Transactions - 1891 Author:Illinois State Medical Society 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: ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. J. P. MATTHEWS, M. D., CAKLINVILLE. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Illinois State Medical Society:—Honors bring responsibilit... more »ies, and therefore while I sincerely and heartily thank you for the distinguished honor to which you elected me one year ago, I ain not unmindful of the fact that the responsibility of the highest office within your gift may well make me diffident of my ability to properly fill it. Our Society is the largest medical organization in this great State—this grand Empire of Illinois—and through its work in many matters to which the medical profession of the whole nation looks with pride, ours has taken rank as the Pioneer State. Upon this, the forty-first anniversary, we look back to when the finger pointed at high noon upon the dial of this, the nineteenth century—to the year 1850—when a few grand men met in this city to organize this Society, which has achieved a great work for the medical profession of the Mississippi Valley. Of those charter members who did so well, two only, Dr. Boles and Dr. Thompson, are left to answer the roll call, and even they are not with us to-day. But with us still is Prof. N. S. Davis, one of the earliest members, always faithful, never failing when it was possible for him to be present. While we mourn the loss of those who have crossed to the other shore, as we do the genial cultured H. A. Johnston and Charles T. Parkes of this year—nature's noblemen, both ofthem—we rejoice that we still have with us one of the fathers of our own Society, and also the father of the American Medical Association, a man, (God bless him,) whose hand every member delights to shake at least once a year. Every one of us sincerely hopes that, notwithstanding his is an age when every pulse beat denotes but the numb...« less