AN ADDRESS,
DELIVERED AT THE FIRST MEETING OF THE
PROVINCIAL
MEDICAL AND SURGICAL
ASSOCIATION.
BY CHARLES HASTINGS, M. D.
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I CONGRATULATE you. Gentlemen, that the day for
forming a Provincial Medical and Surgical Association
has, at length, arrived. An association which,
I trust, is destined to exercise no inconsiderable
influence on the future progress of medical science.
Feeling, as I have long done, the disadvantages
under which the prosecutors of medicine, resident
in English provincial towns have laboured, in consequence
of the want of any system of co-operation,
by which their separate exertions, for the promotion
of our knowledge of the healing art, may be so united
as to render them more influential, and more extensively
useful; I cannot but hail this day, Hunc lætum
medicis diem, as one of peculiar promise; as one
likely to lead to the most important results.
When I see assembled around me some of the brightest ornaments of our profession; and when I call to mind the fact that, in addition to those now present, our association already numbers amongst its future members, a large proportion of
