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Recent advances in science, and their bearing on medicine and surgery
Recent advances in science and their bearing on medicine and surgery Author:Michael Foster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE, AND THEIR BEARING ON MEDICINE AND SURGERY.1 By Prof. Michael Foster, Secretary of the Royal Society. When fifty-four years ... more »ago the school of Charing Cross Hospital gathered itself together for its winter work, among the newcomers was a pale-faced, dark-haired, bright-eyed lad, whose ways aud works soon told his fellows that he was of no common mold. To-day I am about to attempt the fulfillment of the duty, which the authorities of the school have done me the honor to lay upon me, of delivering the first of the series of lectures which the school has wisely instituted to keep alive, in the minds of those to come, the great services which that lad's strenuous and brilliant life rendered to the healing art. The trust of the Huxley Lectureship provides that the lecturer shall dwell on "recent advances in science, and their bearing on medicine aud surgery." I venture to hope that I shall be considered as not really departing from the purpose of the trust if I attempt to make this first lecture a sort of preface to the volume, or rather the volumes, of lectures to come; and since a preface bears a different paging, and is written in a different fashion, from that which it prefaces, I shall be so bold as, with your permission, to make the character of my lecture to-day different from what I suppose will be that of the lectures of my successors. It will, I imagine, be their duty to single out on each occasion some new important advance in science, and show in detail its bearings on the art of medicine. Each succeeding lecturer will, in turn, be limited in the choice of his subject, and so assisted in his task by the choice of his predecessors. I to-day have no such aid. It seems fitting that, for the purposes of this initial lecture, the word "recent"...« less