In 1870 Dr. Gull delivered the Harveian Oration before the Royal College of Physicians, and expressed himself forcibly as to the duty of preventing disease. Indeed, it is a strong article of faith with him that at some future time the office of the physician will be gone. “I cannot doubt it is on all sides imperative on us to limit, and if possible to blot out, all diseases of whatever kind. Who would assume the responsibility of letting a preventable evil fester in society, on a pretence of a knowledge of the divine purposes, or under the pretext that public morality would be thereby promoted? The duty which lies nearest to us must ever have the first claim; and it cannot but be admitted that the nearest duty each man has to his fellow is to save him as far as possible from all injury, even though that injury may arise as the consequence of his own fault. Nor will it be questioned that the cause of morality is more advanced by beneficent interference than by permitting ourselves to stand passively by whilst intemperance and vice work ruin and infect the very fountains of life.” Meanwhile Dr. Gull had attained many of the highest honours of the profession. He was one of the first graduates of London University to attain a seat on its Senate, which he continues to occupy. He was Censor of the College of Physicians in 1859-61 and in 1872-3, and Councillor in 1863-4. Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. in 1868, the Royal Society elected him to its Fellowship in 1869, Cambridge followed suit with the LL.D, in 1880, and Edinburgh in 1884. He was appointed a Crown Member of the General Medical Council in 1871, holding office till 1883, when he resigned. His successful attendance on the Prince of Wales in 1871, in conjunction with Sir W. Jenner, became the occasion of his receiving a baronetcy in 1872, and being made Physician-Extraordinary to the Queen. The evidence given by Sir William Gull before the Lords’ committee on intemperance, in 1877, has often been referred to as one of the most valuable aids to temperance that a medical man has rendered. He distinctly assigned a subordinate value to alcohol as a medicine, and expressed his belief that its value lay chiefly in its action on the nervous system as a sedative, not as a stimulant. He further stated that a very large number of people in society are dying, day by day, poisoned by alcohol, but not supposed to be poisoned by it. In the case of inebriates, with most patients he would not be afraid to stop the use of alcohol altogether. He sees no good in leaving off drink by degrees. “If you are taking poison into the blood, I do not see the advantage of diminishing the degrees of it from day to day.... I should say, from my experience, that alcohol is the most destructive agent that we are aware of in this country.”