If, gentlemen, History be correctly defined as Philosophy teaching by examples, I do not know that I could take any subject for my Address more profitable or fitting than the Progress of Psychological Medicine during the forty years which, expiring to-day, mark the life of the Association over which I have, thanks to your suffrages, the honour to preside this year—an honour enhanced by the special circumstances attending the period at which we assemble, arising out of the meeting of the International Medical Congress in this Metropolis. To it I would accord a hearty welcome, speaking on behalf of this Association, which numbers amongst its honorary members so many distinguished alienists, American and European. Bounded by the limits of our four seas, we are in danger of overlooking the merits of those who live and work beyond them. I recall the observation of Arnold of Rugby, that if we were not a very active people, our disunion from the Continent would make us nearly as bad as the Chinese. “Foreigners say,” he goes on to remark, “that our insular situation cramps and narrows our minds. And this is not mere nonsense either. What is wanted is a deep knowledge of, and sympathy with, the European character and institutions, and then there would be a hope that we might each impart to the other that in which we are superior.”
Psychiatry in the 1880s
