THE CAIRD FUND.

An unconditional gift of £10,000 for research was made to the Association at the Dundee Meeting, 1912, by Mr. (afterwards Sir) J. K. Caird, LL.D., of Dundee.

The Council, in its report to the General Committee at the Birmingham Meeting, made certain recommendations as to the administration of this Fund. These recommendations were adopted, with the Report, by the General Committee at its meeting on September 10, 1913.

The allocations made from the Fund by the Council to September 1922 will be found stated in the Report for 1922, p. xxxi. Subsequent grants from the fund are incorporated in the lists of Research Committees.

In 1921-23, the Council authorised expenditure from accumulated income of the fund upon grants to Research Committees approved by the General Committee by way of supplementing sums available from the general funds of the Association, and in addition to grants ordinarily made by, or applied for from, the Council.

Sir J. K. Caird, on September 10, 1913, made a further gift of £1,000 to the Association, to be devoted to the study of Radio-activity. In 1920 the Council decided to devote the principal and interest of this gift at the rate of £250 per annum for five years to purposes of the research intended. The grants for the year ending March 24, 1922 and 1923, were made to Sir E. Rutherford, F.R.S. The grant for the year ending March 24, 1924, was made to Prof. F. Soddy, F.R.S. The grant for the year ending March 24, 1925, was divided between Messrs. C. T. R. Wilson (£100), J. Chadwick (£75), and A. S. Russell (£75).

RESOLUTIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS.

The following Resolutions and Recommendations were received and approved by the General Committee at Toronto, and, with the exception of the first, were referred to the Council for consideration, and, if desirable, for action.

From Section B.

That the sectional meetings on the Western Excursion be regarded as a part of the official programme of the Association.

From Sections E, F, H and L.1

That the Council be requested to submit to His Majesty's Government and to the Universities Bureau that in any scheme for applying funds from the Boxer Indemnity to the provision of further facilities for higher education and research in China, account should be taken of the urgent need for the foundation of an institute in China for the purpose of education and research in geographical, economic and social conditions.

Resolutions on International Service of Biological Abstracts.

SECTION C approves in principle the proposals to establish an international service of biological abstracts as formulated by the Union of American Biological Societies, on the understanding that the biological (including systematic) side of paleontology will be included, as it already is in the Zoological Record, with which all possible continuity should be maintained; further, it suggests to the Council that eventual details of arrangements and indexing should be reported on by the Association's Committee on Zoological Bibliography and Publication.

SECTION D heartily approves in principle the proposal of the Union of American Biological Societies for the institution of an international comprehensive series of biological abstracts, and recommends the General Committee to authorise the Council to take the necessary steps to bring about the collaboration of British workers.

The Committee of Section D hopes that, in any such scheme, means may be found to preserve all possible continuity with the existing Zoological Record.

SECTION H resolves: To ask the Council to support the proposal put forward by the National Research Council, U.S.A., for the institution of an international abstracting service for all biological sciences.

SECTION I.-The Committee of the Section, which is in close touch with the Physiological Societies of both Great Britain and America, while it desired a sympathetic approach to our American colleagues in this matter, hoped the Physiological Section of the new Biological Abstracts would be arranged in co-operation with those responsible for the publication of physiological abstracts in England. The Committee desired that Prof. H. C. Bazett of Philadelphia be appointed as a member of the Publication Committee of the proposed Abstracts, to make possible this co-operation, this appointment being made in response to the request of those speaking on behalf of biological abstracts

SECTION J.-The Section of Psychology cordially welcomes efforts to arrange international co-operation in making and publishing abstracts of work bearing on psychology. Some progress has already been made by psychologists in this direction. The Section believes that there should be a considerable degree of national decentralisation.

The Section further sympathises with plans for co-operation among the different biological sciences. It should be noted, however, that the relations of psychology are not only with the biological sciences, and psychologists would especially welcome methods by which they could obtain abstracts of all papers bearing on psychology without subscribing for abstracts unrelated to it.

SECTION K resolved: That the Committee of Section K heartily supports the proposal for the establishment of an International Journal for the Abstracting of Biological Publications, and instructs its representative (Dr. Rendle) to express this view to the Committee which is considering this matter in Toronto.

SECTION M favours the general plan for a comprehensive Journal of Biological Abstracts as outlined in Science, of September 28, 1923, and presented to the Association by representatives of the American Union of Biological Societies, and accepts the invitation to appoint representatives on the Joint Publication Committee of the Union and the National Research Council of the United States.

1 The terms of the resolutions in this group did not materially differ.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

PREVENTION OF DISEASE.

BY

MAJOR-GENERAL SIR DAVID BRUCE, K.C.B., F.R.S., A.M.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION.

My first duty is to thank the General Committee of the British Association for the great honour they have done me by electing me to the post of President. I must confess I wondered at first why I had been chosen, but soon came to the conclusion that it was an honour done through me to all Army Medical Officers for the magnificent work done by them during the Great War, in the prevention of disease and alleviation of pain and suffering.

In the next place, I may be permitted to remind you that this is the fourth time the British Association for the Advancement of Science has met in Canada-first in 1884 in Montreal, in this city in 1897, and in Winnipeg in 1909.

The addresses given on these occasions dealt with the advancement of knowledge in Archæology and Physics.

It is now my privilege, as a member of the medical profession, to address you on the advances made during the same period in our knowledge of disease and our means of coping with and preventing it.

An address on the prevention of disease at first sight does not promise to be a very pleasant subject, but, after all, it is a humane subject, and also a most important subject, as few things can conduce more to human happiness and human efficiency than the advancement of knowledge in the prevention of disease.

Think for a moment of the enormous loss of power in a community through sickness. Some little time ago the English Minister of Health, when emphasising the importance of preventive work, said that upwards of 20,000,000 weeks of work were lost every year through sickness, among insured workers in England. In other words, the equivalent of the work of 375,000 people for the whole year had been lost to the State. When to that is added the corresponding figure for the non-insured population you get some idea of the importance of preventive work.

Another way of estimating the value of prevention is in terms of dollars, or pounds, shillings, and pence, and it has lately been calculated that the direct loss in England and Wales from sickness and disability amounts to at least 150,000,000l. a year. In the United States, with a much larger population, the loss is put down at 600,000,0007.

Another reason why this is an important subject is that medicine in the future must change its strategy, and instead of awaiting attack must assume the offensive. Instead of remaining quietly in the dressing stations and field hospitals waiting for the wounded to pour in, the scientific services must be well forward in the enemy's country, destroying lines of communication, aerodromes, munition factories, and poisongas centres, so that the main body of the army may march forward in safety.

It must no longer be said that the man was so sick he had to send for the doctor.

The medical practitioner of the future must frequently examine the man while he is apparently well, in order to detect any incipient departure from the normal, and to teach and urge modes of living conformable to the laws of personal health, and the Public Health Authorities must see to it that the man's environment is in accordance with scientific teaching.

It may be a long time before the change is widely accepted, but already enormous advances have been effected, and it only depends on the intelligence and education of the populations how rapid the future progress will be.

Public opinion must be educated to recognise that most diseases are preventable and to say with King Edward VII., ' If preventable, why not prevented?'

To our forefathers disease appeared as the work of evil spirits or magicians, or as a visitation of Providence to punish the individual or the community for their sins.

It is not my purpose to give a detailed account of the first strivings after a better knowledge of the causes of disease, but it may be said the new era began some few hundred years ago, when it was recognised that certain diseases were contagious.

For a long time it was held that this contagion or infection was due to some chemical substance passing from the sick to the healthy, and acting like a ferment; and then, about the middle of last century, the idea gradually grew that microscopic creatures might be the cause.

About this time it had been discovered that the fermentation of grape

juice was caused by a living cell and that certain contagious skin-diseases were associated with living fungi.

a

Things were in this position when there appeared on the scene a man whose genius was destined to change the whole aspect of medicine; man destined to take medicine out of the region of vague speculation and empiricism, and set its feet firmly on new ground as an experimental biological science. I mean the Frenchman, Louis Pasteur. It is from him we date the beginning of the intelligent, purposive prevention of disease. It was he who established the germ theory, and later pointed the way to the immunisation of man and animals, which has since proved so fruitful in measures for the prevention or stamping out of infectious diseases.

I need not discuss his life and work further. His name is a household word among all educated and civilised peoples. Every great city should put up a statue to him, to remind the rising generations of one of the greatest benefactors of the human race.

What the change in medicine has been, is put into eloquent language by Sir Clifford Allbutt: At this moment it is revealed that medicine has come to a new birth. What is, then, this new birth, this revolution in medicine? It is nothing less than its enlargement from an art of observation and empiricism to an applied science founded upon research; from a craft of tradition and sagacity to an applied science of analysis and law; from a descriptive code of surface phenomena to the discovery of deeper affinities; from a set of rules and axioms of quality to measurements of quantity.'

With one notable exception, the medical profession were not quick to see that Pasteur's discoveries of the nature of fermentation and putrefaction had a message for them. This exception was Joseph Lister, who had been for some years endeavouring to comprehend the cause of sepsis and suppuration, which commonly followed every surgical operation and most serious injuries involving a breach of the skin.

When, in 1865, Lister read Pasteur's communication upon fermentation, the bearing of the discovery on the problems which had so earnestly engaged his attention was apparent to him. He inferred that suppuration and hospital gangrene, the causes of which had so far baffled his imagination, were due to microbes introduced from the outside world, from the air, and by instruments and hands of the operator. Remember, this was years before the microbial causation of any disease was established.

To test the correctness of his inference, Lister proceeded to submit all instruments, ligatures, materials for dressings, and everything that was