HALFORD ORATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 257, 27 September 1935, Page 2

HALFORD ORATION.

PROGRESS OF MEDICINE. ROMANCE OF RESEARCH. Professor Edwin Bramwell, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Diseases of the Nervous System, University of Edinburgh, delivered, at the Institute of Anatomy at Canberra, the annual Halford oration, in honour of the late Professor G. B. Halford, founder of the first medical school in Australia. Professor Bramwell said that two of the greatest discoveries of all time in relation to the healing art had been the discovery of antisepsis by Lord Lister and the introduction of chloroform by Sir James Simpson. Edinburgh was justly proud, of these two giants. Sir Charles Bell, by his discovery of the spinal nerve roots, had formulated a conception of tlie nervous system which in the main features stood to-day. Emphasising the possibilities opened to those who had no previous training in research, Professor Bramwell instanced Banting’s great discovery which led to the insulin treatment of diabetes. Banting, he said, went to bed one night after reading ail article in the British Journal of Surgery, and awoke in the early hours with his inspiration. In time he acquired the animals necessary for his experiments, and proved his point. It was strange that, after some of the most brilliant brains in the profession had been for years engaged with the problems of diabetes, it should be left for one who had had no previous laboratory training to find the solution and the means of saving so many lives. Clinical teachers must try to be suggestive in their teachings, Professor Bramwell proceeded. They must indicate the gaps in knowledge as they proceeded, and must throw out hints as they occurred to them, and avoid creating the impression that medicine was a closed book and that all was known that there was to know. There were great possibilities of advancing medicine in general practice, and many questions which awaited solution for those in whom the spirit of inquiry existed. After the oration, a plaque of the late Sir Neville Howse, on the wall of the Applied Anatomy Museum was unveiled by the Assistant Federal Treasurer (Mr Casev) and a tribute to the memory of Sir Neville Howse was paid by Mr Victor Hurley, an eminent surgeon, of Melbourne.