these matters, stated at an ambulance meeting at Wigan some time ago, there could be no doubt that as many as 100,000 accidents, large and small, occurred throughout the mining districts of this country in one year. Surely, then, with facts such as these before us, so much pain and suffering to alleviate, there is abundance of good work to be done by proper means of carriage for the injured, as brought to our notice by Mr. Furley. It must be obvious to every one, from the facts and figures I have quoted, that this subject is one largely affecting the national health and the national wealth, and especially the health and well being of a class of men whose toil and whose labour contribute so much to the comfort and wealth of the nation. I believe it would afford much pleasure to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to know that this Exhibition had been the means of assisting in promoting work calculated to relieve pain and suffering among our mining population, by assisting in the introduction of well-regulated means for the carriage of the injured everywhere among our collieries and ironworks. I would ask, then, everyone here to examine for themselves the ambulance exhibits, and to exert their influence to foster and extend this good work. I would particularly urge upon the owners of royalties in mines that they should largely contribute, and unite with those who work the mines, to provide proper ambulance material for the mining districts. I hope the day is not far distant when this work of the St. John Ambulance Association, the safe carriage of the sick and injured-will take the same place in the hearts of the people of this country as that other noble work, which has done so much during the past sixty years to save life and relieve suffering on our stormy coasts-the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. I ask you all to assist Mr. Furley and the St. John Ambulance Association in making more widely known this humane and christian work, for in reality it is, if only the public were made aware of it, A National Life Brigade upon the Land.

The CHAIRMAN said he might venture to hope that all who had heard the paper and address had been as much gratified as he had himself, for he must reckon himself as one of the audience, his office of President carrying with it no pretence whatever of being a leader in relation to this subject, or even to be well acquainted with it. He had to confess, like possibly some who had listened to the addresses, that he had no familiarity with ambulance work. His occupation in his profession had been of a totally different kind, and he had been so entirely engaged in it, that he had had no opportunity or time whatever to study the very useful facts which had now been placed before them. There was, in fact, only one direction in which he had studied them, namely, that as surgeon to a large hospital he had constantly seen the need there was for a better transfer of patients, whether sick or wounded, into the hospital wards; and he could, of course, from his own experience, tell numbers of instances similar to those which had been mentioned. In apology for himself and others who had to do with hospitals, he must remark that, when they looked at the difficulties which existed, they could not but observe that as the difficulties existed everywhere so must the remedies be everywhere. They might have arranged a system of ambulance close by, but the patients in large hospitals were brought from the narrowest streets and the most distant villages, and from every part of the country, and it needed the enterprise and co-operation which was shown in a society such as this, to be able to take in hand a work of which the design would be, as they had developed it, to spread the system of ambulances far and wide to every village in the kingdom, and to bring the knowledge of its utility and its application within the range of the whole community. The work was not onehalf, nor yet one-tenth, accomplished when an ambulance was established even in that great city, whilst they did not exist in places 10, 15, 100, or 200 miles off. The Association, however, had shown its intention to work this affair

completely and successfully, and he would recommend it to all present as an admirable instance of that which they might justly boast of in this and other civilised countries, namely, that if you only showed to certain persons the way in which they might be useful, and how they might exercise themselves, not subject to any governmental or central control, in doing good, it would surely be done. No example of this truth could be better than the one now illustrated. He must not be held, however, to imply that work of this kind could not be done except by purely voluntary agency. The work of the army was, with the whole discipline of the army, perfect and complete in itself. The work of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, as had been illustrated to-day, was also admirably complete under the central governing body; yet, as he knew pretty well, having been a member of the Commission, the work of which, with regard to infectious fevers, had one of its issues in the facts mentioned to-day, that work was done mainly by those who gave themselves to it as a voluntary task and duty-not by defined and paid officers of any kind, but by men like Mr. Barrington-Kennett, Mr. Galsworthy, Sir Edmund Currie, and Deputy-SurgeonGeneral Bostock, who, with the purest philanthropy and the most devoted sense of duty, had worked at this matter, so that the work both of the Society and that which was done under the Metropolitan Asylums Board might be thoroughly commended. He might add, however, that this method of the transfer of the sick to infectious hospitals was but a very small fragment of the great work which was being done. The management of the fever and small-pox hospitals in London might, to the best of his belief, be taken as a model by every country in the world. They had heard how valuable this system had been in Liverpool, and he must say he never passed through Hyde Park without admiration for the ambulance arrangements made there, chiefly at the instance of Mrs. Priestley, the result of which had been a very great diminution in the seriousness of accidents to which that part of London was most exposed.

All the officers of the staff of St. George's Hospital could tell, as Mr. Harrison had already told, how the injuries they had to deal with became less in proportion as the ambulance system was developed in the Park. He would venture, then, to urge on all present, and ask them to urge on those who were not present, the duty of helping in every way they could in the extension of this important work of first help for the sick and wounded. He might as well say that in doing it, although he was rather against going down to a lower motive, there might be an excellent selfish one as well. He, who in these matters had learnt to help others, had also learnt how to insure the best help for himself. There was a story which he believed was authentic, concerning one of the most brilliant of his predecessors at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Perceval Potts, the teacher of John Hunter. He was thrown from his horse on London bridge a century or more ago and fractured his leg. The people were as benevolent then as they are now, or nearly so, and rushed to help him, but with his whip he cut this way and that, and drove them off, and they thought he was mad. He cried out, "Send me a shutter," that being the best litter for him at that time, and then he quietly shifted himself on his back to the shutter, and had himself carried home with his simple fracture not rendered compound. That would illustrate the benefit every one might secure for himself if he would learn how to help his neighbours in such matters. Finally, he would balance the instances of selfishness rewarded, by reminding his audience how completely the ambulance work might be the exercise of charity. Few things, indeed, were there in which charity could better exercise itself than in this. There was ambulance work or first help in that incident which led to the giving of a command the most general and most unconditional where a man finding another wounded by the roadside poured in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and took him to the inn. That was an admirable example of what might be ambulance work, and the command was, “Go thou and do likewise."

Sir E. LECHMERE, M.P., then proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman. There was no doubt the interesting papers they had heard, and the discussion which had succeeded would do much good, as it would make the work of the association known; but he believed that nothing would do so much good to promote interest in ambulance work, and to convince the medical profession throughout England and other countries of the reality of this work, as the presidency and cordial support which Sir James Paget had given to it. In the first initiation of this work the association sought the advice and sympathy of the medical profession, who had most freely and liberally given it, and from that moment they had tried and determined to deserve their confidence. To some extent they had done so, but every one would allow that the greatest proof that they had at last succeeded in obtaining the acme of their hopes, was the fact of having secured as the president on this occasion one so distinguished as Sir James Paget. He hoped that meeting would produce many good results, and amongst others that it might lead to the establishment of such a permanent museum in connection with ambulance work has had been suggested in Mr. Furley's paper.

Sir EDWARD PERROTT seconded the vote of thanks, which was carried unanimously, and the proceedings terminated.