The address of Dr. John W. LeSeur, of Batavia, N. Y., was one of those whole-souled, hearty, glad talks which it does one good to hear. He was the incarnation of hospitality, even going so far as to say, "Everything that you see in Niagara Falls, anything that you may desire, behold it and admire it and take it with you so far as your vision will permit."

What more could mortal want? In closing he said, "The Western New York Homeopathic Medical Society to the utmost of its ability gives you an entire, hearty, cordial, earnest welcome." In eloquence the address was the best of the evening, and we rather fancy that in a convention where eloquence counted LeSeur might carry the multitude, as did Bryan in '96. Presidential timber, did you say?

Following came the President's address. Our thought had been, as with his preliminary address, to simply run through it, taking out such points as might, in our estimation, be of particular interest, but we believe it to be of such excellence, interest and importance, and in all so scholarly, that we venture to print it without abridging it in any respect. Seldom have we seen such close attention given a lengthy address. The entire audience remained until the distinguished speaker had closed. Many could be seen taking notes as to its contents and many were the nods of approval. This does not mean that all the sentiments were fully endorsed. They were not. Several of the whitehaired occupants of the platform could be seen shaking their heads in a deprecatory way-showing that they also had thoughts-but the shower of congratulations which met President Sutherland upon the adjournment of the meeting showed appreciation of his fine, manly, scholarly effort. We append the address in full:

Members of the American Institute of Homeopathy, Ladies and Gentlemen:-The annual assembling of the members of the American Institute may fitly be called the "Old Home Week" of homeopathy in America. The sixtieth birthday of the Institute's honorable and fruitful life, which we now are assembled to celebrate, assuredly gives her the title of Mother of homeopathic organized life on our side of the sea. To return to her hearthstone, that of the oldest national medical organization in America, may well be welcomed, for the loyal homeopathist, a professional home-coming. That excellent and now so widely prevailing custom of observing Old Home Week, our country over, is productive of a doubly good result. To those returning to the family hearth it means a renewal of family ties; it means a renewing of the ideals of youth; it means the wholesome realization that one is a part of a whole, and not an isolated and selfish unit. On the other hand, it means to the old home itself, the inrush of the larger

world beyond its own borders. It means learning at first hand, of the marvels of the year's progress, adjusting old ideas to new revelations of fact. And these things are precisely what our annual assembling as children of the venerable American Institute of Homeopathy ought to mean to the Institute and to ourselves. It ought to renew old friendships and associations. It ought to keep green the memories of those, our predecessors and exemplars, who here on earth will meet with us no more. It ought to renew our early ideals of broad and useful living along the lines of our mutual and beloved work. And to the Institute itself, our homecoming ought to mean the enlargement of our common view; the assimilation of new truths, and the fitting of them into the great general scheme of truth that we have already seen and accepted. The spirit of Old Home Week is a good one in which to open our present deliberations and to enter upon our enjoyments. As the son of the great household, upon whom for the hour falls the duty of speaking its welcome, I greet you with all affectionate heartiness to its hearthstone, and I ask you to aid me to make this particular home-coming richer than any that have come before it, in growth, in harmony, in service, in wisdom, and in strength of devotion to the cause we have in common, as children of the Institute.

It is natural and fitting that on the first evening of an assembling at an old-home hearth, the talk should travel far backward and far forward taking as long views as may be, in both directions. So I would ask you to look far backward, into the causes of our coming together, and far forward, into the largest uses that we can serve in coming together.

Who founded the American Institute of Homeopathy? A body of physicians. That is what we are apt to forget, in answering that question on quick challenge; we are far more apt to say, A body of hoemopathists. True, the founders were homeopathic physicians, but they were that secondarily, though very essentially. First of all they were physicians. They were men well grounded in all the medical. lore of their day; they were men who had studied that lore under exactly the same instruction as had any men then bearing the title of physicians. Broadly speaking, all that any physician, as such, then knew, they knew. And knowing, they did not find it sufficient for their needs as healers of the sick. Let that never be forgotten. The founders of homeopathy did not become homeopathists as an easy road to riches, or to notoriety, as not a few of our unbrotherly professional brethren still hold, even to-day. They did not become homeopathists because they were not intellectually equal to mastering the knowlegde possessed by other physicians of their day; as again

is too often claimed. They had already mastered that knowledge, and not a few of them stood high in existing medical councils. They became homeopathists, because, knowing all that was known by the medical science of their day, they did not find that all to be sufficient to treat the physical ills of humanity as successfully as they felt the physician should be able to treat those ills. They believed that in the homeopathic law of cure, they saw an advance upon any method of cure then in use. And they resolved to give that law a trial in their daily practice. If they could have been freely allowed by their brother physicians thus to test this new article of their medical faith there would never have been separation, of the homeopathists' making, in the great army of healers of the sick. They were not so allowed. For resolving to test the homeopathic law they were met with a persecution that it is no part of my purpose to recall to-night. This persecution forced them into what we may call professional segregation. The toleration, nay the encouragement, extended since that time, and to-day, to the practitioners and exclusive practitioners of innumerable specialties of the vast field of medicine, was violently denied to those physicians, our professional ancestors, who sought to become therapeutic specialists. Let us keep this fact well in mind, and then we shall never lose sight of that other fact, that in electing to become a therapeutic specialist, then or to-day, no physician loses, by any logic that can be summoned, his right to be a physician at large; his heirship in every medical discovery of his own or of past ages; his right to experiment along any line that may seem wise to him, in the treatment of his sick patient. A man does not lose the right to be reckoned among physicians, with every claim to the fullest recognition and privilege that great right implies, because he chooses to cultivate as peculiarly his own, one small corner of the vast medical field. Nor does he lose his claim to share in every fruit of that field, if he offers freely to his fellow laborers in other corners of it the fruits he is cultivating in his own corner, and can prove to them the worth of what he offers. As well advance the economic insanity that the man who raises potatoes must live on potatoes exclusively; or the man who deals in wool, be denied the wear of cotton, as to claim that the man who practices a medical specialty, is thereby debarred from the fruits of the field of medicine at large. But what the laborers in the field of medicine have the right to claim, is that the aspirant to recognized ownership of a corner of that field shall first prove his knowledge of the use of tools, and of the character of the soil in which he is to work; as antecedent assurance that the fruits of his raising will be worth a place in the medical market. This

metaphor easily translates itself into a fact. No man can justly claim a right to recognition as a laborer in the medical field, who cannot first demonstrate his knowledge of those fundamental sciences on which, as on indispensable foundation, the art of medicine rests. He must have mastered the sciences of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, histology, pathology and pharmacology. No man ignorant of these things is a physician; and until a man is first a physician, he can never be accorded recognition as a medical specialist. Our medical ancestors, the first homeopathists, met these requirements fully and triumphantly. All that was known of the fundamental sciences of medicine they knew. Their right to become specialists was, therefore, clear. And we who call ourselves homeopathists to-day, have also fulfilled these conditions. All that any physician of to-day is required to know of these fundamental sciences we are taught in our homeopathic colleges. Homeopathic colleges indeed, may boast of having led those of any other school in their requirements as to the length of time a student must compulsorily spend, in acquiring his knowledge of those sciences. As physicians we have a right to our share of every fruit grown in the medical field. We are also specialists, with our own long-claimed corner of that field to keep under careful cultivation; that we may offer from it worthy fruit to the common market. Is it said that no one not resident in our particular corner has any use for our fruit? It may be true that not much of our fruit is openly in request in the public medical mart, but as it is none the less pretty constantly found on the tables of fellow-laborers whose fields neighbor ours, we are forced to the conclusion that what is not bought by day, is sometimes plucked by night. I need not perhaps interpret this metaphor to you. You have only to study the therapeutic "discoveries" chronicled in the journals of other schools than our own, to follow it easily.

We would do well to repeat, as a credo to be recalled on the eve of any labors we undertake in common, the fine and satisfying definition that our Institute Transactions bear on their title page, "A homeopathic physician is one who adds to his knowledge of medicine, a special knowledge of homeopathic therapeutics; and observes the law of similia. All that pertains to the great field of medical learning is his by tradition, by inheritance, by right."

"His knowledge of medicine." What is medicine? It is curious fact that while most of the States of the Union have laws for the regulation of medical practice, there does not exist an authoritative legal definition of medicine. Perhaps as satisfying a definition of it. as does exist, is to be found in the Standard Dictionary, in the phrase

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which defines it as "The healing art; the science of the preservation of health; and of treating disease for the purpose of cure."

"The Art of Healing"; that was a phrase dear to Samuel Hahnemann. Healing the sick; that is the work to which we are pledged by the fact that we are physicians. Not to uphold a theory, however old or new; not to dogmatize, but to heal the sick. Not, please note, to heal the sick exclusively by means of drugs. It is important to have. that clear in our minds, for we who are physicians too often are guilty of that confusion of thought which is almost chronic with the laity; the inseparableness of the practice of medicine from the administration of drugs. There are a great many worthy and successful practitioners of medicine to-day, the very least part of whose work has to do with drugs at all. This may not be a very palatable reflection to those homeopathists whose devotion to the practice of medicine does not go far beyond the exercise of their own therapeutic specialty. But it is none the less a fact immensely to be reckoned with. Nor can we escape reckoning with the fact that the greatest practical advances in the healing art for the last half century have not been made along the lines of drug-administration. Do you doubt this? Look over the records of recovery from disease made under treatment where drug administration has been reduced almost to a negligible quantity, or has been dispensed with altogether; the cures made by surgery; by diet alone; by hydro-therapy; by the various forms of manipulation; by the open-air treatment; by electro-therapy in its all but miraculous advances along the lines of high-frequency currents and vibratory stimulation; by the anti-toxins; by psycho-therapeutics. What advances has drug-administration made to compare with the advances made by these? Our brethren of the Old School return to this query an all but wailingly pessimistic reply. Said Dr. Frank Billings in his presidential address before the American Medical Association, only a twelve-month ago:

"Much as has been accomplished by experimental medicine in a comparatively brief period of time, there are vast fields to which the method has not been applied. With most of us our present methods of clinical observation enable us to do little more than name the disease. In the vast majority of infectious diseases we are helpless to apply a specific cure. Drugs, with the exception of quinine in malaria and mercury in syphilis, are valueless as cures.'

As homeopathists we are happy in being able, alike by authentic statistics and by long and varied personal experience, to give much more cheerful judgment on the usefulness to-day, and in a long past, of drugs, administered under a law. Here is our proof that as special