Abstract
THE RIGHT HON. LORD DAWSON OF PENN delivered his presidential address at the centenary meeting of the British Medical Association on July 26, taking as his subject “A Hundred Years and After”. Lord Dawson traced the art of healing from the Egyptian Imhötep (circa 3000 B.C.), through the well-known Greek era, to the Christian era, where at the beginning there was a retrogression, Christianity at that time delaying rather than promoting medical progress. The greater part of Lord Dawson's address, however, was devoted to the directions along which medical knowledge has grown during the last hundred years. The Reform Bill of 1832 forced masses of the population to dwell in towns, with the result that the prevailing conditions, due to lack of knowledge of public health and sanitation, caused misery, ill-health, and discontent. During the year of the Association's birth, there was a cholera epidemic raging over England and Wales, during which the number of deaths exceeded 50,000. At that time the idea prevailed that epidemic diseases were visitations beyond our ken and control. Even then, however, great minds were working: Virchow in cellular pathology, Bernard in physiology, Bright in medicine, and Chad-wick in sanitation.
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A Century of Medicine. Nature 130, 159 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130159b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130159b0