British Medicine in Greater Britain

To trace successfully the evolution of any one of the learned professious would require the hand of a masterof one who, like Darwin combined the capacity for patient observation with philosophic vision.In the case of medicine the difficulties are enormously increased by the extraordinary development which be- longs to the history of the present century.The rate of progress has been too rapid for us to appreciate, and we stand bewildered and, as it were, in a state of intellectual giddiness, when we attempt to obtain a broad, comprehensive view of the subject.In a safer " middle flight" I propose to dwell on certain of the factors which have moulded the profession in English-speaking lands beyond the narrow seas-of British medi- cine in Greater Britain.Even for this lesser task (though my affiliations are wide aud my sympathies deep) I recognize the limitations of my fitness, aud am not unaware that in my ignorance I shall overlook much which might have rendered less sketchy a sketch necessarily imperfect.Evolution advances by such slow and imperceptible degrees that to those who are part of it the fiuger of time scarcely seems to move.Even the great epochs are seldom apparent to the participators.During the last century neither the colonists nor the mother country appreciated the thrilling interest of the long-fought duel for the possession of this continent.The acts and scenes of the drama, to them detached, isolated and independent, now glide like dissolving views into each other, aud in the vitascope of history we can see the true sequence of events.That we can meet here to- day, Britons on British soil, in a French province, is one of the far-off results of that struggle.This was but a prelude to the other great event of the eighteenth century : the revolt of the colonies and the founding of a second great English-speaking nation in the words of Bishop Berkeley's prophecy, " Time's noblest off- spring."Surely a unique spectacle that a century later de- scendants of the actors of these two great dramas should meet in an English city in New France !Here, the American may forget Yorktown in Louisburg, the Englishman Bunker Hill in Quebec, and the French- man both Louisburg and Quebec in Chateauguay ;while we Canadians, English and French, in a for- giving spirit, overlooking your unseemly quarrels, are only too happy to welcome you to our country -this land on which and for which you have so often fought.Once, and only once, before in the history of the world could such a gathering as this have taken place.Divided through the Greeks were, a Hellenic senti- ment of extraordinary strength united them in certain assemblies and festivals.No great flight of imagina- tion is required to picture a notable representation of our profession in the fifth century B. C. meetiug in such a colonial town as Agrigentum, under the presi- dency of Empedocle8.Delegates from the mother tered so widely up and down the earth.In Canada,