The oration in commemoration of the ninety-first anniversary of the Medical Society of London : delivered at Willis's Rooms, St. James's, on March 8, 1864 / by J.L.W. Thudichum.

  • Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum
Date:
[1864]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The oration in commemoration of the ninety-first anniversary of the Medical Society of London : delivered at Willis's Rooms, St. James's, on March 8, 1864 / by J.L.W. Thudichum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    originality and importance, will be held up as worthy of imi- tation by a member of each, the Church, the bar, and our profession, who have drawn their information from a memo- randum, which at then request I had the honour of preparing for their guidance. Nations should cultivate intercourse, not only for the exchange of merchandise, but also for the ex- change of those higher goods which are intellectual acquire- ments, and which are the outflows of favourable national dis- positions and peculiarities. But withal they should care to preserve their own peculiarities, so far as they are either goo 1 or indispensable, that is to say, founded upon their physical nature. The past year, Mr. President, has been fruitful in stirring events, both in the sphere of politics and science. Diplo- matists have been in long and anxious travail, and have brought forth wars and blue-books. If any one should like to know why the nations so furiously rage together, he may find it by the application of the principle which I have above pointed out as the only guide in the investigation of natural things. A man must have the wish to know the right, to do the right, and to admit nothing but the right to be done ; he must have the desire to uphold the law of the state, as well as the law of nations, that is to say, the law of his land as well as the law of other people’s lands. This may be appro- priately termed the knowledge of the physiology of states. If, then, he makes his observations upon the actual condition of many states, he will find that they deviate greatly from the physiological ideal. He will investigate further, and find that some symptoms are immaterial and others essential, and that they constitute a peculiar and hitherto unknown disease, occult in its origin, changing in choice of organ principally affected, and producing great pathological changes of tissue. This disease is the morbus diplomaticus. It is characterised by its remarkable insidiousness, for a people may to-day be quite hale and healthy, and cheam of nothing but peace and pros- perity, and to-morrow it may awake and find itself in the clutches of the new pestilence. It may actually find the form of a certificate of death, in the shape of a protocol or a treaty already on the table. Then the friends send in the national Sangrados, who bleed, purify, stimulate, give tonics, and other preparations of steel, and keep the patient upon a remarkably low diet. When this process has lasted long enough, the poor patient cries mercy, and denounces the would-be doctors as lustily as the malady. Then steps in the champion of the world, the great doctor, who cures with flagellation and the alternation of the hot vapour-bath with Siberia, and says to the patient, “ I will cure you ' Only see