Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/27

Rh afford, of placing themselves abreast of the times will be readily understood when we think of the rapid progress that tropical medicine has made within the last few years. This progress has been as remarkable as it has been great; indeed, it is hard to keep pace with it. No sooner have we settled down to digest some new and important discovery than a fresh and perhaps more startling one is offered us; and this, too, we must digest and assimilate if we are to practise, or to teach, or to work to the best advantage.

As with the growth of a child, we hardly appreciate the recent progress of tropical medicine, living with it, so to speak, as we do from day to day; but if we come from abroad after an absence of years, or if we compare the state of knowledge, say, of twenty years ago with that of to-day, we shall find that the stripling has not only altered in feature, but has grown into a veritable giant.

I sometimes take from their shelves the text-books of my student days and compare their contents with those of the text-books of to-day—Watson's with, say. Osier's Principles arid Practice of Medicine. The contrast is remarkable. A perusal of Osier's shows how nearly all the old theories have been upset; how new diseases have been brought to light, old drugs and methods of treatment abandoned, pathology and etiology in most instances completely changed. If the contrast be great between the general medicine of to-day and that of forty or fifty years ago, it is even still greater in the case of tropical medicine. As regards the latter, it is unnecessary to go back to the days of Watson to recognise a striking contrast. It suffices to compare the tropical medicine of the early 'nineties as represented, say, by Davidson's Hygiene and Diseases of Warm Climates, published in 1893, with one of the recent text-books, say, the section on Tropical Medicine in