Botsford, Greene; James McNaughton, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Fairfield; John H. Steel, Saratoga; Samuel Freeman, Saratoga; E. D. Tuttle, Cayuga.

The following gentlemen produced their certificates as delegates from their respective county societies, and took their seats accordingly, viz:

James Stevenson, Washington; Thomas G. Evans, Orange; Ira H. Smith, Cayuga; Harvey W. Doolittle, Herkimer.

The following gentlemen, members of the Legislature, and ex. officio members of the Society, were introduced, and took part in the proceedings of the Society:

Drs. Campbell Waldo, Cayuga; John Lynde, Cortland; Robert Collins, Rensselaer.

2. Censors' Report.-The Censors of the Southern District reported that during the year 1825 they had examined and permitted to practice the following gentlemen:

Ananias M. Brewster, State of New York; John Nichols, Montreal; Lucius Hyde, Rensselaerville; John S. W. Parkin, New London; Sanford R. Knapp, State of New York; B. Guernsey, State of New York; James Hubbel, Yorktown, Dutchess county; Henry Van Antwerp, Albany; Asa J. Buddock, Franklin county, Mass.; Samuel W. Denton, Walkill, Orange county.

3. Permanent and Honorary Members.-Drs. John Watts, of New York, and Daniel Ayres, of Montgomery county, were elected Permanent members.

The following gentlemen were nominated as Honorary members: Joseph Lovell, M. D., Surgeon General, Washington; John Lizars, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh; Dr. John Onderdonk, New York; Joseph Bloodgood, M. D., Queens county.

4. Election of Officers for 1827.-Drs. James R. Manley, President; T. Romeyn Beck, Vice-President and Librarian; Platt Williams, Secretary; Jonathan Eights, Treasurer; Felix Pascalis, Charles Drake, John B. Beck, William Bay, Peter Wendell, James McNaughton, John H. Steel, Daniel Ayres, James Stevenson, Alexander Coventry, Laurens Hull, Luther Guiteau, Censors; Harvey W. Doolittle, Eliel T. Foote, Delos White, Ira H. Smith, Henry Van Hovenburgh, Samuel Freeman, Truman B. Hicks, Thomas G. Evans, Committee of Correspondence; John B. Beck, Peter Wendell, T. Romeyn Beck, Charles Drake, James R. Manley, Committee on Prize Dissertations and Questions.

5. Anniversary Address by the President, Dr. Manley. Extracts from.-"Called to occupy a station which has been occasionally

filled by the most distinguished medical talent in this country, it is the monition both of interest and duty to accept it with diffidence, and to use its influence with discretion.

"The medical community of this State, since the incorporation. of this Society, whose business it is to supervise and regulate for the good of the whole, the police of the medical profession, has assumed a more fixed scientific character than could have been reasonably anticipated for many years, without its agency. Without appearing to control, and without imposing any other restraints upon its members than such as commend themselves to the understanding and the conscience of every enlightened individual, it has silently but successfully operated such a change in medical education as cannot fail, if properly improved, to make the character of the physician honorable and respected. But much yet remains to be done. The progress of improvement must of necessity be slow, where philosophy has at every step to contend with ignorance and prejudice.

"The profession which we have chosen is one of awful responsibility; it puts in requisition and gives continued employment to all the powers of the understanding, and all the kindly affections of the heart. The physician is not only obliged to be well informed, but his knowledge must at all times be at command; not only to act with decision, when occasion requires, but to do ungracious acts, and such as will jeopardize his reputation if success should not attend the results. To be well furnished for his profession is not only his duty, but his deficiency is sin; his ignorance is his crime. He is not only obliged to administer relief, but the relief must be extended in the best and speediest manner, and with the least possible suffering. And if anything can render the duty still more arduous, it is the conviction, that his feelings must be so disciplined by his judgment as in no case to be permitted to control it. It is his exclusive business to shield from the dangers and assuage the pains of disease; to furnish the means which alone can give to life its enjoyment, or mitigate the sufferings which must inevitably terminate in death; and to give additional force to all these responsibilities, there are no human sanctions to enforce the obligations. He who made him, and conscience his only representative, can estimate his deficiencies or rebuke his neglect. How important, then-how vitally interesting to the public-is the subject of medical education! And how essential is it, that its foundation should be laid in a deep and abiding sense of moral obligation?"

"A medical reputation, though in years past it might have been easily acquired, must now be maintained by severe application to study and industrious habits of observation; and those who fail in either, or who content themselves with their attainments, betray not only a neglect of the progressive improvements of the science, but a contempt for the intelligence of the public, which will not fail of its desert, whenever their claims to distinction are questioned.

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"It is necessary, therefore, that those who devote themselves to the practice of physic, should be fully educated, in order to warrant the expectation of acquiring character in their profession; and as an indirect stimulus to their exertions, they ought to be made acquainted with the difficulties which lie in their way, that they may not, in disgust, when too late to retrace their steps, abandon the high road to honorable preferment, and study to compensate themselves for their disappointment, by converting the privileges they possess into a mere trade-stock to accumulate wealth. It is a truth, which if not immediately obvious, experience will soon teach, that the path to wealth, if not to eminence, is best found in a spirit of worldly accommodation, which consults the prejudices rather than than reason of the multitude; for, however ignorant that multitude may be, (and they are not scandalized by being charged with total incapacity to judge of medical character,) there is not an individual of them who will not accept a deference to his opinions as a compliment to his intelligence. It is also true, that the profession of physic addresses itself to the heart rather than to the understanding to the feelings, rather than the judgment; and that this is the fruitful source of much of the difficulty with which the physician must contend, in his pursuit of medical distinction. Sympathy with suffering makes a firm friend; hence, the intelligent discharge of the obligations of duty are merely acknowledged or forgotten altogether; while a tithe part of the services, rendered with apparent and officious interest for the distressed, is received with a gratitude which memory will always cherish. So universal is the operation of these principles, that the uninformed, the impudent, and the cunning, who per fas aut nefas become legally authorised to practice our art, make their advantage of them, to conceal their ignorance or to mask their hypocrisy; and they so admirably answer either purpose, that they are successful for both.

"Perhaps there never was a time since the organization of this Society, when the calls of duty were more imperative than at the

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present. The rivalries of the numerous schools for medical instruction, distributed throughout the country, many of them offering very limited courses of instruction; the neglect on the part of most of these schools to require from the candidates any evidence of proficiency in those studies which should form the groundwork of a medical education; the facilities with which degrees in medicine are obtained; the inducements offered to young men to enter themselves as pupils, while they are deficient in the elements of general science, which alone will enable them to study to advantage when their period of pupilage shall have expired; and especially, that mistaken liberality of our statute, which, while it gives full effect to the evils above enumerated, is calculated to perpetuate them; all threaten to degrade and deprave the medical character; and, unless this Society suggest some decisive measures to arrest this wholesale manufacture of physicians, by more particularly determining the qualifications which shall admit to license in this State, the consequences must be alike disastrous to the respectability of the profession, and the interests of the public.

"However much we, as individuals, may regret the injury done to medical degrees by the indiscreet or interested distribution of them, it is only as they affect the character of the license, and as they are calculated to defeat the intentions of the law of the State, that they interest us in our corporate capacity. But while I feel constrained to charge upon them so large a share of the abuse of medical privileges, I should do injustice to my subject were I to permit the evasions of the law in respect to the licenses themselves, as they are occasionally issued by the county societies, to pass unnoticed. Those infractions, it is true, are not numerous; and they appear to have arisen more from the latitude of construction given to its provisions, than from a contempt of its restraints; still, as it is of the first importance that the law should not only be rigidly but impartially executed, they are proper subjects for the cognizance of the Society."

"There is no court for the correction of errors in the practice of physic, at least none which can afford relief to the unfortunate subject of an ill-advised, or perhaps, under the circumstances of the case, a poisonous medicine. The most that may be expected, (and this is far too much,) is that the victim's misfortune may serve as a lesson to others equally unskilled in the profession, and teach them another truth, of which it was always their sin to have been ignorant. There is scarcely any person whose experi

ence is so limited as not to have presented evidence of the truth of the above remark. Those who have witnessed the desolation of a wide-wasting epidemic, who themselves have tasted all the bitterness of widowed hope; who have been called to inter in rapid succession every staff of their support, whether present or in prospect, and who, but for the anodynes which even protracted sorrow kindly furnishes to the distressed, would have drained the cup of unmingled wretchedness, and found their only refuge in despair, and there are some such-they know the immeasurable difference between a well-instructed physician and one who merely values his vocation for the profits which it yields. There are times when the intelligence of the best informed is taxed to the utmost limit of its ability to arrest the march of disease, or suggest a remedy which shall avail to ward off the stroke of death; and when they do occur, where shall the half-educated or the imprudent physician be found? When the files of recorded fact afford no precedent;' when, if they did, the disastrous issues which await a moment of indecision forbid a reference; when the impending gloom of the grave affrights from their wonted exercise the kindliest affections of the heart; and death, clothed with all the terrors which its realities possess and its fears can borrow, oppresses with heartless despair both the patient and his attendants; then it is that the intelligent physician stands, as it were, between the living and the dead, the honored instrument of blessing, qualified alike to dispel the distracting doubts of friends, and to calm the anxieties of the suffering victim of disease; or, in failure of success, to justify himself before God, his conscience, and the sorrowing family; while the ignorant practitioner, affecting for the first time to have been made sensible of his deficiencies, contemplates in stupid amazement the event which he can neither avert or control, and is too happy if peradventure he can solace himself with the reflection, that the distress which he witnesses he had no agency in creating."

TWENTY-FIRST MEETING, ALBANY, FEBRUARY, 1827.

1. Officers, Members and Delegates present.-Drs. T. Romeyn Beck, Vice-President, Albany; Platt Williams, Secretary, Albany; Jonathan Eights, Treasurer, Albany; Laurens Hull, Oneida; Joshua Converse, Schoharie; James Stevenson, Washington; Peter Wendell, Albany; William Bay, Albany; Eliel T. Foote, Chautauque; Delos White, Otsego; Henry Van Hovenburgh, Ulster; Truman B. Hicks, Warren; Harvey W. Doolittle Herkimer;