Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/51

 receive the subscriptions, when due, in their respective districts.

Each member of the Association to pay one guinea on admission, and the same amount annually afterwards. The subscriptions to become due on the 1st of January each year.

I may here, also, remark, that if, from the subscriptions being numerous, our funds will admit of such a measure, we have it in contemplation to have a medal struck, to be conferred by the council on any successful prosecutor of medical science.

You must perceive, gentlemen, it is no ignoble service in which I wish to engage you. Neither is it one of which the benefits can be doubtful. I do not require you to embark with me in the endeavour to build up some hypothetical system of medicine. I do not wish to entice you into some labyrinth of conjecture, where you may be lost in the mazes of fancy. I do not desire to lead you into useless theoretical disquisitions; but I call upon you in the true spirit of inductive philosophy, to be vigilant in the collection of facts, and cautious in drawing conclusions from them; " At non solum, (if you will permit me, on this point, to use the words of the immortal Bacon) copia major experimentorum quœrenda est et procuranda, atque etiam alterius generis, quam adhuc factum est; sed etiam methodus plane alia, et ordo, et process us, continuandæ et provehendæ experientiæ, introducenda. Vaga enim experientia et se tantum sequens mera palpatio est, et homines potius stupefacit quam informat. At cum experientia lege certa procedit, seriatim et continenter, de scientiis aliquid melius sperari poterit."