The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-05-22
President Julian M. Baker Delivers
the Annual Address.
A NUMBER OF REPORTS WERE READ
he Physicians VIII be in Session Three Days
Upwards Of Two Hundred Members
Of The Society in
Attendance.
Attendance,
Especial to News and Observer. J

eighth annual session of the North Caro-
lima Medical Society convened this morn
ing at IL o'clock. and win be in session
for three days. The sessions are being
held in the court house.
The first session was called to order
this morning by DR.. A. c. Carr, of this
city, who is chairman of the Committee
on Arrangements Rev. w. L. Cunningham
pastor OF Main Street Methodist church,
led in prayer. The address of welcome
was then delivered by Prof Jerome Dowd
Y of Trinity college, ii
Professor Dowd said in part:
Within the last year we have been
honored by visits from the knights of
PyIhias. the Elks, the Junior Order of
Mechanics, the undertakers, land by the
way, l have been told that the Under
takers cover up good many of your mis-
takes) also We have had John Robinson's
circus, the Harvard baseball club, and
Prof. Gentry's dog show. Besides these
several expert opticians and patent med
icine men have dropped in upon us, and l
have observed that some Of them play
II
had DR.. Lee, the hypnotist, and Madam
Amaze, the celebrated fortune teller.
Some of them do us and some of them are
done by us.
I'm the present case we know that you
will do us-only good and consequently
we prop open the ates little wider than
common and offer you the freedom of
the city.
BE assured that we shall treat you
we'll! We are always careful what we do
or say to physicians. We feel towards
them somewhat as the old Baptist
deacon felt towards the Devil. A young
preacher had come to preach his trial
sermon. His subject was the Devil. He
denounced this Old Nick as the author
and inventor of all manner of mischief
AT the conclusion of the sermon the dea-
con came up and said Well, I for one
dent like your style, and l don't think
you will suit cur people, Why, what's
the matter!' exclaimed the preacher
oh, / tell you,' said the old deacon, we
can't be too careful what we SEE about
the Devil cause we don't know whose
hands we are gwine to fall into
But laying aside Righteousness there
are no workers in the world who have
done so much for the welfare of this gen
Grafton as the physicians and surgeons.
early in the nineteenth century medi-
cal science turned away from the study
of theory to the study of life-anatomy
physiology and pathology. The clinic, the
laboratory and the hospital were set up
and with the discovery of bacteria, there
was accomplished such miracles in med
icine surgery and sanitation as the world
had never dreamed of.
"Since 1850 many frightful diseases
have been banished from civilization, and
every disease except one has to some ex-
tent been diminished or rendered less
painful. This one exception, / believe, is
spring poetry.
Cholera. yellow fever. leprosy and the
plague have been successfully excluded
from all progressive countries. Typhus
fever, which was formerly the scourge
of every great city, is now a disease
rarely named in the catalogue of deaths
and even typhoid fever in late years has
been rapidly retreating before the adj
vances of science.
THE mortality from diphtheria has di-
minished 60 per cent since Behring's in
PRODUCTION OF the antitoxic treatment in
1892. Small pox, which carried away al
most as many people as consumption, is
now unknown in well governed countries,
except occasionally in the slums of a
few seaport cities.
Lastly the worst of all human
plaques, consumption, which annually
kills 120 600 people in the United States,
is now yielding to the skill of the sani-
tarium and the practitioner, and the
remedies are already known which, if
carefully and faithfully employed will
eventually drive that disease out of ex-
isteDce.
IF the science of governing cities and
States had made half the progress that
the medical and sanitary sciences have
made in the last fifty years, and we
could find men of sufficient back bone and
intelligence to carry out the measure
which science recommends there would
not be case of small pox in the State
of North Carolina today, and many other
dreadful diseases would be reduced at
least one half.
''In surgery the discovery of anaethe
STA and the development of anti-sepsis,
which resulted in the eradication of many
frightful and heretofore fatal maladies,
and the mortality from operation, in
GLIDING those of the most serious nature
scarcely exceeds five per cent 1t is
said that Sir Spencer Wells in his first
1000 cases ovariotomy saved 10000 years
of human life
THE cathedral in which the physician
worships IS as wide as humanity, its
dome as high as Heaven, it's affairs are
human suffering, its litany is the sound
OF rain and hall and wind, its choir music
u the signing and mourning Of broken
lives and byoken hopes and the crood -
it's EaIarIS is self sacrifice for az
blessing aSsAup lifting of mankind.
s.In. .theP aerne OF those who IN tha
hou1 aniiction. have liftea b, -.
W 80 weak and trenabIfng