A familiar instance of susceptibility to septic influences, after a large loss of blood, will occur to every obstetrician who has learned, from painful experience, how often metritis and septicæmia follow excessive post-partum hemorrhage. In an address as brief as this needs must be, it would be impossible to touch upon all the conditions which may demand, or which may forbid a resort to the knife; but there is another and better reason for the omission than want of space, and that is our want of exact knowledge. Especially is this true of those constitutional conditions whose existence we but too painfully realize, and of whose essence we know so little-diatheses. Using the word in its broadest sense, we may define a diathesis as any condition, varying from the normal standard of health, which disposes to the development of disease in the presence of trivial exciting causes. Under this name we include, therefore, a multitude of latent tendencies to disease, either inherited, or the result of external conditions; tendencies which may perhaps never manifest themselves by any outward sign, and yet, under the operation of some fortuitous exciting agency, may feed the spark, and develop a disastrous conflagration. Other conditions, which we habitually include under diatheses, are themselves diseases. Scurvy, for instance, arising under conditions of deprivation of fresh vegetable and animal food, and of prolonged exposure, conjoined with excessive fatigue. The scrofulous habit; engendered in children by bad feeding, leading to indigestion and mal-assimilation, by confinement in damp, ill-ventilated rooms, etc. Tuberculosis; naturally following struma, and appearing in connection with the breaking down, transportation, and deposition, in new sites, of imperfectly-formed products of inflammation. Syphilis; both in its inherited and its acquired forms. A diathesis may be transient or permanent, retrogressive or progressive; it may be so marked in its manifestation as to force its recognition upon even the most careless observer, or it may be so obscure as to elude the most painstaking scrutiny; and yet, however faint the previous indications of its presence, it may respond immediately and disastrously to an injury, or to the touch of the surgeon's knife. In acknowledging our ignorance regarding the precise nature of such variations from the normal standard of healthy tissue, as we believe must exist in diseases like scurvy, scrofula, tuberculosis, and others equally familiar, to say nothing of the many unnamed conditions, whose distinctive symptoms have not yet been adequately studied, we recognize the existence of wide uncultivated fields, rich, no doubt, in promise, to future investigators. A more perfect animal chemistry, a more thorough histology, and a deeper search into the subtle possibilities of pathological change, will doubtless throw many a ray of light into regions where the darkness is now too dense for our vision to penetrate. To these fields coming generations of physicians will surely be attracted, in the faith that, as man advances in knowledge, and approaches somewhat nearer to the comprehension of the perfect wisdom which designed the wonderful physical organism through which he is brought into relation with the world around him, he will be enabled to solve more and more of the difficult problems which now perplex and baffle us, and will gradually raise medicine to a position more nearly akin to that now accorded to the exacter sciences. MINUTES OF THE SECTION ON PRACTICE OF MEDICINE, MATERIA MEDICA, AND PHYSIOLOGY. TUESDAY, May 3, 1881. THE Section on Practice of Medicine, Materia Medica, and Physiology met in Mozart Hall at 3.15 P. M. In the absence of the Chairman, Dr. WM. PEPPER, of Pennsylvania, the Section was called to order by the Secretary, Dr. T. A. ASHBY. On motion, Dr. J. A. OCTERLONY, of Kentucky, was made temporary Chairman, the Chairman, Dr. PEPPER, subsequently taking the chair during the meeting. Dr. W. C. WILE, of Connecticut, read a paper on Blood-letting as a Therapeutic Measure in Pneumonia. Dr. J. S. LYNCH, of Maryland, opened the discussion on this paper. He thought Dr. WILE had made a mistake in diagnosis, as his cases were evidently croupous, not catarrhal pneumonia. Dr. WILE, he said, was probably mistaken in attributing the rapid recovery of his cases to bleeding. He hoped he would never see the day when the profession would return to the sanguinary method of treating pneumonia. Dr. WHITAKER, of Ohio, thought too earnest protest could not be made against this revival of venesection. There could be no justification of blood-letting in pneumonia, except upon the theory of a local inflammation. Pneumonia is not a local inflammation. This is proven by the fact that it differs in its temporal and special relations with local inflammation, like bronchitis. Dr. N. S. DAVIS, of Illinois, said he had practised medicine for nearly half a century. For fifteen years he had practised ven |