Indigestion Injection Treatment of Hernia........ 356 71 In the Matter of a State Sanatorium for Indigent Consumptives... 311 29 Medical Association of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico... 303 Mississippi Valley Medical Association 359, 397 237 Modern Medical Training......... News and Miscellany................35-36, 83-86, 131-132, 175-179, 215-218, Neurasthenia .... New York Academy of Medicine 114 256 News Items Concerning Third Pan-American Medical Congress..... 304 Panhandle Medical Association.......... Pan-American Medical Congress. 256 .... 123 254, 263 513 60 426 211 469 Pelvic Abscess.... Pernicious Vomiting of Pregnancy and its Treatment with Elec- tricity........ Placenta Prævia...... Post Partum Hemorrhage........ Public Standing of the Physician....... Publisher's Notes.........42-46, 94-95, 137-142, 181-192, 223-239, 274-280, Reform in Asylum Laws and Management 32 Report of Chairman of Section on Obstetrics and Gynecology......... 246 341 San Antonio New Hospital........... 535 Scarlatina or Something Similar....... 108 Should the Use of Antitoxin in Tuberculosis be Condemned from Some Surgical Cases......... Some Requisites for Successful Work in Obstetrics and Diseases of Children......... 156 Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association....... Tenth Semi-Annual Meeting of the South Texas Medical Asso- tion ....... 532 Texas State Medical Association....... ..386, 435, 461 The Physician as a Sanitarian.... The Country Doctor........ The Correct Thing The Treatment of Phthisis Pulmonalis of Tubercle Bacilli...... The Clinical Laboratory as an Adjunct to Medicine......... The Baby's Second Summer. 1 10 34 49 64 67 The Mosquito as a Transmitter of Micro-Organisms.. 143 The Preparation of the Lying-in Patient and the Management of Transactions Texas State Medical Association for 1900... 214 149 Tri-State Medical Society of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee...... 160 PUBLISHED MONTHLY.-SUBSCRIPTION $1.00 A YEAR. VOL. XVI. AUSTIN, JULY, 1900. Original Contributions. For the Texas Medical Journal. The Physician as a Sanitarian.* No. 1. Mr. President, Members of the Board of Regents and of the Faculty, Members of the Graduating Class, Ladies and Gentlemen: The never-ending cycle of years has once more turned round, and it falls my turn to address you. On behalf of the faculty, I congratulate you on the splendid effort you have made in preparation and welcome you into the profession in which you have chosen to perform your life-work. This is an event that comes but once in a life-time, and is always attended with the sorrow of departure and the joy of expectation. How fitting that this occasion should be called commencementthe commencement of your professional careers. What you have accomplished in the few years you have been with us has been but preparation to fit you for that work. Do not delude yourselves with the idea that the period of study is past. No error could be more fatal, especially to the physician. The mere attainment of the degree does not mean that your intellectual labors cease. If you aspire to success in your profession you will continue your studies with new effort, especially in the early years of your practical life. It is, indeed, a unique opportunity to speak just at this time, as we are about to enter upon a new century. Such a time naturally suggests a retrospect-some review of the achievements and progress of the dying century. We are also entering upon a new era in med *Address to the graduating class, Texas Medical College, Galveston, May 12, 1900, by Prof. W. S. Carter, M. D., of the Faculty. icine, and the line which marks it from the past is sharper than the changing of the centuries. It is a rare privilege to address the first graduates who have pursued the four years' course in medicine, not only in this State and university, but in this great southland. It is all the more to your credit that you should have elected such a course at a period when it was possible to get a degree elsewhere in less time, and in a State which, although it is most liberal in providing free professional education, is also most negligent in failing to protect the lives of its citizens against all sorts of quacks. Not only are men who are totally unfit permitted to practice medicine, but this State also gives a charter to a bogus institution for granting diplomas to such men. Although you are small in numbers you represent a very great gain in power. Medical teaching has undergone radical changes in the last few decades of the closing century. In 1853, that great leader in medicine in this country, Dr. George B. Wood, with his characteristic eloquence, called attention to the urgent need of graded courses and of more clinical instruction, with less didactic teaching in the medical schools of the United States. It took twenty years for these suggestions to be put into operation. From that time rapid changes have been made in medical teaching in this country. In the last two decades, however, greater progress has been made in medicine than in the first eight decades of the century. With the advent of bacteriology more exact methods of investigation of disease have come into use in all the medical sciences, and the way of teaching all subjects has rapidly changed from the theoretical to the practical. Before this period but two years were required to prepare men for the practice of medicine by all the colleges of this country, impossible as that may seem at the present time. Until very recently bu three years were required, but now four years are demanded by all the leading schools of the country. This great change in the preparation of men for the practice of medicine indicates that the training must be much more comprehensive and that new demands are made upon them; that more is expected of them and they are better. prepared than in former times. It may not be out of place at the present time, when we are hearing so much about national expansion, to speak of one of the possibilities presented in this expansion of medicine, and I have selected for my theme "The Physician as a Sanitarian." It has been stated that although surgery has advanced greatly as a result of the knowledge gained from bacteriology, medicine has profited comparatively little from it. While in the cure of disease our earlier expectations may not as yet have been fully realized (with the exception of diphtheria), yet along the line of prevention possibilities are presented which are fully as great as in surgery. Preventive medicine probably offers a more brilliant future than any branch of science. In former times four-fifths of all deaths were due to preventable diseases. At that time, however, the causes and methods of prevention were unknown. Conditions are different now. Bacteriology |