was for the public good or for the interest of the profession. He was always on the side of right, a Christian gentleman, a loving husband and kind father, a firm, warm-hearted friend, a gallant soldier in the Confederate cause, a devoted and skillful surgeon on the battlefield and the hospitals in time of war, an able and faithful practitioner in time of peace, a patriotic, useful citizen, he will be missed by this entire State, by the community in which he lived and was loved and honored, his presence at the annual meetings will be missed by the older members of this Association, he is and will be greatly missed by this Board, and we beg to add our tribute to his virtues, to drop a tear upon his new-made grave and bedeck it with a wreath of immortelles. The death of Dr. Jones left a vacancy in the Board, which was promptly filled by the Governor, who appointed Dr. T. J. Bell of Tyler. The Board desires to tender its thanks to the Association as a whole and as individuals for many kindnesses, for its support and the interest manifested in the work, and pleads for a continuance of the same. J. T. WILSON, President, S. R. BURROUGHS, Vice-President, M. M. SMITH, Secretary and Treasurer, J. H. REUSS, J. W. SCOTT, J. H. EVANS, D. J. JENKINS, S. T. TURNER, T. J. BELL. Dr. J. H. McCaleb read the following report: REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON PERMANENT PLACE OF MEETING. We, your committee, report as follows: We do not recommend a permanent place of meeting, but we do recommend the establishment of a Pathological Museum and State Medical Library with a permanent home, to be known as the Permanent Home of the Association, and that a committee of five be appointed to solicit concessions from cities desiring the location of the museum and library, and to report to the next annual session of this House of Delegates. Respectfully, The report was received and adopted. E. B. PARSONS, The Chair appointed the following committee: Drs. J. W. McLaughlin, Bacon Saunders, W. R. Blailock, J. D. Osborne, J. K. Lankford. The Secretary received a communication from the Medical Recorder of Shreveport, La. Communication filed without action. A communication was read from Mrs. Kennedy, of Sour Lake, regretting her inability to attend the meeting. The Secretary was instructed to extend to her acknowledgment and the compliments of the Association. Adjourned. April 29th, 10 a. m. Reading of minutes dispensed with. The Nominating Committee made the following report: REPORT OF NOMINATING COMMITTEE. For President: J. E. Gilcreest, F. E. Daniel, W. R. Blailock. Treasurer: R. F. Miller. For Councilors: First District, S. T. Turner; Second District, P. C. Coleman; Third District, D. R. Fly; Fourth District, C. M. Alexander; Fifth District, W. B. Russ; Sixth District, H. J. Hamilton; Seventh District, T. J. Bennett; Eighth District, W. A. Rape; Ninth District, H. B. Decherd; Tenth District, B. F. Calhoun; Eleventh District, S. R. Burroughs; Twelfth District, G. B. Foscue; Thirteenth District, J. H. McCracken; Fourteenth District, M. Smith; Fifteenth District, Holman Taylor. Delegates to American Medical Association: S. R. Burroughs, J. E. Dodson, Alternate; Frank Paschal, T. C. Whitehead, Alternate; J. T. Wilson, C. M. Rosser, Alternate; R. W. Knox, W. G. Jameson, Alternate; J. W. McLaughlin, A. C. Scott, Alternate. Orator: J. D. Law. Place of Meeting: Houston. Respectfully, G. B. FOSCUE, Chairman. Balloting on the President resulted in the election of Dr. F. E. Daniel. The remainder of the nominations submitted by the Nominating Committee were elected without change. The newly-elected officers were escorted to the hall by committees. President Paschal, presenting the President-elect to the House of Delegates, said: I have the honor to present to you your new President, a man too well known to need an introduction: Dr. F. E. Daniel of Austin. Dr. Daniel said: Gentlemen: For the distinguished honor it has been your pleasure to bestow upon me, you have my profound thanks. To be President of the State Medical Association of Texas at any time is a high honor. It has been conferred annually upon one of our most distinuished members. Able, honored and beloved men in the past have presided over your meetings, and have done themselves credit and honored the Association. Their names, enrolled on our Temple of Fame, will endure so long as the Association maintains its integrity, and will forever live in the memory and hearts of its constituent members. But now that, under the stimulus of an awakened interest and reorganization, when a majority of the reputable physicians of this great State are enrolled under its new-flown banner, and thousands will annually answer to roll call, to be chosen by your votes to wield the gavel of authority and preside over your deliberations, is indeed an honor of which any man may well be proud. Indeed, the poor words at my command are inadequate to express my sense of it. I can only say that I thank you. The love of approbation is inborn in us, in all creatures, I believe. An approving conscience is itself a pleasing reward for duty done. The approbation of those you serve is very dear. If your child does an act he considers meritorious, he expects a pat, and is heart-broken if instead he be reproved. Your dog even covets your kind approbation, and is disgusted with a kick. I can not, and would not if I could, divest myself of the belief-the hope—that, in crowning the closing years of my life with this wreath of laurel, which to me comes like a benediction, you have been actuated by a realizing sense and appreciation of the services I have rendered, and steadfastly, despite discouragements, have tried to render to the cause of legitimate medicine, organization, the public health, and a pure and exalted standard of professional character. For twenty years I have done my best by word and pen to promote this cause, and, much or little, the results have been the outcome of the strong will and earnest endeavor. Doubtless some of the seeds sown have fallen in good soil and will bear fruit. This belief is very sweet to me. It must be that for this you have honored me, for I have no other merit. Gentlemen, you have known me, many of you, twenty-odd years. You know that there have been times when I have strongly antagonized the Association in certain matters, and doubtless contributed to the defeat of some of its aims. Whenever it has seemed to me that the Association has made a mistake, or, tacitly at least, sanctioned conduct or language on the part of those who should have been exemplars of better things, I have been outspoken in condemnation of such course. I will not be more specific; the older members know to what I allude. This earned for me the reputation among the unthinking of being a kicker, an element of discord, and some in their wrath went so far as to call me an enemy of the Association. Ah, those gentlemen forgot how earnestly I had worked for its upbuilding, and the personal sacrifices I repeatedly made for the sake of harmony! To allude to only one instance: I resigned the office of Secretary, which then paid $500 salary with a five years tenure, to appease a dissatisfied minority. I was elected and re-elected, but declined to serve, and the will of the majority was thwarted that there might be "harmony." It may sound boastful, my brethren-let it. But it requires a high order of courage of a certain kind to do one's duty as he sees it, at the expense of personal popularity, influence, prestige and money. This I have done. I have fearlessly advocated what I believed to be right. I have hewed to the line, regardless of the chips and of myself. I thereby antagonized influences that were powerful, losing friends and money. I have taken thousands of dollars out of my pocket by the course I have felt to be right and pursued. In all that time I had, however, the encouragement and support, moral and financial, of a host of attached and loyal friends-God bless them-the Old Guard I call them, who held up my hands and Amelik has not prevailed against me. They said I was right, and stood by me. My heart goes out in gratitude to them, one and all, and I love them. And I believe, and am happy in believing, that there is not among you today an unprejudiced man, acquainted with all the facts, who will say that I was not right. Your action today in calling me to the high office of President attests it, and I am amply repaid for what I have suffered and lost; for being misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned and even persecuted by those and their friends who fell under the lash of merited and just denunciation. Early wedded to the profession of medicine, I have devoted forty-odd years of my life to its best and highest interests. A pupil before the war of the immortal Flint and the great Fenner, I was early inspired with a high ideal of what the true physician should be. That ideal has ever been before me. Like the banner "Excelsior," it has ever stimulated me to go higher. Not "mid snow and ice" have I borne it aloft, but, through adversity and opposition and persecution, I have never lost sight of it. Like a beacon light it has ever beckoned up and on. By tongue and pen the rising generations of doctors have been cheered and urged to strive for its attainment, and I have denounced all conduct in conflict with it, quackery and shuffling in high places and in low; and so long as God gives me the strength to strive for this and other laudable ends to which so much of my life and my best efforts have been devoted will I continue to stimulate and encourage the young doctor to realize in his life and conduct the highest type of the true American physician. And here let me say that the great and grand body of learned men we call the medical profession, of which each of you is a working unit, is a power for weal or woe according to its work. Its integers degenerate into quacks sometimes. The "fakir" and patent medicine man, the advertising "regular" are most frequently degenerate physicians. They can say maybe: "Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell; fell like a snowflake from heaven to hell!" The tendency to this degeneration to quackery and disgrace must be checked. The unstable must be encouraged and strengthened. They must be brought into the fold, and incited by precept and example to a high and honorable life. And, gentlemen, not all of you perhaps have a full and realizing conception of the scope and extent of your duties or your influence, individually and collectively, for good or ill. Your all-duty is not done when you have conducted a case of illness or injury to a successful termination; brought a child safely through the shoals and shallows of childhood-past measles, mumps and diphtheria— or steered both mother and babe through the perilous straits of parturition. Your responsibility does not terminate there. Have you a conception that the organized medical profession is a strong factor in world politics, and may measurably give direction to and shape history, or contribute to changing the map of the earth? This may seem far-fetched, but it is true. You should be the mentors of every family where you practice. You should teach them sanitation, the laws of hygiene, temperance and cleanliness; how to avoid being sick. You should watch those at whose advent into this breathing world you have assisted, and see that his or her potentiality is developed; that the best in him shall come out. Watch him through boyhood and school and youth and adolescence, warning him against all those things that make for evil and decay; for the fittest survive in nations as in species and individuals. And that nation is the fittest, and |