Dr. Frank M. Ridley, of La Grange, made the following RESPONSE TO THE ADDRESSES OF WELCOME. Gentlemen: In behalf of the Medical Association of Georgia, I accept your most cordial greeting. Such words of welcome are worthy of yourselves and of your beautiful Central City, whose great heart is filled with hospitality just as sunshine fills the day; just as beauty, color and perfume fill the rose. We have met in your midst for the purpose of enhancing and advancing the grandest and most philanthropic of all the sciences. We have met for the perpetuation and unification of the strongest of fellowships. We have met in Macon because we admire it. We admire it for its thrift, its enterprise, its industrial and its educational institutions. We love it for its history. Macon has a history of its own which should be preserved in enduring form. Your antecedents projected and established the first chartered female college in the world, which had the right of conferring degrees upon women. This even anticipated the memorable address of Daniel Chandler at the University of Georgia, and antedated a discussion of woman's rights in the British House of Commons. [Applause.] From Wesleyan Female College abides with you still. its doors have gone forth and still go forth her daughters, who illumine the fairest pages of the history of this commonwealth. Mercer University, staid and tried, with a curriculum equal to any university of the land, continues to send forth her sons, who honor their alma mater, who honor themselves, their State, their nation. [Applause.] Here was born and reared the gifted Sidney Lanier, in my humble judgment, with the single exception, Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest poet of the American continent. Here, gentlemen, not in Baltimore-but here beneath your turquoise skies, kissed by the breezes, redolent always with the perfume of your perennial flowers, should be reared a fitting monument to him who wrote the mellifluous song of the Chattahoochee, who canonized in imperishable verse the marshes of Glynn. I should not forget the members of our own profession who have labored in your midst. Many of them sleep beneath the violet-covered sod of beautiful Rose Hill; others in other fields have brought distinction to themselves and honor to you. Is it any wonder, then, that all patriotic Georgians should be proud of Macon? In the name of the State Medical Association, I proclaim all hail, beautiful Macon! Macon, whose sons in pulpit, on platform, on rostrum, in field, have illustrated the highest type of southern manhood and southern chivalry and whose daughters, bless them all, are as beautiful as the Medici Venus and as pure as Diana, the silver-sceptred huntress of the skies. [Loud applause.] At the conclusion of Dr. Ridley's response, President Noble delivered his annual address. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Gentlemen of the Medical Association of Georgia : It is with feelings of deep pleasure and gratitude that I attempt to execute the customary functions of the high office with which you have honored me, and it is hoped that you will bear with patience and much charity my shortcomings in the discharge of the same. I am sure that our Association is to be congratulated that we are assembled again in Georgia's hospitable Central City, in such inspiring circumstances. The excellent program, unprecedented in extent, and this splendid attendance are the token and the pledge of continued work that shall promote the welfare of its membership, and that it shall go on performing its high objects of good to the profession and the public. If by recounting some of the reasons why we should feel an enduring pride in our calling, or by speaking some word of encouragement or suggestion, I may, in however small a measure, promote the welfare of our organization, I shall feel that I have not in a wholly unworthy manner performed the task of making the usual annual address. An endeavor to trace the beginning of the practice of medicine will lead the inquirer to the Olympian heights, and will give him mythological authority, at least, for asserting its divine origin. Perhaps the first allusion to the medical practitioner is to be found in the history of the Centaurs, creatures described as half man and half beast. Thus, we find Chiron described as having the head and body of a man joined to the nether portions of a horse, that noble animal for which the ancients possessed such great admiration and fondness. To Chiron were attributed many good traits and virtues. He was renowned as a hunter and famed as a musician, but most distinguished for the practice of medicine, and his teachings were such that some of his pupils became noted among the heroes of Grecian story. To the care of Chiron the infant Esculapius was confided, who, growing up to fulfil prophecy, made an immortal name as a physician, and of whom it is even related, that in one instance he restored the dead to life. When Esculapius performed this miracle, it is said that Pluto in resentment implored Jupiter to destroy him, which he did with a bolt of lightning, but, relenting, revived him and made him a god, placing him on a throne among the stars. Thus we see exemplified the fate which has so often befallen men of lofty achievements, wherein the honors due. to true greatness are recorded only after the actors have passed away from the scenes of their beneficent labors. Following the current annals of these early times, we find two sons of Esculapius surgeons on the fields of the Trojan war. One of them, on the advent of peace, is reputed to have practiced venesection upon the daughter of the king of Caria, and, so the romance goes, he received her hand in marriage as his recompense. Other descendants of Esculapius held sway as leading practitioners for five hundred years. Next follows the brilliant record of Hippocrates, the "father of medicine." It is known that he first operated for renal calculi by incision, resorted to percussion to demonstrate the presence of fluid in the thorax, practiced paracenticis thoracis, employed the trepan and used the obstetrical forceps. Glancing further down the pages of medical history, the following facts are noticeable among the more remarkable contributions to our science. Praxagoras, emboldened by the hope of averting otherwise inevitable death, braved the danger of penetrating the peritoneal cavity, and made an artificial anus in a case of obstruction of the bowel or ileus. Herophilus was the first to discern that anatomy is the groundwork of medical practice, and instituted dissection of human subjects for this science as early as 320 B. C. Xenophon gave impetus to a great advancement in surgery by the invention of the tourniquet for controlling the loss of blood from the extremities. But the greatest mechanical ingenuity was displayed by Ammonicus, who devised lithotripsy, using an instrument especially invented for the purpose. Prior to this time, calculi were removed from the bladder by a special class who made the median incision. Celsus wrote upon injuries of the head and noticed that there could be effusions and compressions of the brain without fracture of the skull, described the hare-lip operation, and recommended the application of ligatures to arteries. A. D. 130, Galen described luxation of the femur backwards, a displacement until that time unrecognized. Aetius, A. D. 475, removed hemorrhoidal tumors and wrote on the subject of hernia. Albucasis, 1100 A. D., ventured into the trying field of intestinal surgery, and was the first to suture wounds of the intestines. Thus, there seems to have been steady progress, until all advancement ceased with the general stagnation of the dark ages. But on the revival of learning and letters and the new awakening of civilization, we find the decade 14401450 distinguished by the discovery of printing, when the healing art took on new life, and with rapid strides developed all along the lines of true science. The wide-spread distribution of printed literature placed the study within the hands of such a large number of devotees, that for the next 300 years discoveries and contributions to medicine became so numerous that the mention of leading particulars, even, is far beyond the scope of this paper. In later years the labors of our own American predecessors have distinguished our land as the home of some of the most notable discoveries of all time. America gave to the world the father of abdominal surgery, the father of surgical pathology and the father of gynecology. Our country conferred upon mankind the blessings of anesthesia. In obstetrical surgery America leads her mother country many years. The Americans acknowledge no superiors in the practice of medicine, nor in materia medica, and there have been recently established laboratories for pathological and bacteriological investigations that are equal to similar institutions anywhere; and in these lines of research Europe must look to guarding her laurels. Among the more prominent discoveries by Americans may be found the following: The first enucleation of the parotid gland was by a Boston surgeon in 1798. Resection for anchylosis of the hip and knee-joint was first done by Barton, of Philadelphia, in 1836. Rogers, of New York, removed both superior maxillæ back as far as the pterygoid processes, in 1824. Ergot was wrested from the empirical midwifery of England and introduced into scientific medicine by Stearns, of New York, in 1814. Peaslee, in 1854, introduced drainage in laparotomy, an innovation that has saved many hundreds of lives. The principles of Esmarch's bandage were discovered by Gross, of Philadelphia, Esmarch merely substituting rubber for cotton bandages. In 1856, Isaac E. Taylor devised the simplest method for operating for recto-vaginal fistula. In 1867, Theophilus Parvin cured a uretero-vaginal fistula in a manner exhibiting superior skill and ability. An American performed the earliest operation of supra-vaginal hysterectomy for fibroids of the uterus (in 1853), while the first successful laparotomy for pelvic abscess was done in our land. M. B. Wright, of Cincinnati, perfected the combined method of version, which was subsequently and unjustly accredited to Braxton Hicks, of London. Storer, of Boston, performed ablation of the uterus after Cæsarean section eight years before Porro actually performed the operation that bears his name. Washington Atlee, in 1844, did laparohysterotomy for fibroids of the uterus. No section of our country has made more notable contributions to medicine than our own Southland, despite disparagements in want of hospital advantages. Boynham, of Virginia, deliberately and boldly did laparotomy for ectopic pregnancy in 1791, and again in 1799. John King, of South Carolina, performed the vaginal operation for the same condition in 1816. Kinloch, of South Carolina, was the first to practice laparotomy for gunshot |