The first societies in Germany, France and Great Britain were in connection with their institutions of learning, as they were at an earlier period in Egypt and Greece. In Rome we have reason to believe that they were more independent, as the physicians used a society seal as a label for their medicine. Truly independent society organization and work is comparatively of our own day. Even in the early part of the present century, British authority was the London, Edinburgh and Dublin colleges. In our own country, previous to the organization of the American Medical Association, about thirty-six years ago, there was very little system in society work. That organization marks a new era in society usefulness. From it sprung the International Medical Congress, making a unit of medical investigation and progress of the world. We point with pride to Philadelphia as the city in which the association was organized, and to the able and determined stand our State has ever taken in sustaining and strengthening it. It has been a power for good to American medicine. It has elevated and is elevating the standard of our American medical colleges. The progress in society organization, work and usefulness in the last thirty-six years is greater than in all American medical history previous to that time. We had then a few isolated independent medical societies without unity and without influence. We have at present a society in almost every county, a State society in every State, all united in an association and wielding an influence national and world wide. Great as the benefit has been to the profession at large, it has been greater still to the individual practitioner. It has been to him a post-graduate school. In our societies A. meets B., B., C. and C., D. They compare their investigations, experiences and theories, and each is benefited. Our society enables us to know one another better. It is a true saying that, “no man is as good as his best deed nor as bad as his worst.” Our meeting in society aids us in striking the balance and makes us more united, by forming and cementing friendships. They discourage quackery, empiricism and everything that is professionally low and mean. They encourage and stimulate purity, nobility and rectitude. They are a strength to us medically and medico-legally. All that is necessary on our part to secure us these benefits and many more which might be enumerated, is to do our duty to our county, State and national societies. I will now present to you what I believe to constitute at least part of that duty. _First._ Punctuality and regularity in attendance. This increases our interest and gives the society strength. _Second._ Support with our intellect. We may not all have an equal number of talents, but he that has five should use them, and he that has one should use it, and the use of that one may be just what the society needs at the time.