START MICROFILMED 1985 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY © GENERAL LIBRARY BERKELEY, CA 94720 COOPERATIVE PRESERVATION MICROFILMING PROJECT ~~ THE RESEARCH LIBRARIES GROUP, INC. Funded by THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION Reproductions may not be made without permission. THE PRINTING MASTER FROM WHICH THIS REPRODUCTION WAS MADE IS HELD BY THE MAIN LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720 FOR ADDITIONAL REPRODUCTION REQUEST MASTER NEGATIVE NUMBER g¢&_305 | AUTHOR: Hateh, F- W- TITLE: Sixth anniversary address... PLACE" San Francisco DATE. [37% VOLUME caLL F364 MASTER %5- NO. SRHIY NEG. NO. 305 F869 Hatch, F w SI2Hl4 Sixth anniversary address before the Sacramento Society for Medical Improvement, March, 1874, San Francisco, J. winterburn & Co., Printers, 1874. 10 p. 23cm. » Cover title. 22446B 'eHELF LIST | gu on N "at maim errwie Sup irs wats Sieve a hes FILMED AND PROCESSED BY LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720 REDUCTION RATIO 8 DOCUMENT — — meet) | A ————— SOURCE = THE BANCROFT LIBRARY sg Jz & 10 = =k» atm So sp [l20 Ey <8 = " Iz lll22 ll 14 fs MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) CLL 1 Fer 3A 1 1 1 | Retake of Preceding Frame CaO Johan y Sr . % SIXTH ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS BEFORE THE > g CH 3 S 1 "TH : ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS | | BEFORE THE | | Pacramenty Pociety for Hedical {improvement MARCH, 18741, BY F. W. HATCH. A.M, M.D. a Published by Direction of the Society. —_—————————— J SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.: § J Joseru WINTERBURN & CoMPANY, PRINTERS, © 5.2 No. 417 Clay Street, between Sansome and Battery. Iu d iE \ go 1874. [RA LIE RR SE on PTR —— 1% ‘ Eo MIS acer F369 Si2H14 -X SIXTH ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS BEFORE THE ‘Sacramento Soclety for Medical Improvement. 1 —— BY F. W. HATCH, A. M., M. D. rim smmiegYpatreen ei t GENTLEMEN — We meet to-night upon the occasion of the Se sixth anniversary of the ‘‘Sacramento Society for Medical "i i Improvement.” [ congratulate you, gentlemen of the Medi- Nn AH C/, : cal profession, upon the success which has, thus far, crowned : BZ Joncrgfl: ey N our efforts, and the bright promise of the future. We have i 7 : lived long enough to feel that we rest, at last, upon a firm 3 foundation. It is an experiment no longer, but an assured o and gratifying fact. “We have passed the period of childhood i / Sine and dependence, and stand erect in all the confidence of youth- | A ld 2 7 ful but vigorous manhood. Profiting by previous experience, : and the unfortunate fate of other medical societies, we escaped the shoals upon which they had foundered. We adopted our organization different from any that had preceded us. We set out upon a new, and perhaps, original plan, a sort of ‘‘free love” association, without the objectionable features of such communities—a medical union for the common weal, for pro- fessional improvement first, and incidentally for social enjoy- ment—a society from which clanship, and rivalries, and ¥ a ~ jealousies were to be forever banished. We met together with the determination to lay aside and bury in oblivion, the bitterness and estrangements of isolated existence, and joined hands on that eventful night, the 17th of March, 1868, in a league of fraternal sympathy and perpetual amity. Right nobly has the pledge been redeemed. of Preceding Frame 224946 PB SIXTH ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS BEFORE THE Sacramento Society for Medical Improvement. —— eae BY F. W. HATCH, A. M., M. D. | E » | GENTLEMEN :— We meet to-night upon the occasion of the 1 | sixth anniversary of the ‘Sacramento Society for Medical : Improvement.” [ congratulate you, gentlemen of the Medi- -) fe ie cal profession, upon the success which has, thus far, crowned Cl raty our efforts, and the bright promise of the future. We have hg lived long enough to feel that we rest, at last, upon a firm foundation. It is an experiment no longer, but an assured and gratifying fact. We have passed the period of childhood and dependence, and stand erect in all the confidence of youth- 4 ( ~lo LAS 2 9 ful but vigorous manhood. Profiting by previous experience, ¢ and the unfortunate fate of other medical societies, we escaped g the shoals upon which they had foundered. We adopted our | organization different from any that had preceded us. We v8 | set out upon a new, and perhaps, original plan, a sort of ‘‘free : love” association, without the objectionable features of such communities—a medical union for the common weal, for pro- fessional improvement first, and incidentally for social enjoy- ment—a society from which clanship, and rivalries, and jealousies were to be forever banished. We met together with the determination to lay aside and bury in oblivion, the bitterness and estrangements of isolated existence, and joined hands on that eventful night, the 17th of March, 1868, in a league of fraternal sympathy and perpetual amity. Right nobly has the pledge been redeemed. The objects of associations like this are two-fold: first, the cultivation of the social qualities—to draw out the finer attri- butes of human nature, which, left to themselves, are wont to dry up and wither, and become at length bedwarfed, de- formed and degenerate; and secondly, the improvement of the mind—the advancement and elevation of the profession to which our lives and energies are devoted. These two ob- jects are inseparably associated here. They constitute the very basis of our existence as a society—the pabulum which has nourished and sustained us during the past six years; and they can never be lost sight of, or disunited, without destroy- ing the grand and characteristic features of our organization. How have we succeeded? Have these two objects been kept in view? Let the history of the society answer; let the visible result attained, and the convictions of each member bear witness. From a state of isolation, we have been brought into friendly association and union; suspicion has given place to confidence; the cold and measured courtesies of daily life and occasional intercourse have been warmed in the new life of unreserved and trustful companionship; the barriers which separated individuals pursuing, independently of. each other, the same vocation, have been broken down, and man has learned to meet his fellow man as a friend and counsellor. Am I not right, gentlemen? And if so, has not our success, in this respect, at least, been commensurate with our most sanguine expectations ? This spitit of fraternity, of which I have been speaking, as existing among the members of this society, as one of its fruits, is something which the community, even its more intelligent members, cannot clearly understand. The world is so full of strife and antagonism; the walks of life are so “crowded with eager contestants for superiority; the actions of men are so generally governed by selfishness and controlled by sordid considerations, that it is difficult for those engaged in ‘other avocations to appreciate any very. different state of things among us. They witness, or are informed of its 3 results, but how it happens that among so many conflicting interests, among a score of men, each pursuing the same occupation, dependant alike upon popular favor and support, each striving to build himself up in public confidence, and earnestly working for fame and fortune, there should still be maintained a spirit of co-operation, a jealous regard for the rights and interests of each other—with no under-valuing or under-bidding—is a problem which the accepted theories of ordinary business cannot solve, and which finds no explana- tion in the logic of commerce. Only a few days ago, a gentleman of quick discernment in business, and admitted intelligence, was astonished, and not a little vexed, at my refusal to accept a fee and visit the patient of another physician, nor could he easily be made to believe that my conduct was not a gross violation of the prin- ciples of common humanity. About the same time, » gentleman, by way of complaint against a bill for obstetric services which had been presented to him—a bill conformable to the lowest rates of our Fee Bill —said to me: ** Why, sir, in our town the charge for such attendance is only twenty dollars, and yet there is no compe- tition there!” Competition! The word itself, in its common objectionable sense, as an indication of opposition, of unscru- pulous, narrow-minded and ignoble contentions among the members of our profession is unknown among the physicians of Sacramento! Competition! Look for it in the market- place and the stock-exchange; seek it in the haunts of specu- lators and the busy avenues of trade; find it steeped in bitter- ness, envy, selfishness and venom, among the charlatans and pretenders, who wear the livery and usurp the name of an honorable profession, but in the vocabulary of regular, legit- imate medicine, it has no place! There are several obstacles to the right solution of this subject, one of them growing out of the habits of thought of our people—the democratic tendencies of public sentiment and action. It is an unwillingness which every man feels to regard his neighbor's occupation better, or more honorable 4 or useful than his own. ¢« You, sir,” he will say, ‘‘ may be a more thorough student than I have been; you may know more of the anatomical construction of the body, its physiological laws, the conditions of disease and their remedy ; but in my sphere, in the business in which T am engaged, equally legit- imate, perhaps equally essential to the necessities of society, as yours, I am your superior. I charge so much per day for my time and labor ; I am content with a certain interest on the capital invested : why should you, with no visible, tangi- ble capital at stake, demand more?’ We have all doubtless heard this argument used, and exposed its fallacy. It is a fair illustration of the leveling proclivities of some minds ‘when unbalanced by prejudice. The difficulty, in all such cases, is that the public cannot readily understand the true relation of the physician to so- ciety, the real intrinsic and vital difference between the services he is called upon to render and those of any other class. These services are commonly regarded as something for sale, as a commodity having a market value regulated like other commodities, by the ordinary rules of political economy ——the supply and demand—and by that other criterion, the time engaged, the minutes and hours occupied in their ren- dering. Those who indulge in these views are able to dis- cover no distinction between gross, inanimate matter, the artificer in stone or metal, the day-laborer with his shovel or hod, and the physician whose care is the living organism, and to whose hands are sometimes intrusted the solemn issues of life and death. They forget that as the value of human life cannot be estimated, to the individual, upon a money basis, go can you not measure by any similar standard the services of him who, at the sacrifice of his own comfort and inde- pendence, often at the risk of life, steps in to assuage pain, to comfort the afflicted, to alleviate sickness, and cheer by his advice and counsel, the broken heart. Hence, as in the case just cited—and it is typical of others daily occurring— they fail to recognize or comprehend the philosophy by which our intercourse and amicable relations with each other are b governed ; the reason for our refusal to supplant a brother in practice, or underbid him in the amount which conventional usage has established to be, in a strictly business sense, an approximately just remuneration for his time and labor. This can only be approximate and formal, for, as just intimated, the true, intrinsic worth of a physician’s services is, and must ever be, graduated by the same scale upon which are delineated the appraisement of human suffering and the value of human life. The second object to which allusion has been made as the more or less definite result of associations like this—the ad- vancement of medical science —is not less important than the other: nay, it is in some respects of higher moment, for it is paramount in view of our relations to the public, and it is to this end that all our efforts tend. How far we have succeeded in making our meetings subserv- ient to this great object, individual experience may perhaps best determine. That it has not been lost sight of or neg- lected, the character of the essays read and the critical discussions which have followed, supported, as they have generally been, by individual experience and observation, af- ford conclusive evidence. These papers have been usually of a strictly practical nature; they have embraced topics with which we almost daily come in contact, and have served to invest with fresh interest the various forms of disease against which the physician in California must most frequently con- tend. Viewed in this light, I hesitate not to say that they have proved of far more value to us than many of the finely- wrought and highly scientific treatises which come to us in our books and journals, as the emanations of the old and distin- guished societies of the chief cities of the world. These all ~ have their valae. They serve to keep us up with the progress of medicine and the current literature of the profession; they enlarge our conceptions of disease, its history, pathology and treatment as taught by the great masters of our art, and afford us oftentimes new and effective weapons of defense against a common enemy ; but how seldom do they embody that prac- tical information of disease as it is encountered here at our own doors which we can make available in our every-day con- flicts at the bedside! It is on this account, I contend, that the less elaborate, possibly less scientific, yet strictly practical discussions to which we are accustomed to listen in this So- ciety, and the brief yet pertinent recital of our own expe- rience, possess for us a higher value, and are calculated to lead to more exact and profitable results. The present, gentlemen, is emphatically an age of improve- ment, of progress in medicine. Even within the professional life of more than one of those present here to night, how many changes have been wrought, what revolutions have taken place! Within this period, less than the limit of a single generation, the lancet has grown rusty on your shelves. Then antimony and mercury were its necessary and effective adjuvants, and those, too, have become so restricted in their use, so repugnant to prevailing. theories, and, possibly, so unfashionable, that few of us, in this climate at least, would venture to trust them even in their once favorite battle- ground —a case of pneumonia. Within this period of thirty years, chloroform has been discovered, and ether made avail- able for anesthesia. Within the same time, the bromides have won triumphs which place them in the very front rank in the materia medica. Chloral hydrate has been introduced and glycerin, carbolic acid, iodoform and the hypophos- phites; and many new combinations of the old standard rem- edies are presented for our use, possessing real and well- recognized advantages over the rude and simple and often- times unsavory forms to which our predecessors were restricted. Of the action of many of these older remedies new and more correct and intelligent views are entertained, giving them a wider application, and serving to mark emphat- ically the advancing precision of our profession—its gradual approach toward exactitude. Digitalis has been invested with profound interest by the recent demonstration of its beneficent action upon involuntary muscular fibre, as exhibited especially as a heart-tonic—its sustaining power over this 7 organ when enfeebled by disease or exhausting hemorrhage; the application of ergot has been extended and its irresistible power over capillary circulation made availaile in many abnormal conditions where this special action is desired; while even quinia, used and misused for so long a time, has exhibited a virtue as an antiseptic and antiphlogistic, as possessing a marvelous toxic action on the colorless cor- puscles of the blood, which, in view of the recent investigations of physiology, invests it with a profound therapeutical interest which we are only just now beginning to appre- ciate. But if in therapeutics these great results, within this brief period, have been accomplished, what can be said of the advances made in pathology, histology, and the practice of medicine; in surgery and gynecology. They are familiar to you all and need not be recapitulated. Those of us who buckled on the armor of the profession thirty years ago, may well be confounded and annoyed at the retrospect. Within these thirty years, sanitary science has shaken off the confusion and indefiniteness which encumbered it, and recog- nizing the grand fact that in the discovery of the causes of disease its most glorious triumphs were to be achieved, applied itself to the amelioration of the social condition, to the re- moval and eradication of those varied yet mysterious forces which arise noiselessly and unseen within circumscribed areas and isolated districts, or sweep over nations with the resistless power of the pestilence. Perhaps no better illustration can be given of the success which has thus far attended its efforts than those alluded to by Aitken, as witnessed in England: ‘“ Town-sewering,” he says, ¢‘ with other social regulations, has contributed to prolong human life from 5 to 50 per cent. as compared with previous rates in the same district. Agues and typhoid fevers are reduced in frequency in the same district. Since 1840 an annual mortality in English towns of 44 in 1,000 has been reduced to twenty-seven; an annual mortality of 30 has been reduced to 20 and even as low as 15.” - ee ————————— Te epg 8 The warrior crowned with laurels won upon the field of carnage, sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the humble sanitarian contending against forces of whose exist- ence he is sensible but whose subtle forms he has been unable to discover, reclaiming localities hitherto unfit for habitation, wresting from the miasma of decaying vegetation its power for evil, subduing the deadly emanations of sewers and cesspools, controling the march of epidemics and rescuing millions from the fatal grasp of the destroyer. The trophies of the one are crimsoned with the blood of victims slain; the crown of the other shall be the consciousness of human life saved, and the enduring gratitude of posterity. And yet, gentlemen, the science of medicine has been pro- nounced to be stationary, unprogressive, old-fogyish ! It is for this society to bear its share in the great work which is going on; to refute the libel; to vindicate the character of the profession; and to devote exhaustless energies to the demonstration of the great and important problem of the cure of disease. The occasion and the circum- stances in which we are placed are auspicious. We have in California a special field for investigation. Disease is often presented here in types and phases different from those once familiar in other States. We have an important duty before us in classifying and portraying in intelligible form those variations from a common type, and making known to the profession those other disease-forms peculiar to this State and climate. The State, too, is peculiarly adapted for the successful prosecution of some of the leading branches of medicine. Nowhere, so far as we can judge, do capital operations in surgery succeed better than under the conserva- tive influence of our genial climate. The fact is, I believe, universally conceded, and it is especially true of our own local climate, as has been demonstrated by the success of many grave operations which, under less favorable conditions and surroundings, would have been considered hopeless. For the pursuit of gynecological studies and the practice of this progressive art, no one who has devoted himself to 9 professional duties need be reminded of the frequency with which his attention is called to the class of diseases embraced under this title; and here, as well as in the practice of general medicine, I am warranted in saying, that we have among the fellows of this society, laborers devoted to the work——not followers only but originators——striving success- fully for the advancement of their art, and to bring it up to a higher standard of usefulness. I contend that there is no better or more efficient way of giving impulse and a proper direction to our labors, and of hastening the desirable results to which I have alluded, than by mutual consultation and co-operation in associations like ours. And here indulge me in the remark, that, in my judg- ment, the gratifying success which has thus far crowned our efforts to maintain an existence as a society, and to perpetuate the spirit of fellowship and concord which so happily prevails, has been mainly due to our peculiar form of organization, to the free, unrestrained intercourse which it invites, the in- formality of its proceedings, its social gatherings at each other’s place of business, and the pleasant interchange of hospitality which custom has sanctioned. I know there are many present who will agree with me, that it is not to any one of these several elements, but to all combined and happily associated, that we owe the stability of our society. If this be true, let us, after the injunction of the great apostle, hold fast to that which is good; let no spirit of innovation disturb its foundations, but let it continue, as in the past, to join im- provement in professional attainments with the cultivation of friendship, to mingle the ‘‘feast of reason with the flow of soul,” to blend the solid realities of business with the pleas- ant and scarcely less profitable amenities of social intercourse. *¢ Blest be the spot where cheerful guests retire, To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire.” In conclusion, gentlemen of the society, let me thank you for the kindness, the many manifestations of forbearance and friendship of which I have been the recipient during my of- ficial term. 10 To say that I consider it an honor to have been for so long a period the presiding officer of this body, would be but a cold and formal recital of an equally formal and hackneyed phrase. But there are emotions which we cannot express. There are feelings, deep in the heart, living, breathing, pulsating, which will not take form at our bidding and clothe themselves in words. Yet I should be doing myself and the occasion in- justice, did I not venture the assurance that the relations sus- tained with the society have been among the happiest of my professional life. My official connection with you, gentlemen, gratifying in itself, and worthy of an honorable ambition, has been rendered doubly so by your generous forbearance, and the manifold tokens of your kindly appreciation. ‘ Forsan et hoc olim meminisse juvabit.” ; Before taking my seat, brothers of the society, let me again thank you for the confidence you have evidenced in having so often elevated me to this distinguished position. Let the mantle of your esteem now rest upon another. Give to him the same generous support of which I have been the recip- ient, and be assured of my hearty co-operation, my earnest and zealous efforts in all that may be calculated to advance the interests and promote the welfare of this society. Pow END