MINUTES

OF THE

THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, Held in New York City, June 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th, 1880.

THE Association met in the Hall of the Young Men's Christian Association, corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, at 11 A. M.

The President, Dr. LEWIS A. SAYRE, of New York; the VicePresidents, Dr. R. BEVERLY COLE, of California; Dr. EZRA M. HUNT, of New Jersey; Dr. H. O. MARCY, of Massachusetts; and Dr. F. PEYRE PORCHER, of South Carolina; the Permanent Secretary, Dr. WILLIAM B. ATKINSON, of Pennsylvania; the Assistant Secretary, Dr. WALTER R. GILLETTE, of New York; the Treasurer, Dr. RICHARD J. DUNGLISON, of Pennsylvania; and the Librarian, Dr. WM. LEE, of District of Columbia, occupied their respective positions.

The Ex-Presidents were requested to take seats on the platform. In response to which invitation, Dr. SAMUEL D. GROSS, of Pennsylvania; Dr. WM. O. BALDWIN, of Alabama; Dr. JOSEPH M. TONER, of District of Columbia; Dr. J. MARION SIMS, of New York; Dr. HENRY I. BOWDITCH, of Massachusetts; and Dr. T. G. RICHARDSON, of Louisiana, presented themselves and were most cordially received.

Prayer was offered by Rev. W. F. MORGAN, D.D., of New York. Dr. T. GAILLARD THOMAS, of New York, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, then welcomed the members of the Association to New York, as follows:

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Fellows of the American Medical Association:

The pleasing duty has fallen to my lot of bidding you welcome to New York, and of offering you the hospitality of our homes. Sixteen years have passed since your Association last honored us with a visit. Let us pause for a moment, and consider what those years have borne upon their wings!

The struggle which at that time convulsed our land, has given way to peace; the terrible mental sufferings, which ever mark fratricidal quarrels, have quieted down into restored affection; the devastating consequences of an exhausting titanic conflict have been replaced by prosperity; and unity, peace, and concord have made glad the blessed land which we proudly call our home! At the last meeting here, when all our horizon appeared so dark and foreboding, we welcomed you, Fellows of the Association, as our colleagues and our friends. Now that the happy issue has been reached-when the genial rays of the sun of national prosperity have made the whole landscape bright and effulgent-thrice warmly do we hail you as our brothers, inalienable, now and forever.

In this noble metropolis, whose doors are to-day thrown open to welcome you, you will see many wonderful changes, for sixteen years in the present day are equal to a cycle in the past. But in none of its advancing circles will you discover more evident signs of progress than in that department upon which your affections, your best wishes, and your highest ambitions are fixed.

As we whose homes are made amidst its busy walks show you, in the pleasant week which lies before us, its gorgeous edifices, its unsurpassed thoroughfares, and its magnificent works of art, we shall feel a sincere satisfaction in recognizing the fact that the pride excited by these falls into shadow and insignificance before that which is created by the demonstration to you that New York-the money-seeking, the utilitarian, and the superficial, as she is so often regarded--has learned to honor science, to appreciate its results, and to reward its struggles. It shall be our pleasure to exhibit to you, not the palaces in which her bankers conduct the finances of the world, nor those in which her merchant princes carry on a traffic which knows no limits but those of the inhabited earth. It shall be to show you how these men house and clothe and care for the poor, the sick, and the needy; to lead you until a pleasant fatigue overtakes you through miles of well-appointed hospital wards, whose hygienic appointments will put to the blush those of the stateliest palaces of European kings; to convince you, by incontestable evidence, how true, how loyal, and how sincere an appreciation of the science and art of medicine the representative city of America has acquired.

In the olden time men of wealth reared monuments to their memories by the erection of chapels and statues; of fountains,

of groves, and of public baths. It has become the custom of our own day to perpetuate their memories in the murmured gratitude of the sick, the thankful epithets of the poor and needy. The Holy Grail is no longer sought for in distant lands, but is found at the doorway through which we daily and hourly pass. And to our calling belongs the proud privilege of furnishing a background to the gorgeous colors of such a noble picture, for every charitable institution rests upon a tripod; one foot, the gold of the wealthy benefactor; the second, the noble Christian faith, the mother of hospitals and charities; and the third, the science of medicine, the representative upon earth of a good God, the dispenser of health. "Homines deos accedunt dando salutem hominibus."

Let us, then, rejoice together that the day has passed when the glory of this great city rests upon the successful accumulation of her money changers; upon gold and tinsel. She should to-day be known as the city of noble charities, the home of healthy and vigorous science.

We are living in an age, the intellectual life of which contrasts most strikingly with that of any which has existed in the past. The difference is certainly not due to the greater intellectual power of the present. The men who lived in the days of Plato and Socrates; of Cicero and Virgil; of Bacon and Newton, surely had all the brain-force which has been evolved by any who have left their impress upon the nineteenth century. We must look for the difference elsewhere. The characteristic feature, the formative factor of our time is the continual, complete, and perfect intermingling of thought.

In the olden time a grand idea has its birth in the brain of a great Grecian. He springs from his bath, and, mad with enthusiasm, rushes half naked through the streets, with the cry of Eureka, Eureka." But how is the world to obtain and appropriate this thought? A few thousand men collecting in groves and open spaces receive it from the mouth of a teacher; it is entombed in a musty manuscript, and there it dies; or, remaining alive, like seeds buried in the pyramid of Cheops, germinates ages afterwards.

A God-given thought, a grand conception, emanates from the mind of an obscure dentist in the nineteenth century. He has learned how to annihilate pain, and to render him unconscious whose living limbs are dissected by the surgeon's knife; and within half a year the uncouth physician who plods his way o'er the snow-bound steppes of Russia, or tends the convicts working in the mines of Siberia learns of the great discovery, and makes it subservient to his daily labors.

Imagine a pool of dark and stagnant waters, brightened everywhere by the rays of the sun, and here and there thrown into brisk and stirring eddies by the winds and other passing influences, and you have before you what may be likened to the

intellectual life of former times. The waters are deep and pure, and brilliant in their depths; the eddies which here and there occur are active and vigorous, and stirring in their circumscribed localities; but those of the centre and on the surface never mingle with those on the borders and in the depths; or mingle so slowly that the original impetus is lost, and its pith and moment turned awry."

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Imagine this same pool stirred from centre to circumference, so that the waters, rapidly radiating and circling, mingle in every part, no solitary drop being left in isolation and inaction, and you have the intellectual life of the nineteenth century.

And what, let us inquire, are the instrumentalities effecting this change, and which our forefathers did not possess? The printing-press, the railroad, and the telegraph! These, and these alone, are what have rendered our civilization superior to any which has preceded it. Annihilate these, rob our age of these vivifying influences, and the actively circulating waters of our intellectual pool would become as still and as sluggish as those of the past. Suppose our predecessors to have had these advantages, and who can doubt that with them they would have accomplished all that we have been enabled to perform?

And what glorious havoc have these influences made with the theories of the schools, the dogmas of the sects, and the dicta of the masters! A fact declared, or a position assumed, and thousands of wires flash, thousands of steamers plough the deep, and thousands of engines rush over their iron ways to lay it in judgment before a jury composed of the master minds of the civilized world! By this tribunal its right to existence is pronounced upon, and, thanks to its verdict, the humblest amongst us may to day, with perfect sincerity, declare himself, "nullius addictus in verba magistri jurare."

Another grand result which they have accomplished has been the general elevation of professional tone throughout the world. From this hall, tenanted as it is at this moment by the representative men of our profession in America, we may truthfully and joyfully declare to the young men about to enter it, that the shibboleth of success in medicine to-day is merit; honest, uncompromising, unalloyed merit! True it is that if by success is meant the acquisition of gold, the attainment of popular notoriety, the way of the transgressor is easy, and the methods of fraud are still potent; but to the true physician these things, obtained at the expense of professional honor, no more constitute success than hypocrisy and deceit constitute honesty! Time was, and not so long ago, when the powdered wig, the gold-headed cane, the portentous presence, and the sonorous voice, were passports to success and eminence in medicine. But those days are dead; killed by steam, electricity, and the printing-press. Pax eiseum! May their ashes never again take embodied form!

These being the main elements in the advancement of our times, as lesser ones have sprung from them a marked tendency to community of language, and the development of societies. devoted to the interests of every profession, guild, and calling. No avocation in the world has, under the fostering influences mentioned, more rapidly developed than medicine. Emerging from the confined boundaries of a simple art, it has limited itself only by those of a noble science.

And what, Fellows of the American Medical Association, is the end and object which brings us together to-day; which has collected in this little hall in the city of New York the hundreds who have traversed thousands of miles of territory, from the forest regions of Maine, from the flowery lands of the Gulf, from the beautiful slopes of the Pacific, from the prairies of Nebraska and Minnesota, from the border-lands of Mexico, and the shores of the noble St. Lawrence? Like the waters of a gigantic lake have you come, rushing with the rapidity of steam, from the borders and the depths, and the estuaries and the shoals, to one common centre, to emit and to absorb thoughts, and to give one to another friendly greeting, aud the handshake, and the kindly interchange of expression which passes only from eye to eye as you bid each other God speed in advancing the interests of that noble profession which most closely allies man to his Maker.

Our mission, then, is a noble one, for we are assembled together to take advantage of the surpassing opportunities of our century-to educate and, standing shoulder to shoulder, to encourage and sustain each other in the work which lies before us.

And now, a few words in a less genial strain. If these things be true, and no man will gainsay them, powerless fall the hand, and palsied be the tongue of him who, enrolled in the ranks of medicine, utters one derogatory word, or strikes one traitor blow at the life or usefulness of an institution whose function is so lofty and whose mission is so elevated. Is it inefficient or badly managed? Then let those who recognize this fact enter its widely open portals, and within its halls correct the existing evils. Has it become too much the field of medical politics? Then let the noble and the pure, the good and the brave in our ranks, come boldly forward, and with indignant heel crush the head of the creeping serpent; but let no man stay at home, deprecate evils, which, if they exist, the absence of himself and men like him have created, and fulminate anathemas against a noble institution which begs his aid to improve, to strengthen, and, if necessary, to reform.

The aspirations of man are full of vanity, but no vain thought is more excusable than that which gives to him the desire to live in the memory of those he leaves behind him after he himself has crossed the dark and silent river. In a few years from now every voice which to-day is heard in this hall will be