Page:The Harveian oration 1888.djvu/16

8 present? Is disease being prevented? Is life being prolonged? Is pain lessened? When disease arises can it be more skilfully- treated or more rapidly controlled? It is almost superfluous for me in this assembly to answer these questions or to point out how intimately our progress has been associated with and dependent upon Harvey's great discovery. As illustrations, need I speak here of the diminished mortality from consumption, which, by the recognition of and attention to ordinary sanitary laws, has during the last quarter of a century been reduced in England and Wales 28 per cent.? or of the diminished mortality from ague or from typhoid fever? Is pain lessened? Need I refer to ether and chloroform, or to nitrite of amyl which is now finding a more extended use than in simply relieving angina pectoris; or to the hypodermic injections of remedies such as morphia and ether? When disease arises can it be more skilfully treated or more rapidly controlled? Need I speak of the effects of the bromides I in epilepsy and allied disorders; of the specific effect of quinine in ague, or of the equally specific effect, in proper doses and with suitable diet, of the salicyl compounds in acute rheumatism; of the diminished mortality from pneumonia; of the use of the aspirator in pleuritic and pericardial effusions; of our increased skill in the localisation of cerebral disease and the brilliant results which are now achieved by surgery in connection there-with? All these are modern advances of which we may well be proud. The names of those, many of them happily still living among us, to whom we owe this increased knowledge, are known to you all. It is unnecessary therefore to commemorate singly those distinguished Fellows of this College whose names connected with the advance of medicine will be cherished by posterity not only as Benefactors of this College, but of mankind at large.