Gentlemen: It is obviously the first and at the same time the most pleasant duty of your chairman, to congratulate the members of this Section on the fact, that the American Medical Association, at its forty-third annual meeting decided by an almost unanimous vote, to "omit the word physiology from the title of the Section on Practice of Medicine, and to form a new Section on Physiology and Dietetics." The wisdom of this action admits of no doubt, for the creation of this new Section enables those more especially interested in our branch of the medical sciences to present and discuss the results of their labors in this field under conditions much more favorable and satisfactory than could possibly be afforded while physiology was coördinated in the same Section with a branch, in which the usually superabundant, important and practical matters presented for consideration were apt to encroach upon those