1885] enactment that no one should practise as a dentist until he had been duly examined by one or more members of that body. The negotiations failed, although the support of the Government had been obtained in the person of the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham. A second and more successful attempt was made in 1855, and in the following year the College was memorialised upon the subject, the Odontological Society was founded, and the British Journal of Dental Science was published. The College of Dentists of England was established about the same time. It was an independent organisation, whose promoters desired that dentistry should be free from any association with the Royal College of Surgeons, and it proceeded to examine candidates and grant licences in dentistry. It existed for seven years, and amalgamated in 1863 with the Odontological Society. As an institution it is now defunct, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England fills its place. The Odontological Society is a society of qualified dentists Nursing. Medical Journalism. [1865-1885 established for purely scientific purposes. The dentists gradually obtained a course of sound technical instruction verified by examination, for in 1858 the Dental Hospital of London was founded, and in 1860 the Royal College of Surgeons began to examine candidates for a licence in dental surgery. This course of instruction was purely voluntary at first, nor was it rendered compulsory until 1878, when a special Act of Parliament placed dentists upon the same footing as other members of the medical profession. It established a register of those qualified to practise their art, and it prohibited unlicensed persons from assuming any title implying that they were qualified to practise dentistry. In 1880 the British Dental Association was incorporated. The Association consists of the qualified dentists of the United Kingdom, and the objects for which it is established are the promotion of dental and the allied sciences and the maintenance of the honour and interests of the dental profession. The great improvement in nursing is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable developments in connection with the history of medicine in our own times. Taking its rise in the Crimean War, with the laudable object of mitigating the horrors of a campaign, nursing rapidly became a profession. Contined for a time to the military hospitals, it spread to the civil institutions of the country, which then became the training schools from which private individuals and the poor in their own homes might obtain the services of highly-qualified and often of socially-gifted women to perform the various duties of the sick-room. The decay of hatred is as marked in the medical profession as it is in the political world. Medical men used to entertain the most violent animosity, not only for each other, but even for those who endeavoured to make their views known to the rest of the profession. Teaching was almost entirely oral at the beginning of this century, and medical journalism was then at a very low ebb. The College of Physicians, the Provincial Medical Association, and a few societies, tried to diffuse knowledge by the publication of "Transactions," and as early as 1781 a Society of Physicians who met together occasionally to converse on medical subjects agreed to set on foot a monthly publication, which should contain an account of new medical books and useful discourses in physic, whilst it was at the same time a repository for original essays. This venture was continued quarterly until 1790, and it was known as the London Medical Journal. The new era of medical journalism began on Sunday, 5th October, 1823, when Thomas Wakley published the first number of the Lancet. Its beginnings were by no means creditable. There were doubtless plenty of abuses to combat, for the large hospitals were practically close boroughs as regards the staff appointments. The medical officers in each were recruited from apprentices who had paid fees of £500 to £1,000 to the physicians and surgeons on the tacit understanding that they should have the reversion of their places; but the means adopted by the Lancet to correct abuses were most unjustifiable. Personal attacks, nicknames, and gross abuse were so often employed that the journal was tabooed for a time even by those members of the profession who were sufficiently enlightened to understand the true value of this new means of diffusing knowledge. Quarterly journals then appeared, but, with a few useful exceptions, all the quarterlies are now extinct. The weekly journals have continued, and, by a slow process of evolution, have become transformed into their present highly respectable shape. Monthly journals, too, have arisen in great numbers, for their growth has been stimulated by the increasing tendency towards specialisation which has marked the progress of medicine. We thus bring to the year 1885 the history of medicine in this country. The ranks of the medical profession contain, as they always have done, men of the very highest scientific attainments, who devote their lives to the assistance of their fellows irrespective of creed or of nationality; empirics, or men who neglect and disclaim science; tradesmen, for whom the profession is a more or less lucrative business; and quacks, who dishonestly make physic a means of preying upon the credulity and fears of their fellow-men. Quacks, indeed, become fewer as time progresses and knowledge increases, but with keener competition the number of the tradesmen is augmented. Education has a constant tendency to exterminate, or rather to hinder the development of, the empiric or mere pretender to physic; but the scientific physicians daily increase in number, though the best minds in the profession are too often seduced to the study of pure science. JONES. 1885. THEORY and practice in real life actually work in parallel O. G. courses, the one rarely far in advance of the other, each unable to expand its limits without encroaching on those of its neigh- ing, 1815. bour. Their correlation is well marked in the history of engineering. Electrical engineering is dealt with elsewhere (p. 783 seq.), but the causes and general direction of the advance in mechanical and civil engineering may be suitably discussed here. Mechanical engineering is more than a branch of the subject. It is essentially the application of mechanical principles to the construction of engines for the transmutation of energy, or of machines for its transmission. We may apply electricity, heat, water-power, or any other source of energy, and find ourselves continually requiring the training of the mechanician before we can realise our aims. The great advances in constructional processes in this country may well be studied with the development in our knowledge of the physical sciences. We may illustrate this first in the case of the principle of the conservation of energy (pp. 258, 704). Its recognition has been but gradual. At the beginning of the century some few leading physicists had begun to realise that a disappearance of energy in one form was simultaneous with its appearance in another. Rumford formulated the doctrine with reference to heat as a form of energy. Davy upheld it, and successfully combated the caloric theory then generally accepted. Joule, Helmholtz, and Lord Kelvin have since completed the work (p. 711), and placed the dynamical theory of heat so that succeeding experiments never fail to strengthen its position. The energy stored up in coal is converted to heat energy in the process of combustion, and transferred, with various losses, to steam. This is made by suitable engines to yield up some proportion of its heat energy for conversion into mechanical motion. More energy than the coal supplies it is impossible by any device to obtain as energy of motion, and engineers, with a clear realisation of this principle, have abandoned all schemes for the solution of the perpetual motion problem. A physicist, therefore, criticises all steam-engines or other sources of power in the light of their physical efficiency. So much energy is supplied to them in one form; what percentage is given out in another desired The Con servation of Energy. |