Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/27



AN ADDRESS,

DELIVERED AT THE FIRST MEETING OF THE

PROVINCIAL

ASSOCIATION.

BY CHARLES HASTINGS, M. D.

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 CONGRATULATE you. Gentlemen, that the day for forming a Provincial Medical and Surgical Association has, at length, arrived. An association which, I trust, is destined to exercise no inconsiderable influence on the future progress of medical science. Feeling, as I have long done, the disadvantages under which the prosecutors of medicine, resident in English provincial towns have laboured, in consequence of the want of any system of co-operation, by which their separate exertions, for the promotion of our knowledge of the healing art, may be so united as to render them more influential, and more extensively useful; I cannot but hail this day, Hunc lætum medicis diem, as one of peculiar promise; as one likely to lead to the most important results.

When I see assembled around me some of the brightest ornaments of our profession; and when I call to mind the fact that, in addition to those now present, our association already numbers amongst its future members, a large proportion of