The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-06-27
MEDICAL SCHOOL EXERCISES
HELD YESTERDAY IN COLLEGE
 STREET HILL.
Presided Over by President Hadley- Award of Prtzcs Nlnde-Annual Ad- dress by pr. J. N. Dn Costa.

At the Medical school anniversary
 exercises yesterday the annual address
 was delivered by pr. J. M. Da Costa,
 professor emeritus of Jefferson Medical
 school, Philadelphia, on the subject
 Problems of the Day in Medicine" The exercises were held in College street hall
 The Campbell gold medal given to that member of the graduating class who stands highest in the examinations of the course, was awarded to H. C.. Pitts of New York city.
 The Reese prize for the best thesis was awarded to c. o. Puriton, Yale '97, of New Hartford, Conn, with honora- ble mention of c. w. Henz of New Ha- ven.
 Honors cum laude were awarded to H. c. Pitts of New York city, N. L.. Griffin of New London. N. H., and w.. J. Moroney of Springfield, Mass
 The exercises were largely attended by friends of thei graduating class President Hadley presided.
 In part Professor Da Costa spoke as follows:
 If we were asked what in our day has contributed most strikingly to the enlargement of medical knowledge and has been most potent in farreaching results, the answer would be, unhes- itatingly, the recognition and study of the minute organisms that are found to be the germs of disease. This is the bacteriologic age, and daily the ques- tion is forcing itself on use, what the true relations of bacteriology to prac- tical medicine are, and in how far it is solving vital problems In SC far as it is solving the problems of the causa- ton of disease that We are obtaining through it are so immeasurably in ad- advance of what we even suspected thirty years ago that these appear jejune and puerile contrasted with the accuracy of present knowledge. Through bacterology medicine has been connected in its best sense with sci ence, and it has come to this, that the words of the French philosopher are proving true: Savior c'est connaitre par les causes" We are beginning to experience the pleasure indicated by Virgil: Felix, qui potuit rerum cog noscere causes.
 One of the most promiSin outgrowths of bacterology, and the study through it of the nature of disease, is that 1t has led to the knowledge of the coun- teracting agents that are generated in the system itself, and, further, to the attempts at cure by the antitOXins. Many and striking are the studies of the various curative and protective serums, and there is great hope for medicine in this line of research. But 1t is in its infancy, and except in it's brilliant and life-saving application in diphtheria, and in the marked influence shown in relapsing fever, the therapeu tic power of antitoxic serum, either curative or preventive, has not proved itself very decided.
 The great possibilities that present themselves to stamp out disease by the of preventive serums have led to efforts in all directions to render the individual immune But for many years to come l think that we shall have to be content with the use of the serums in the curative treat ment of disease or when special epi- denies, like the plague, are threaten ing
 Bacteriology is a science to be cul- tivated as such, having it's own prob lems to be solved in it's own ways, and it can only to 6 certain degree come into the daily life of a physician. Nor can the bacteriologist spersede him, as you might judge he is bound to do by the prominence given to the subject in medical journals and societies and by the ardor and claims of many of the followers of the new sci . ence.
 Medicine will never be practiced pure ly through a laboratory. The man of action is still, and always will be, para