What of the future?

I MUST thank you for the great honour which the Council of the Society has done me in asking me to be your President for the incoming session. I appreciate the honour greatly, though it entails certain responsibilities, not the least being this agony of words, usually called the Presidential address. Even the choice of a subject worthy of the occasion gives cause for thought. I could deal with the present and discuss some aspect of surgery in one or more of its rapidly advancing frontiers. The past has been frequently and brilliantly treated by many of my predecessors in the Presidential chair. The third alternative is to talk of the future and I have been so bold and so foolish as to rush in where my betters have feared to tread. Other attempts at prophecy are not encouraging. Indeed the only really successful example which occurs to mind is that of Jules Verne, who so clearly foresaw the invention of the submarine, but more daringly and with remarkably accuracy in 1865, exactly one hundred years ago, described a journey from the earth to the moon direct in 97 hours 20 minutes. His prophecy is dramatic in that he placed the projection site in Florida, in that the rocket was fired from