What, then, can hinder us from devoting ourselves to the rational, the scientific investigations which it is the object of our Association to institute? Shall we say that we have no leisure for these pursuits? that the practice of our profession and the cares of life, too much engross our attention for us to engage in so useful an exercise as this which I am proposing to you? Has it not been said by the very highest authority on this question, that " the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath, no question, many vacant times of leisure, while he expecteth the times and returns of business, (except he be either tedious and of no dispatch, or lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be better done by others:) and then the question is, but how those spaces and times of leisure shall be filled and spent; whether in pleasures or studies."
Gentlemen, you will, at any rate, admit, that the objects I have thus hastily introduced to the notice of the meeting, are worthy of deep meditation. The contemplation of them appears to me, indeed, to open to us, a vast and unbounded prospect, and to beget high and lofty thoughts of our future proceedings. I may be sanguine in my expectations, but I cannot help indulging the gratifying, the cheering, the delightful thought, that, if we engage in this undertaking, as we are bound to do, by the obligations which our profession imposes upon us, with the zeal and alacrity of men anxious for the good of mankind, the Association must be of some use; must have a direct tendency to extend the empire of knowledge, and to increase our power over disease.
" Valeat quantum valere debet."
