ners in ampler halls and under far more
favorable conditions.

I hope that I may have the privilege of meeting you there, possibly may
be allowed to add my words of welcome to those of my former colleagues,
and in that pleasing anticipation I bid good-by to this scene of my long
labors, and, for the present at least, to the friends with whom I have
been associated.

APPENDUM

NOTES TO THE ADDRESS ON CURRENTS AND COUNTER
CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.

Some passages contained in the original manuscript of the Address, and
omitted in the delivery on account of its length, are restored in the
text or incorporated with these Notes.

NOTE A.--

There is good reason to doubt whether the nitrate of silver has any real
efficacy in epilepsy. It has seemed to cure many cases, but epilepsy is
a very uncertain disease, and there is hardly anything which has not been
supposed to cure it. Dr. Copland cites many authorities in its favor,
most especially Lombard's cases. But De la Berge and Monneret (Comp. de
Med. Paris), 1839, analyze these same cases, eleven in number, and can
only draw the inference of a very questionable value in the supposed
remedy. Dr. James Jackson says that relief of epilepsy is not to be
attained by any medicine with which he is acquainted, but by diet.
(Letters to a Young Physician, p. 67.) Guy Patin, Dean of the Faculty of
Paris, Professor at the Royal College, Author of the Antimonial
Martyrology, a wit and a man of sense and learning, who died almost two
hundred years ago, had come to the same conclusion, though the chemists
of his time boasted of their remedies. "Did, you ever see a case of
epilepsy cured by nitrate of silver?" I said to one of the oldest and
most experienced surgeons in this country. "Never," was his instant
reply. Dr. Twitchell's experience was very similar. How, then, did
nitrate of silver come to be given for epilepsy? Because, as Dr. Martin
has so well reminded us, lunatics were considered formerly to be under
the special influence of Luna, the moon (which Esquirol, be it observed,
utterly denies), and lunar caustic, or nitrate of silver, is a salt of
that metal which was called luna from its whiteness, and of course must
be in the closest relations with the moon. It follows beyond all
reasonable question that the moon's metal, silver, and its preparations,
must be the specific remedy for moonblasted maniacs and epileptics!

Yet the practitioner who prescribes