complete a training for the faculties that make men and nations great, as any modern college affords.

As you know, a strong current of trade sprang up between Boston and Canton. Nearly half the commerce between the United States and China, from 1810 to 1840, was in the hands of the Boston house of Bryant & Sturgis. Great family fortunes were founded by the enterprise of those boyish navigators (in whom love of adventure, no doubt, whetted the desire for gain), and the names of Perkins, Forbes, Bromfield, Russell, Derby, Sears, Parkman, Lyman and Low are inseparable from that splendid passage in our history. From China the merchantmen brought tea, silk, nankeen and crêpe. In return they gave specie, ginseng (highly prized in the Orient for its medicinal properties) and the pelts of sea otters captured on the northwest coast of America.

I regret to have to add that this thriving trade was ruined by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature. A tax on the returning cargoes, imposed in arrogant disregard of the protests of the merchants of Boston. It is my earnest hope that some day our distinguished visitors may visit our city again and be witness to our old-time activity in China's trade and commerce.

And so these mariners of Boston who had sailed their vessels to Calcutta and Cronstadt, to California and the Mediterranean, knitted together by their daring voyages the oldest and the youngest civilizations of the earth. Times have changed since the first half of the nineteenth century. The vessels in which these long journeys were made were very different from those in which you, gentlemen, crossed the ocean to honor us with your visit. But the memory of those old commercial relations has not faded out, and I am sure that you cannot visit any part of America in which you will meet a more genuine hospitality and a more sincere interest in the purposes of your investigation. It may be that in the city of Canton there still lingers some

recollection of the white traders who came there and established agencies in the city long ago,- who looked like Englishmen but were particular to explain that they belonged to a different nation. At any rate, we in Boston have not forgotten the benefits of our early Chinese trade. Our city contains many mementos of that period, as well as evidences of our interest in the great and wonderful civilization which you, gentlemen, represent. It was my privilege to accompany you yesterday on your tour of inspection and to note the grave courtesy and the high intelligence of your commentary on what you saw. May the remainder of your journey be as profitable and pleasant as we trust your stay in Boston has been, and may its fruit be a closer knitting of the bonds of friendship and understanding between two great peoples!

HEALTH MEASURES IN BOSTON. WELCOME TO MEDICAL CONGRESS, JUNE 5, 1906.

GENTLEMEN,- Once more, after an interval of fortyone years, your association holds its convention in Boston, and I, as Mayor, am privileged to throw open to you the gates of our official hospitality. It is indeed a rare privilege to greet the representatives of a profession which renders such universal service and has a personal claim on the good will of every man. Dealing with life itself, and the mysteries of birth and death which envelop it, you develop in your calling the finest virtues of our nature. When we read of the young physicians in Cuba and New Orleans, giving up their lives in experiments designed to trace the source of yellow fever, and when we remember that such instances of heroic sacrifice are the commonplace of medical history, we understand why the title of doctor is everywhere one of dignity and affection.

You come from many states and foreign countries, single-minded in your devotion to a great central idea. I trust that during your stay in Boston you will observe that the government of this city is not uninfluenced by the same idea, but feels its due responsibility for the health of the people. We provide sanitary living conditions, a pure water supply, inspection of milk and vinegar, registration and quarantine of all contagious or infectious diseases, hygienic instruction in the public schools, public baths, gymnasia and playgrounds. Any inspection of our efforts in the field of hygiene which should ignore the last-named agencies would be sadly incomplete, for as you know prevention in this matter is a thousand times better than cure.

Yet prevention is not always possible in spite of all our efforts. There has always been practice enough for

physicians and surgeons in Boston, and I believe we have had our share of the great names of your profession. One chair alone, the Parkman professorship of Anatomy at Harvard, has had four such distinguished occupants as John Warren, J. Collins Warren, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Thomas Dwight, my associate in this reception, and an honored member of the Board of Library Trustees. Indeed, the faculty of the Harvard Medical School has never been without names of national and international eminence, and the Ether Monument on the Public Garden, erected in honor of Dr. W. T. G. Morton, certainly commemorates one of the greatest discoveries ever made in the history of medicine.

Most of you, I presume, will visit our various medical colleges while you are here, and some of our well equipped hospitals, from the Massachusetts General Hospital, the oldest of all, to the City Hospital, of which Boston is no less proud than of its public library, its schools, its park system and its water works. The land and buildings of this institution represent an investment of nearly three million dollars, and its various departments contain nearly a thousand beds. Its administration, which is in the hands of a Board of Trustees, giving time and services without pay, is of the highest order, while the progressive spirit of its medical staff may be judged from the fact that the Boston City Hospital was among the first to introduce pathological study in clinical work and to use anti-toxin for diphtheria and the X-ray for diagnosis.

Other hospitals may be mentioned as deserving credit for success in special fields — such as the Carney Hospital, which for a long time was alone in receiving consumptive patients, and the Children's Hospital which has done such noble work in correcting deformities and in preserving precious young lives. But there is one hospital which is still to arrive, and one monument not yet erected. The people of Boston have in tuberculosis a foe as implacable and as insidious as the typhoid fever which scourges Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We

have recently organized our defensive forces, and laid the foundation of what I prophesy will be a great institution, and I here and now promise a monument, built by popular subscription, on any site he may select to the member of your profession who shall forge the weapon by which we may effectively check the ravages of the White Plague.

Long addresses are not to your taste, gentlemen. Let me then briefly but heartily bid you welcome to Boston. I trust that your deliberations may be fruitful in good results for suffering humanity, and that you may succeed in your efforts to raise the standard of membership in your honorable profession.