The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-05 00:00:00

THE NEW DUKE.

It las been finally decided, says the Post, that the
Marquis of Abercorn shall be elevated in the peerage a'
Ireland, under the titles of Duke of Abercorn and Mar
quis of Hamilton. The marquisate will be of Strabane,
in Ireland, and will not, therefore, interfere with the
Duke of Hamilton's marquisate of Hamilton, county
Lanark, in Scotland. The notion of conferring the dukedom
of Ulster upon the Lord-Lieutenant has been abandoned,
in consequence of the earldom of Ulster being one of the
titles of the Duke of Edinburgh. The possession by the
noble marquis of the viscounty of Strabane in Ireland
enables her Majesty to raise him in that peerage. Hez
Majesty can only create a new Irish peer, of whatevez
rank, after the extinction of three Irishpeerages, and aftez
the lapse of twelve months after the expiration of the last
of the three, in order to afford time for collateral claims
to be asserted. At the present moment her Majesty is
not in a position to create any Irish peer for some little
time to come. The present act of the Crown is one of pro.
motion in the peerage, and that power is not limited by
any restriction.

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

The thirty-sixth annual meeting of the British Medical
Association began at Oxford on Tuesday, under the
presidency of H. W. Acland, M.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.,
the Regius Professor of Physics in the University. Dr.
Stokes, of Dublin, is the retiring president. The
meeting is expected to be one of the most important
and influential which the association has yet held. It
will extend to Friday, the 7th inst. The following are
the presidents of the sections :—Sir William Jenner
(medicine), Professor Rolleston (physiology), Mr. James
Paget (surgery), Sir Charles Locock (midwifery), and Mr.
John Simon (State medicine). One of the most striking
features of this meeting, both in a scientific and social
aspect, will be the president's soiree in the University
Museum, a building singularly adapted to give brilliant
effect to such a reunion. Among other scientific attrac-
tions which this soiree will offer, Professor Beale, of King's
College, London, has undertaken to exhibit, with a lavish
profusion of iniscro,scopes, a large number of very choice
microscopical preparations, illustrating the tissues in
health and disease.

The PRESIDENT, in his inaugural address, after acknow-
ledging the honour which the association had conferred on
him, said he proposed to take a general survey of the
position occupied by medical knowledge, and the objects
which ought to be held in viewindiscussing the formation of
the character and temper of the medicalprofcssion. Medicine
had too long consented to regard itself as an art, and so dis-
tinguished from science. It could never fulfil its mission until
it recognised and substantiated its claims to be one of the
sciences that precisely interpret the phenomena of nature.
In so far as medicine was purely scientific it was not in
harmony with the average mind of mankind, and in so
far as it was empirical it was at variance with pure science.
Having shewn how medicine adopts scientific methods,
Dr. Acland proceeded to consider the relations a medi-
cine to the wants of modern society. The relations of
medicine were modified by the multitude of its
agents. But if the philosophic base of medicine has been
changed during the century by its relation to science, it
has been as much modified by the exigencies of a fast-
growing population. It would not be true to say
that till modern times no great crowds of men have been
densely congregated into unhealthy masses. There
were great armies before the Christian era ; there
must have been great overcrowding in ancient
Rome. A careful and detailed sanitary code was
enforced on the Jewish people at the time of the exodus.
Rome paid no small attention to sanitary works. But
one of the peculiarities of modern life is the tendency to
increase in great towns. In England between 1841 and
1851 there was an increase in the great towns of over
100,000 inhabitants of 23 per cent., and in the follow-
ing decennial period, from 1851 to 1861, there was
in France an increase in towns of similar mag-
nitude of 50 per cent. The evils of modern civili-
sation had not yet been met by the clear-sighted and
systematic superintendency by which they can be sub-
dued ; but he hoped ere long to see the relations
which ought to subsist between this department of the
science of medicine and the community at large investi-
gated systematically by a royal commission. Ire antici-
pated that one result of such a commission would be
the elevation of the duties of an officer in State medicine
to that of a recognised profession. The Government
would have to define the duties to be discharged by
public health officers, and the General Council of
Medical Education would be able to direct the educa-
tion of those who aspire to the performance of the
duties so defined. The problems arising from the condi-
tion of great towns were become part of the literature of
the day. "For my own part," said the professor, " I know
nothing apparently so damaging to the reputation of the
study of classics, as a means of forming completeness of
character, as its active antipathy in former years to the
cultivation of science, and its passive indifference to the
promotion of art." The address was frequently ap
rlauded.