A very significant feature of the age has been the extraordinary development of associations devoted to scientific discussions and the publication of medical literature and journals. The formation of medical societies, especially in the United States, has been quite active. But few counties are without a medical organization, referred to as “The ... County Medical Society.”
The American Medical Association was established by Dr. Nathan Smith Davis in Philadelphia fifty-two years ago (1847). The first two years no meetings were held, but since then regular annual meetings have been in progress, the place of assembly being decided upon by a majority vote of its members. It has met in the city of its birth five times, the founder has been elected president twice, and is still (1900) in active practice at the age of eighty-two. He has attended all its meetings held in various cities from Boston to San Francisco.
The first medical journal in this country appeared in New York, 1797. It was called “The New York Repository,” was published quarterly, and managed to reach its twenty-third edition. Fifty years ago there were about twenty journals published in the United States. At the end of the century there are two hundred and thirty.
In 1810 there were six hundred and fifty students of medicine in America, and one hundred graduates. At the present writing about twenty thousand medical students are enrolled in our various colleges, and during the spring of 1899 about three thousand five hundred received the degree of M. D.
STARLING MEDICAL COLLEGE AND ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL.
The original branches, practice of medicine, surgery, obstetrics, physiology, anatomy, therapeutics, and chemistry, have been subdivided and specialized. Among the chief of these specialties are gynecology, which treats of diseases of women; pediatrics, which treats of diseases of children; dermatology, which treats of diseases of the skin; ophthalmology, which treats of diseases of the eye; laryngology, which treats of diseases of the throat and larynx; otology, which treats of diseases of the ear; neurology, which treats of diseases of the nerves; medical jurisprudence, which treats of the relation of medicine to law; pathology, which treats of diseased tissues and organs; bacteriology, which treats of the microbes; and physical diagnosis, which treats of the art of discriminating disease by means of the eye, ear, and touch. The nucleus of the teaching regarding the latter subject is due to the efforts and observations of Corvisart, of France. He was the first to ascertain the diseased areas of the lungs, by tapping on the chest with the fingers, and listening to the pitch of the note thus elicited. A low, dull note indicates that the lung is solid, as in pneumonia; a flat note that fluid is present, and so on. By placing the ear to the chest wall, sounds in health and disease are heard, which vary in intensity, degree, etc. Laennec discovered by accident that this method was greatly improved and the sounds more distinctly heard if a cylindrical tube was interposed between the ear and the chest wall. The outcome of this principle is the stethoscope.
DR. NATHAN SMITH DAVIS, OF CHICAGO.
The name of Pravaz, the Lyons surgeon, has been perpetuated by the hypodermic syringe which he devised. The employment of suitable drugs in this instrument is the method par excellence for relieving pain. With it drugs can be injected into unconscious patients. Suicides who refuse to swallow emetics can have their stomachs emptied most effectually of their contents by a hypodermatic injection of apomorphine.