President’s Address [excerpt]

     The law regulating the practice of medicine has been so amended as to place the examination of all applicants in the hands of the State Board. The State Board is further empowered to establish reciprocal relations with other State Boards of Examiners, and to issue certificates without examinations to surgeons of the army and navy and marine hospital service. While the present policy of the association has done much more for the profession than those of us who live in the centers of population know and while the stability of the organization has been the chief factor in attaining this end, yet it seems to me that the adoption by the Board of some plan by which an applicant’s knowledge of the art along with the science of medicine could be estimated, would be productive of good results. There is a great demand today for men who can do things and it is a source of congratulation that few people in the State live beyond the reach of skilled medical and surgical aid. Successful laparotomies and scientific accouchments are not at all rare in the remote rural districts. I knew two young men in the rural districts to do a laparotomy on a negro shot in the abdomen; they stitched up two perforations of the stomach while an attendant fanned the flies away. The negro made an uneventful recovery. It was said that the wound was identical with the one that killed President McKinley, and I have often thought of the anguish that might have been spared the American nation if these two boys from the hill country of Alabama, could have been in the city of Buffalo on that fateful day.