Dr. STETLER offered the following amendments, which were laid over for one year :

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Amend Art. I., Sec. 1, of the By-Laws, by striking out the words, "open the annual session with," in the 3d line, and insert the word deliver, and after the word "and," in the same line, insert annual. Amend Art. IV., Sec. 3, of the Constitution, by adding the words ex-officio delegates, after the word "delegates," in the first line.

On motion of Dr. STETLER the Standing Committee was continued.

The President made the following appointments for 1877:To make the Address in Medicine, Dr. W. B, ULRICH, of Delaware County.

The Address in Obstetrics, Dr. S. B. KIEFFER, of Cumberland County.

The Address in Surgery, Dr. H. LENOX HODGE, of Philadelphia County.

The Address in Hygiene, Dr. BENJAMIN LEE, of Philadelphia County.

The Address in Mental Disorders, Dr. JoHN CURWEN, of Dauphin County.

On motion of Dr. W. L. ATLEE, thanks were tendered to the President and all the officers for their efficient services.

On motion of Dr. STETLER, thanks were tendered to Drs. W. L. ATLEE and R. J. LEVIS, for the handsome receptions given by them. On motion of Dr. S. M. Ross, of Blair, thanks were returned to the profession of Philadelphia for the kind manner in which they had received the brethren from abroad.

On motion of Dr. J. G. STETLER, thanks were returned to the trustees of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church for the use of the church building for the session.

Drs. W. L. ATLEE and G. D. BRUCE then conducted the Presidentelect to the chair.

Dr. R. B. MOWRY, President-elect, then addressed the Society, as follows:

Gentlemen of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania :— The first thought which presses itself for utterance is to thank you for the distinguished honor you have been pleased to confer

upon me.

It is true that it is intended more as a tribute to the part of the State to which I belong, yet it is no less esteemed as a high dis

tinction.

This honor, too, is enhanced by the time and place; the Centennial of our national history; surrounded, as we are, in this great city of Philadelphia, with such evidences of our country's great

ness; evidences of such wondrous progress in all the departments of human knowledge, and in none are the evidences more patent than of the progress made in medical science during these hundred years.

The epoch of a century ago was marked by two events which took place in this city, the results of which have been of the greatest importance to the people of this country. At that time all over the eastern portion of the continent, the patriotic atmosphere was highly oxygenated, and here, in the city of Philadelphia, it became intensely so; the old thirteen colonies, coming under the influence of this burning zeal, were oxidized, a new and beautiful compound was formed, the officinal name of which is the United States of America.

The other event, which has been already so well spoken of from this platform, is, that scientific medical teaching on this continent first took shape and was brought into living active existence here in the city of Philadelphia; when, a little more than a hundred years ago, Shippen and Bond and Kuhn and Redman and Rush formed a medical school, and nursed it into strength and vigor. From this small beginning the great medical schools of our country have originated, and the medical schools of the city of Philadelphia have continually been scattering blessings and benefits on the people of this vast country.

As citizens of Pennsylvania we are proud of Philadelphia, this great commercial metropolis. Philadelphia ever has been, and is the medical emporium of this country. It is then no small honor to preside over the deliberations of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania.

On motion, the Society then adjourned, to meet at Harrisburg, on the second Wednesday in June, 1877.

ADDRESS

OF

CRAWFORD IRWIN, M.D., PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA:

CITIZENSHIP, under a good government, well administered, has always been regarded as a boon greatly to be prized. Examples are not wanting, either in sacred or profane history, where the protection of citizenship has prevented insult and warded off threatened injustice and outrage. The great Apostle to the Gentiles, before the Roman Court, found it necessary to take refuge behind this agis, when he demanded of that court whether such an outrage had ever been known as to scourge a Roman citizen, being uncondemned. The assertion of citizenship in Imperial Rome was an adequate protection from wrong, the world over, when that proud city was in her glory. Invasions of the rights of a citizen, he being part of the body politic, are regarded as insults to the sovereignty of a nation.

Happily we have, at the end of the first century of our national existence, attained a position where the claim I am an American citizen is a guarantee of safety and respect over all the civilized world.

A century ago the roll-call of the American States would have been answered by a blank silence. At that time our condition was colonial; colonies we were of the most powerful, most enlightened and free nation on the earth; but colonial was synonymous with dependent, and dependence exposed to exactions and impositions humiliating in their nature. From the operation of these impositions and exactions, our fathers determined to be relieved. Their firm resolve took shape and body in the instrument, which has, to this day, been treasured up among the lares or household gods in every American household, and the spirit of which is nursed and cherished

in every patriotic heart, known as the Declaration of American Independence.

The magnitude of the undertaking assumed in the formal renunciation of allegiance to "a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant," and the claim "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States," can scarcely be more clearly indicated than by recollecting the relative numerical strength of the two parties to be consulted: the one numerous and powerful in all the elements of strength, with a productive capacity, at that time, unequalled; the other sparsely settled and comparatively unprovided with the elements of martial power. Yet these were endowed with spirit and bravery and a love of liberty which were invincible. The spirit of the actors in these scenes may be gathered from the utterances of the patriots in the discussions preceding the adoption and signing of the instrument. When, in the discussions in this city in the year made memorable by the passage of this very paper, one of the speakers announced, "our chains are forged, their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston;" and followed by the noble announcement, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death," such was the thrill of sympathy, that speedily, lives, fortunes, and sacred honor were pledged to each other.

Just what might have been the status in the family of nations of this country at this period of its history, had the colonial condition. been continued, may be a subject of the wildest conjecture, but in our present independent condition, it may be affirmed with confidence that here has been demonstrated, by a practical solution, that a larger measure of political liberty, and a larger measure of social prosperity and domestic happiness, may be enjoyed under the representative republican system, than under any known form of government, and that this form of government is susceptible of application to territories far more extended than any to which it had ever been applied. Within the century just closed, this feeble and unprovided population has attained a position of peaceful prosperity and happiness at home, and is enjoying a large measure of respect abroad. The little rivulet has swollen into the surging river, freighted with the interests of humanity on this western continent.

As indicating the progress of our country, a few comparative facts may not be inappropriate. Less than a century ago, the first effort was made to have an enumeration of our population. That census shows the population in 1790 to have been about 3,000,000.

Since that time these 3,000,000 have swollen to upwards of 40,000,000.

As suggestive of social feelings and business necessities and facilities, the postal service, then supplied by seventy post-offices, and our mail transportation by 18,000 miles, has reached the number, probably, of over 50,000 post-offices, and the distance of 18,000 miles would scarcely measure our trans-continental railroads. The population of that day, and for years succeeding, was confined to a comparatively narrow belt along the Atlantic coast; since then the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains have been scaled, and the number of our States has been trebled. The territory of the United States, at that time large in comparison with the States and nations of the Eastern continent, has by acquisitions of territory become almost continental.

This country, thus richly endowed, with a genial soil and a comparatively mild climate, has thus increased partly on account of its natural advantages, but very largely on account of the social and political advantages secured by our constitution and the structure of our government. The increase of our population is far from being due to the natural increase of the residents of the country. Immigrants from other lands have flocked to ours, nearly all the civilized nations of the earth have contributed their quota to swell the grand aggregate,-in the language of the old song

"The fame of its fruits [of this liberty tree] drew the nations around, To seek out its plentiful shore.”

Somebody has paradoxically, but wittily, described the different characteristics of the nationalities which have supplied the chief elements out of which our own nation has been composed, as follows: "An Englishman is only happy when he is miserable, a Frenchman is never at rest except when he is in motion, and an Irishman is only at peace when he is at war;" and, as characterizing the resultant of the mingling and incorporation of these discordant ingredients, I beg to suggest, as most appropriate, this, of our own people, that an American is only at home when he is abroad.

Perhaps by no single characteristic is the average American more widely separated from the Old World's inhabitants, than by the almost utter absence of that feeling known as inhabitativeness, that feeling which in the Frenchman excites a long-drawn sigh for the blue sky and clear air of his native France, and inspires in the subject of Queen Victoria almost contempt for anything which is not English, and glows in the exile of Erin as a lively affection for the land of his birth, and which has so frequently prostrated with