THE ADDRESS IN MEDICINE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, AT DUBLIN,
Dominic Corrigan
1867
The Lancet
PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-The President of this great association has already welcomed you to Ireland. Let me feebly, perhaps, but with all my heart, echo that welcome on this the first occasion of our meeting here. My next duty is to thank you for the distinction you have conferred upon myself in requesting me to deliver the address of this day,-a distinction that would be a high one were it conferred by my own College,high if conferred by the profession of my own country, but that now comes to
more »
... me as a triple honour when presented to me by the profession of the United Kingdom. And among the bonds I that unite the three divisions of this our kingdom together, there are none stronger than those of our profession, soaring in its exercise above all sectarian discords. We know no difference of race, or creed, or colour, for every man is our neighbour; and when we remember that the Redeemer while on earth chose the healing of the sick as one of the most impressive evidences of his divine mission, we must ever hold in respect the exercise of a profession that devotes its efforts to the same object. On the walls of our old, and I hope soon to see it on our new, College Hall, stands the motto, to remind us of this. Perhaps the greatest, truest, and most convincing tribute that can be paid to the worth of the profession of medicine is this, that when members of our profession have spent a long life in its exercise,-when on their death-beds,—when the past is a dream, the present a flitting moment, and the future an awful eternity, -they have thought the best use they could make of their wealth was to leave it to hospitals and schools of medicine, where the profession they had so long followed would continue to be taught and to be practised. In our own city, we have only to look around us to see examples of this. On the north, one of the noblest piles of architecture in the city, the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital, devoted to the relief of suffering woman, was founded by a physician, Dr. Mosse, who gave his fortune and years of labour to the work. Westward is one of our greatest hospitals, Steeven's, with upwards of two hundred beds, always open to the sick, founded by the bequest of a physician of the name. In another direction is the celebrated Carmichael School of Medicine, built from the bequest of a good and great man who has only lately passed from among us, distinguished as a great surgeon and teacher, who served his country, cured the soldier abroad, the civilian at home, and who left a large portion of his wealth to promote the teaching of medicine, as the best boon he could leave behind him for his fellow-men. Eastward we see Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, one of our foremost schools of clinical medicine and surgery, built and supported mainly by a fortune left by the first. President of the College of Physicians under its present charter, granted by William and Mary. He was an Englishman, and Physician to William the Third, and that noble hospital, opening its gates to all comers in need of relief, stands a monument of charity on the part of its founder, and of reproach to us that while the Englishman, dwelling among us in the midst of all the bad passions of civil war, felt equally for all, and left this monument of charity to our people, '" we never joined in love." A better future is, I trust, brightening for us, and when it comes, I think we may truly say, that no hands have done more than those of our own profession to grow the olive of peace and charity. I could adduce other instances, but these are enough.
doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(02)73055-9
fatcat:5nfhvyyk3zdupmcf67rzwoasq4