Address / by Freeland Fergus, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., F.R.S.E., President, delivered before the Society on 4th November, 1908, at the opening of Session 1908-1909.

  • Fergus, A. Freeland (Andrew Freeland), 1858-1932.
Date:
1908
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Address / by Freeland Fergus, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., F.R.S.E., President, delivered before the Society on 4th November, 1908, at the opening of Session 1908-1909. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to imagine any one better fitted for the post than he. A most modest and retiring man, in his own line of life he was profoundly erudite, and he was held in high esteem by all who had the privilege to know him. It is no easy task to occupy the Chair of a Society which has such an honourable history and such tradi¬ tions, nor is the burden lessoned by the thought that this year we reach another important epoch in the Society’s career. We have come, as it were, to the parting of the ways. We now no longer occupy premises conjointly with our friends the Society of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, and henceforward new responsibilities, chiefly financial, will have to be undertaken by the Society, which I trust it will be well able to meet. I sincerely hope that the future of the Society will be as prosperous and as successful as the past, and that it will continue, for many years to come, to do useful work in the city of Glasgow. That, however, depends upon the members of the Society, upon their co-operation with those whom they appoint from time to time to its board of management, but I feel sure that if there is a hearty and cordial effort made generally by the members to promote the great ends for which it exists that there will be an advance and not a retrogression. Undoubtedly there have been considerable changes, even within my own recollection. These were perhaps inevitable, but they have considerably altered the character of the Society, and changed its scope of operations. It was called into being for the study of the mathematical and physical sciences, and for the study of the practical application of physics and chemistry to the arts and manufactures. It had a definite aim and that was, the propoga- tion of technical knowledge amongst its members. It was for many a day, in a very special sense, the meeting place where men of scholarship in these departments of knowledge were brought into •contact with their practical brethren. In recent years the scope of the Society’s work has been much expanded. Technical societies have grown up all round. In the old days if a man dis covered something new in mechanics, the science of machines, there was practically no other place at which he could exhibit his invention in Glasgow than at one of our meetings. In the same way, if an industrious man had invented some new process in dye¬ ing or in bleaching the likelihood was that he would also com¬ municate it to the Philosophical Society. It was, in these days, a