President's Address
Authors: H. W. Acland
Journal: BMJ (1868)

term of office, as Annual President of the British Medical Association, having expired, I have to resign the chair to one whose life-and labours are a guarantee that he will do it honour.I need not ask you to believe with what sincerity I have appreciated the importance of the position, which, owing to your too flattering estimation of me, I have held since the occasion of the meeting in Dublin, where, as here, you were received and honoured in the halls of a great University.To be chosen to preside over a society of three thousand educated gentlemen, all zealous for the advancement of human knowledge, many of them distinguished in the paths of literature and science, and not a few the practical doers of Christ's work upon earth, is a distinction of which any man might be proud, for which any man should be thankful.For, though the place of meeting influences the selection of President, the character of him who is to preside influences, at least among other things, the choice of the place of meeting.Here, and for the second time, you meet in Oxford,. the heart of England, whose history is that of the country, the free, the enlightened, the religious-the conqueror in the arts of peace and of war.Let me, berore bidding you farewell, say a few words as to the future of this great Society-now the most numerous body working for the benefit of science in the world, and which will doubtless attain to lager dimensions.So far, we have been an united body, which is to be attri- buted to our federal constitution, with independent local action, and a representative and imperial executive.How long this strength-giving union may last no man can predict; nor, on the other hand, can any man say to what an amount of influence for good this Association may attain.But it is plain, that its durability and usefulness will depend on its being made the instrument for the public good, rather than the machinery to advance the immediate worldly interests of the profession.And every one of us must lay it to heart that a great issue rests within his hands.The man among us who by his unselfish labour adds one useful fact to the storehouse of medical knowledge, does more to ad- vance its material interests than if he had spent a life in the pursuit of medical politics.Far be it from me to say that there are not great wrongs to be redressed.lt is impossible, in any country, that evils of custom and of administration, private wrong, corporate shortcomings, hard dealings, unfair competition, and scanty remuneration for public and private services, should not occur.But these evils being admitted, how are they to be lessened, if not removed?Is it by public agitation and remonstrance, addressed to deafened or unwilling ears?Is it by the demand for class-legislation ?or is it, by the efforts of one and all, to place medicine in the hierarchy of the sciences-in the vanguard of human progress; eliminating every influence that can lower it, every day more and more developing the unprofessional principle, whilewe foster all things that relate to its moral, literary, and scientific character?When this becomes our rule of action, then begins the real reform of all those things at which we fret and chafe.Then will medicine have