Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/43

 that, by the sacrifice of a small portion of time, the medical officers attached to the several charitable institutions of this kind, might furnish tabular records, giving an account of the principal cases under treatment; and also of every peculiar occurrence, as endemics and epidemics, &c.; any remarkable accident or operation; any particular mode of treatment; any particular formulæ not in general use; and, above all, accurate descriptions of the morbid appearances in all fatal cases. Annals of this kind would not only afford most valuable information to the public, but they would also materially tend to improve the discipline of hospitals, infirmaries, and dispensaries, and lead to a much more systematic arrangement of the respective duties of the officers of these establishments.

Medical Topography, again, is a subject on which we are particularly called upon to exert ourselves. It yet remains as a reproach to Englishmen, that they have done much less than their continental brethren in this very important branch of Medical Learning. To provincial practitioners we must look for the supply of this deficiency. They, alone, in their different localities, have the means of remedying this defect, and of supplying a more perfect system of Medical Topography than we at present possess.

" That great and numerous obstacles," to use the language of a learned author, in an excellent article in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, " exist, to a general medical topography of this or any other country, we are most ready to admit; but, we have little hesitation in saying,