The spirit of judicial investigation, of patient, untiring,
intelligent labor, now everywhere seen and felt in the ranks of our
profession, is rapidly evolving from empiricism, theory, conjectures and
partially proved truths, the substantial and enduring basis of a scien-
tific medical profession, and the more this spirit of judicial inquiry pre-
vails, the more antagonism melts away and the closer the lines of inves
tigation converge, until at last they unite, the same broad path open-
ing before all. No sooner is science enlisted in any investigation than
at the right time, when the people are prepared to receive and under-
stand the great truths revealed, the men and the means are forthcom-
ing to develop them, make them understood, and to utilize them in the
work of science and for the public good. Men who have amassed
riches by honorable labor place their wealth at the disposal of- science,
and observatories are erected and furnished with instrmnents; hospitals
are built and laboratories constructed with every device which science
<»n suggest for practical study. The attention of the medical world is
called through Huxley, and Tyndall, and Koch and others, to germ life
as the seed of- disease, and forthwith one of New York's wealthy men
places his thousands at the disposal of science, for the construction of
a laboratory for the more careful study in this department, hoping that
through the culture and study of the lower forms of germ life the
cause and cure of various forms of disease can be reached. Upon the
heels of the erection of the Carnagie laboratory in the grounds of Belle-
vue Hospital, comes the gift of half a million of dollars to a medical
college, for the erection and furnishing buildings for its work, and
another gift, by husband and wife, to the same institution, of a mag-
nificent building, richly endowed, to be used as a maternity, serving a
double purpose, that of a great and much needed charity and a practi-
cal school of midwifery. 