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Veuillez agréer, Monsieur et honoré confrère, avec mes meilleurs compli ments, l'assurance de ma considération la plus distinguée.

L. RANVIER,

Professeur d'Anatomie générale au College de France.

SOCIÉTÉ D'ANTHROPOLOGIE DE PARIS.

MONSIEUR ET CHER CONFRÈRE:

PAR 8, 23 juillet, 1879.

Je n'ai plus besoin d'insister auprès de vous sur la nécessité de l'adoption générale du système métrique en Médecine. Vous developpez mieux que personne l'intérêt qui se attache à cette question sous le double rapport de la science médicale, et de la santé publique, qui dépend de la sureté des prescriptions.

Mais il y a un point de vue que je tiens à vous présenter: c'est celui qui concerne l'anthropologie. Les métrologies locales sont encore usitées par les médecins dans plusieurs pays; mais il y n'y a plus maintenant dans le monde entier qu'un seul pays où les anthropologistes aient refusé d'adopter le système métrique c'est l'empire britannique. L'anthropologie positive repose pourtant avant tout sur la craniométrie et sur l'anthropometrie. Les anthropologistes anglais, en continuant à experimer leurs mesures en pouces et ou ou rz de pouce, et leurs pesées en livres et onces troy ou avoir-du-poids, se créent des difficultés arithmétiques, s'exposent à des confusions qui se produisent non seulement à l'étranger, mais quelquefois même entre eux, et se tiennent, par rapport au reste du monde, dans un état d'isolement très puisible au progrès de la science.

Veuiller agréer, Monsieur et cher confrère, l'expression de ma considération distinguée. Le secrétaire général, BROCA.

CHAMBRE DES DÉPUTÉS,
PARIS, 17. 7. 79.

MONSIEUR ET TRÈS HONORÉ CONFRÈRE: J'applaudis des deux mains à votre tentative d'unification en matière de poids et mesure dans le domaine médical. Nous avons obtenu en France de tels avan tages de l'emploi du système métrique que nous devons désirer vivement le voir mettre en usage à l'étranger. C'est du reste une chose déplorable que d'être obligé, en lisant les mémoires scientifiques des diverses nations, de traduire même les chiffres; c'est bien assez des mots!

Votre bien devoué confrère,

PAUL BERT,

Professeur de Physiologie à la faculté des sciences de Paris.

Je m'associe complètement aux conclusions de M. le Professeur Bert.

CHARCOT,

Professeur de maladies nerveuses à la Salpêtrière.

The following note was dictated and signed as a last effort when its venerable author was not expected to live:

MENIL-LE-ROI, PRÈS MAISON-LAFITTE, SEINE ET OISE,

CHER MONSIEUR SEGUIN :

19 juillet, 1879.

Je suis tout disposé à vous venir en aide, car votre idée d'aujourd'hui (l'uniformité internationale en médecine et en pharmacie, et préablement l'adoption partout du système métrique) est bonne, comme l'était celle d'autrefois (d'enseignement de la thermométrie humaine aux femmes, pour qu'elles puissent l'appliquer dans les familles, dans les écoles et dans la société) . . . . Mais l'age de 78 ans passés n'étant pas celui des convalescences faciles, je ne puis vous en dire davantage. Acceptez mez regrets. Je vous serre la main. E. LITTRÉ,

de l'Institut de France, etc.

These letters need no comment; their unanimity and simultaneity show a consensus worthy of reflection. The men who wrote them stand high, each one in his own walk of science; yet they pronounce an identical verdict: The metric system is the universal language of science; medicine must be ruled by its mathematism.

I do not want you to be influenced by names-myself the reverse of a worshipper of names-I beg you to consider this array of authorities (to which I could have added many more) as secondary to, but confirmatory of, the array of facts I have previously presented in their philosophical chronology. You have seen that the need of mathematical thoroughness was expressed early in this century by men of great sagacity and foresight-one of them yet a living witness among us: That the discovery of the unity of the forces, and of the uniformity in the means of calculating them, has passed from physics to experimental physiology, thence to practical medicine: That, in virtue of these discoveries, we are no more at liberty to practise the conjectural art which was the glory or the shame, the burden of our fathers: That if on one side it has become impossible to practise medicine without being able to resort to all sorts of analyses which have a mathematical basis-on the other side it would be worse than futile to make these analyses in the mathematical English cacometry; and safer to stop observing at once, sooner than accumulate an avalanche of irreducible figures which raises as it descends upon us: That the solution of the problem which your delegates had to investigate rested on the means of rendering easy the acceptance of the metric system and kindred conformities inter nations.

The President of the Metric Executive Committee will submit to you his views on these obligations; and from abroad, the Foreign Delegation begs leave to indicate the advantages which would result from establishing closer and more permanent intercourse with the medical organizations of Europe.

To that effect, we would suggest: 1. That the choice of the Annual Delegates be made, not only for their high character, but in view of their possibilities of working in the interest of this Association. 2. That our President be invited to qualify as Special Delegates the most noted American medical scholars studying at some important seat of learning, with the duty to report to this Association on the progress they witness, which could be engrafted on our schools and the profession at large; and so rendered as fast as possible international.

EDOUARD SEGUIN.

REPORT OF LAURENCE TURNBULL, M.D., OF PENNSYLVANIA, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN DELEGATION TO THE FOREIGN SOCIETIES.

TO THE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS

OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

ACCORDING to the instructions conveyed in the circular letter received from your body, we presented ourselves at the ancient city of Cork, August 4th, 1879, and were received with great courtesy by the President and members of the British Medical Association. The various members of the medical profession, with the Mayor, ex-Mayor and citizens of Cork, did everything in their power to make the 47th annual meeting of the British Medical Association a perfect success. The American Delegation owe especial thanks to the President, local Secretaries, and particularly to the Honorary local Secretary, Professor II. Macnaughton Jones, for his warm and generous hospitalities, his untiring zeal, and successful efforts in adding to the comfort and general harmony of the meeting.

The following is a list of the delegates from the American Medical Association: Drs. Lewis A. Sayre, E. Seguin, Beard, and Gray, of New York; Dr. Hodgen, of St. Louis; Drs. L. Palmer and Yandell, of Louisville; Dr. Byford, of Chicago; Dr. Robert Battey, of Georgia; and Drs. Da Costa and Turnbull, of Philadelphia.

First General Meeting of Members, Tuesday, August 5, 1879.— The President, Dr. Falconer, of Bath, occupied the chair. After the reading of the minutes by the general Secretary, the retiring President made a short address on the more salient occurrences in the Association during the year, and stated, in conclusion, that the total number of members was 7800. At the close of the President's address, Dr. Sullivan, President of Queen's College, introduced the President-elect, Dr. Dennis O'Connor, who took the chair, and delivered his address as

follows: "When several thousand men, many of them the most distinguished and honored in their profession for genius and learning, are banded together for one common object, we will readily assume that object to be large, comprehensive, and benevolent; and what purpose of greater magnitude can occupy the human mind, or stir the human heart, than the effort to lighten the burden of sickness or misery, and to defer the inevitable death in which we all have a common inheritance? In forwarding this work, we follow our instincts as men, obey our duty as physicians, and receive a divine sanction as Christians. It can then be well understood how so many, leaving their homes, cross the seas or ocean, and come here to unite in this common brotherhood of benevolence. I only hope the success of this meeting, by increasing our knowledge and diffusing throughout the entire medical community sound principles to guide our actions, may be the result of their sacrifices."

The President's address was the effort of a master-mind in the profession, and full of wise and judicious counsels, beginning with a brief reference to the city of Cork, with its numerous charitable and benevolent institutions, and to the social and moral condition of its inhabitants, and concluding as follows: "It is not a humiliating office for the physician to study the means by which nature accomplishes her ends, and, as far as his knowledge permits, to imitate her. I know the assertion of a vis medicatrix nature' is now nearly obsolete, and equally so the seeking of primary causes for vital phenomena. These oldfashioned ideas have been extinguished by modern philosophy, which asserts that all organizations and its operations are the result of blind chance, without a mind to fashion or guide them. The physician, with his opportunities for observation, must be blind, indeed, who does not see beyond this darkness a clear light, showing him that all nature has been conceived and formed in beauty and order, the result of Divine purpose directed by Divine benevolence."

Section of Medicine.-The first paper read was on “Mountain Air in the Treatment of Phthisis," by Dr. H. Bennett. His objection to mountain regions in winter in Europe for any invalids is, that from eighteen to twenty hours in the twenty-four must be spent in stove-heated rooms, and in bad weather the entire twenty-four. On the north shores of the Mediterranean, as on the plains of Central America, the phthisical patient may live in

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