We have examined the accounts of the Treasurer, and compared them with his vouchers, finding all correct, leaving a balance of $819 01, due the Association, at the close of the fiscal year, April 15, 1857. H. F. ASKEW, FRANCIS G. SMITH, JR., ADDRESS OF ZINA PITCHER, PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. ASSEMBLED as we are here, under the auspices of the medical profession in Tennessee; meeting in presence of the citizens of this beautiful city, honored by representatives from that better part of our creation, who, like the Amarant of Milton, throw their shadows and shed their fragrance o'er the waters of the fount of life; coming as we have in considerable numbers from distant portions of the United States, abandoning for the time being our private engagements, and encountering on our way hither the hazards incident to velocity in locomotion, as if only to enjoy the social amenities and the pleasures of professional reunion, these two questions naturally arise in the minds of those who are merely witnesses of the spectacle presented by our assemblage: "For what purpose is this convocation of physicians? What is there in the nature of their particular pursuit which prompts them thus to relinquish its rewards, to forego the endearments of home, when there is no visible manifestation on their part of a design to promote those objects which centre in self-interest, to advance the purposes of sectarian ambition or political partisanship?" In the fulfilment of a duty incident to the position which I have had the honor to hold for the past year, a year full of pleasant recollections to myself, I shall, whilst designing in brevity to follow the example of my honored predecessors, attempt an explanation of the phenomenon we may be supposed to present to the mind of an intelligent, but uninitiated observer. Before entering upon the task I have assigned to myself, I beg you to indulge me one moment, in repeating to the Association my assurances of gratitude for the distinction I have received at its hands, and for the personal manifestations of confidence and the acts of courtesy I have received from many of the individual members, the recollections of which will linger in my memory, and lessen the consciousness of my weight of years, on the remainder of my journey down the declivity of life. The objects for which the Association was formed will ever enlist my warmest sympathies and command my active co-operation. I congratulate you on the happy circumstances by which this anniversary meeting is attended, on the evidences of vigor and the promises of longevity which this Association derives from its annual migrations. God grant that its existence may be prolonged by these annual renewals of its vitality, so long as there are evils for it to reform or works of beneficence for it to accomplish. To do what I have proposed satisfactorily to myself, would involve the necessity of showing the relation which medicine has held to the civil authority, to the ecclesiastical power, and to the social condition of the people for all time antecedent to the date of this organization. This review would also lead us to consider the relation which free governments bear to letters, to science and the arts; a field too large for us to occupy on the present occasion. We shall endeavor, without attempting all this, to present to your view the condition of the profession at the time this organization sprang out of the antecedent chaos, the cause or causes of that condition; whether inherent and incurable, or whether arising from intrinsic circumstances which may be remedied, and whether this remedy is to be found in public authority, or sought for in associated professional influence. We remark first that a great and immutable law marks and governs all the works of creation. It is typified in the individual mindin our corporeal functions-in the movements of the race-and in the revolutions of the heavenly hosts-all are subject to this law of periodicity, and this alteration of condition manifests itself even in the domain of disease. We have seasons of activity and repose in the natural as in the moral world; periods of illumination and obscurity, of activity and of rest: in the one case, producing day and night, winter and summer; and in the other, those alternations of social condition which have been spoken of as the Athenian age, the age of darkness, literally a long and profound intellectual eclipse, to which has succeeded the active era of mental excitement and of material progress in which we live, by which we are moved, the sun of which appears not yet to have reached its point of culmination. |