Page:The healing art in its historic and prophetic aspects - the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Oct. 19, 1885 (IA b21908199).pdf/30

 foundation, and that the progress of our Art and of our Science has been greater during the last half-century than during all the preceding centurios. Nay, more: that recent progress gives promise of still more rapid progress in the future.

It is not necessary to recount an elaborato list of dis- coveries in support of this assertion. Ono may truly say that there is no organ, no structure, no function of the body in health or disease which has not received the stamp of improved knowledge during the period referred to.

In our knowledge of the structural changes which occur in disease, accuracy is now replacing with great strides the previous uncertainty and vagueness; and I feel it is due in this connection to refer to the good work of the Pathological Society of London, whose forty volumes of Transactions are a brilliant monument of labour and research, and a bright exemplar to future years. It is but justice to say, in memory of one long since dead, that the society was established in 1843 by the intelligent zeal of a member of our College, the late Dr. Edward Bentley, a name which is remembered and honoured by those amongst us his friends and colleagues who still survive, although unheard of or forgotten by many who yet fully appreciate the value of the Society which he was the chief means of establishing. (6)

I need but remind you how extensive has become our knowledge within the past few years of the facts of structure revealed by the microscope in connection with new growths, with regard not only to their distinctive characteristics, but also those which connect apparently diverse forms and indicate their relation to the tissues in which they occur. The structural lesions comprised in the term ' degeneration' are now clearly recognised and defined, and, without pre- tending to a complete knowledge of these morbid conditions, that which we do know about them possesses a character