It only fails of its purpose and is beaten and defeated when it attempts to find a northwest passage to reach the northern pole, and to construct a practical, safe and useful flying machine.

And the amount of money that has been lavished on either of these questionable-even if successful-projects would, it is very probable, give us all that we ask or need. And it neither satisfies or pacifics our desires nor convinces our judgment, to tell us that we transgress the bounds of prudence when we ask it to come to our assistance when so many precious lives are involved. It is idle to tell us that whatsoever of capital is demanded to secure the public health and safety-whether it be much or little-cannot be furnished without either perceptibly impairing its energies or seriously obstructing its designs.

There is no doubt, there can be none, that the ravages of disease will be greatly diminished and the death-rate correspondingly changed when suitable measures shall be adopted for carrying projects like these into execution, and thus affording protection to those who do not or cannot protect themselves. And if, indeed, their excessive cost should seem to justify a doubt of their expediency, yet the times are come upon us when every consideration and dictate of humanity, of philanthropy, of zeal for the public safety, of interest in the progress of medical science, demand that the experiment shall be no longer delayed.

It is time to end this homily, that seems but just begun. The subject is inexhaustible. But the hand will move upon the dial plate, and you are growing weary, and a more alluring entertainment is awaiting you in the hall below. The great multitude that represents the medical profession in Massachusetts are gathering, eager and impatient, to exchange those kindly greetings and interchanges of recognition that cement more strongly the sympathetic tie that binds them, as they gather round the social board. Our

annual festival does not fail. Year by year, as the sun approaches the solstice, we note - if we do not always welcome its return. It has its delights and its enjoyments, but it has its suggestions too. Year by year we find ourselves moving farther and farther upward toward the head of that great procession that marches, not only into the anniversary dinner, but into "the pale realms of shade" as well, whither so many have preceded us whose forms and features have been familiar to us in years that are gone when we were marshaled to our places in the rear, and whom we have watched year by year, to see them gradually putting off the robes of stately manhood, to wear the crown that only age could bring them, and then to disappear, that they who joined the Society in the decade next in order, might move upward to the places that had belonged to them.

The century is at its beginning. At its close no one of us will remain. But that matters not; the world will move on. Medical science will continue its work for humanity, will make new discoveries, will find new and better ways of controlling diseases, will establish more perfect and effectual methods of arresting and destroying the causes on which they depend. Generations will come and go. The young, hopeful, ardent, eager, aspiring, ambitious graduate in medicine will take his diploma and enter upon his work with high resolve and noble purpose to win distinguished honors and achieve a brilliant success, as his predecessors for generations have hoped to do. The middle-aged practitioner will pursue his daily round of duty with a calmness and serenity of spirit that no adverse circumstance can disturb, that are born of faith in the value and usefulness of his profession and his labors, and with resignation to the many hardships of his lot, that will sustain him and reinforce his courage when the stimulus of ambition and expectancy has been withdrawn. The aged

veteran in the service will look backward reflectively over the paths that he has trodden and where his fathers have traveled before him, contrasting the new ways with his own, and then will sleep as they sleep.

But The Massachusetts Medical Society will live on; surviving all changes, keeping fully abreast with all advances, it will live on. Strong in the abiding affection and veneration of its members, stronger still in the confidence and support of the people, for whose welfare it exists, but strongest of all in the ever increasing and ever expanding range of its benefactions, it will live on and on; and if it shall be true to its history and equal to the opportunities that await it, it shall rise to higher-and still higherplanes of usefulness and honor, and the voice of millions shall reverberate down the ages in strains of thanksgiving, gratitude and praises for all the blessings it has secured to

men.

ARTICLE II.

THE SHATTUCK LECTURE.

THE CHANGES IN THE SPINAL CORD AND MEDULLA IN PERNICIOUS ANÆMIA.

BY FRANK BILLINGS, M.D.

OF CHICAGO, ILL.

DELIVERED JUNE 10, 1902.