in 1810), when it gave place to the present admirably constituted board of examiners, with its systems of checks and balances, preventive of any hasty or improper exercise of its functions. These efforts to substitute well-educated, conscientious practitioners for selfish and ignorant pretenders to medical knowledge, and thus stand between the public and fraud, have been but poorly rewarded by the laity, who have attributed them to a spirit of sectarian bigotry and selfishness. The effect of this popular estimate of our motives and aims has resulted in the repeal of the clause in the charter of the State Society which denied to unqualified practitioners the right to collect their dues by process of law, thus removing the only barrier the State has ever erected to protect its citizens from the baneful influences of quackery. An attempt to estimate the beneficial influence upon the progress of the healing art generally, which has been exerted by the great number of eminent practitioners who have gone forth from our ranks, and penetrated to the very confines of our vast territory, offers an inviting and appropriate topic for consideration, but the narrow limits which I have thought proper to assign to this paper forbid even an attempt at its development, and I therefore merely allude to it on account of its suggestiveness. The present position of the regular medical profession, not only in this ancient commonwealth, but also throughout the country and the civilized world, is to my mind unique. To-day legitimate medicine may be said, for the first time, to be without an important rival, and we are, seemingly, on the very threshold of an era which will impose upon us the unequalled responsibilities of the entire field of medical practice. The rapid succession of discoveries in the various and numerous sciences which relate, directly or indirectly, to the practice of our art, have, in fact, destroyed the foundations of all opposing systems of general practice, and it only remains for us to await the slow process of a popular comprehending of the fact that what seems to be opposition is practically a distinction without a difference, to be inducted into an almost endless field of responsibility. While we may well shrink from occupying a theater of labor thus indefinitely expanded, yet the duty is, nevertheless, imperative, and cannot be shunned. Long since has the rapid march of true medical science imposed upon our profession the necessity for such broad culture, as well as high special attainments in spheres of general practice, as to discourage the most zealous and persevering students, and necessitate the distribution of its practical duties into a large number of specialties; thereby affording greatly increased advantages for a more thorough mastery of particular branches, as well as conducing, also, to still more rapid general progress. It requires no more prophetic vision than the imagination, aided by the light of the immediate past with its thick crowding discoveries, to discern a field of labor which, probably, not my more venerable brethren nor I may behold, but into which our juniors possibly may be required to enter. If so, preliminary to assuming such momentous responsibilities, they may well, in a becoming spirit of humility, put their shoes from off their feet, for the place whereon they tread is holy ground. If this brief and imperfect review of the already burdensome and increasing duties of our professional life is correct, then, ever mindful of its brevity, we should be incited to renewed and, if possible, greater efforts than hitherto, to promote the efficiency of all the various organizations having for their object the perfection of the healing art, and the diffusion among the people of such knowledge as will tend to educate them up to the ability to dis |