Report of the fourteenth anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical & Surgical Association, held at Norwich, Aug. 19 and 20, 1846. President John Green Crosse.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the fourteenth anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical & Surgical Association, held at Norwich, Aug. 19 and 20, 1846. President John Green Crosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    upon this island, a momentous period of his life. It is a period which I may say, for my own part, I have looked forward to, with almost intense desire, from the period of my youth. I have always maintained and cherished a desire to set my foot upon the island of Great Britain, and to form acquaintances amongst its inhabitants. This purpose I have cherished throughout the whole period of my professional career, which as yet has been but short; and now, at the expiration of half a century of my life, I have happily accomplished it. In arriving on this island, there are a thousand things that strike one as being curious, wonderful, and inter- esting. One is its antiquities. We, as you know, have nothing that would here be called old. Our utmost extent goes not beyond two centuries. No one can trace his lineage back beyond a grandfather, or a great grandfather; and he who can carry it back to the first settlement of the colony, (five or six generations,) is regarded as having an hereditary title to respect, and possessing a long line of illustrious ancestors. Another thing is the immense magnitude of your great metropolis, the city at which I first landed. I was in its midst in storm and darkness; its limits seemed to be like the horizon flying from before me as I attempted to approach them. And I was only convinced that there was a limit by getting into a railway carriage to come to this meeting, and travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour. One’s emotions too, are excited, on arriving at a place which is connected with all the literature and history with which one has been conversant during the greater part of his life. Of course, if our history goes back to so short a period, it is for the most part the history of England, the history of Scotland, and the history of Ireland. In coming to Great Britain, we visit the spots that are noted in English history. Those parts of the city of