Excerpt from Transactions of the Texas State Medical Association: Sixteenth Annual Session, Held at Belton, Texas, April 22, 23, 24 and 25, 1884 Enlisted as you are in the grand. And humane mission of allevi ating the sufferings of the children of earth, as the chief executive Officer of our city, I greet you in the name of our people with a cordial welcome, and gratefully tender to you our hospitality during your stay among us. Standing as your profession does, on the very pinnacle of usefulness, although I am myself but one of the vast multitude of non professionals, I know I but voice a universal sentiment when I declare that Yours is pre-eminently the profession around which cluster all the ennobling virtues and sympathies of life. In what can humanity feel a safer or more abiding interest than in that which so closely concerns their physical and intellectual well being? Who can ever forget, or learn to view with indifference the unselfish work of the faithful physician? At once the accomplished gentleman, the tried and trusted friend, braving alike the summer's heat and win ter's cold, and the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the de struction that wasteth at noonday. Who does not feel that heaven's light has yet a resting place on earth as he sees him waging his unceasing war with disease and death, alike in behalf of the lisping infant or the aged and decrepit? To him it mat ters not where he gives battle to the great destroyer; of whom it is said he taps with equal step at he palace of the rich or the hut of the poor. Whether on the field of carnage, amid the terrible music of the bursting bomb, and the piteous moans of the crushed and dying; whether around the squalid cot of the friendless pauper or the gilded couch of the millionaire, the same good, kind physician, with impartial thought, brings to his task his wealth of learning and experience, and applies his ministrations with all his mighty energy. Always so intent on relieving the sufferings of others. As to be totally regardless of his own health or safety. Thus, often with the same hand which soothe; and heals the woes of his fellows, he plants the seeds of his own dissolution. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.