“A compliment to Canadian medicine”: Sir Thomas Roddick addresses the British Medical Association in Montréal

[Thomas Roddick]'s Montréal BMA presidential address reveals his awareness of the intellectual, social, cultural and political strands already identified; his speech remains a historical snapshot of the high-Victorian era in Canada.4 The BMA's decision to meet outside of Britain, Roddick made clear, was "not a personal matter, but a compliment to Canadian medicine" and one "which will serve still more to impress upon the memory of our people the year 1897, the year of the Diamond Jubilee of our beloved Sovereign Queen Victoria. In no part of her vast empire - not even its very heart - did her subjects celebrate the great event with more enthusiastic loyalty and devotion than in Canada, especially in this province, the home of the French Canadians. We Canadians of both tongues love and honour our Queen." Lord [Joseph Lister], Roddick opined, was the "most illustrious surgeon of our generation ... who stands for the rise and zenith of modern surgery. ... [A] s long as surgery is scientifically discussed [his] name cannot fail to be mentioned." Continuing, Roddick noted how antiseptic and aseptic methods of wound treatment were the "most powerful agency in the development of surgery in this century." Thus Lister's personal presence was an "intellectual stimulus and an energizing force in our deliberations." Two professional topics addressed in his lecture were medical education and licensing legislation. For Roddick, the training of medical students had changed for the better during the later 19th century as formal didactic lectures had waned, while the role of the laboratory had increased dramatically. "It is in the dissecting room, the chemical, physiological, therapeutic and pathological laboratories" Roddick stated, "that we see the change. These which before were for the most part only 'side shows' are now made to hum with the practical work which is done within them, while demonstrators are moving about busily, engaged in examining and instructing." Clinical teaching had advanced too through the introduction of "bedside teaching" as clinical demonstrators led small groups of students around hospital wards enabling them "personally to examine the case, to study the physiognomy of disease, and to make deliberate, thorough, and systematic examinations." All of this honed students' "special senses" to gain "careful habits of observation." That this might not appear novel today highlights the extent to which current medical training remains indebted to these