The generations of the last two centuries have been renowned above all others for those discoveries and inventions which minister to the wants of suffering humanity. The physical sciences have always been slow in their development, yet with these the art of healing is most intimately connected. It is sometimes said that little progress has been made in literature during the last two thousand years.

Modern authors do not surpass the ancient classics, modern orators have not equalled Demosthenes and Cicero, and the volumes of modern poets are laid aside for those of Homer and Virgil. Euclid, who flourished three centuries before Christ, has not been excelled by geometricians; astronomers have improved little on La Place, and law has improved but slowly since the days of Blackstone and Mansfield.

Medical science, however, has advanced with rapid strides in our day, diminishing suffering and greatly lengthening the period of human life. Statistics show that longevity has increased in Paris, since 1805, seventy-one per cent., and that while the annual deaths of London in 1780 were one in twenty of the population, in our day they are reduced to one in forty. The great increase of hospitals, infirmaries, and dispensaries, during the last quarter of a century, has evinced decided progress in the right direction, exhibiting on the one hand a thoughtful generosity among the wealthy, and timely relief from the woes that afflict the indigent on the other. But while much was accomplished for the blind, the deaf-mute, for eye and ear patients, there still existed a very numerous class of ruptured and crippled for whose relief no institution had been founded. In 1804 a society was formed in London for the relief of the ruptured, which gave advice and trusses to poor persons properly recommended. Several have since sprung up from this example, but it is others believed that the citizens of New York have the honor of founding the first institution for the gratuitous and thorough treatment of hernia and all classes of orthopedic surgery. The prime mover in this laudable enterprise was Dr. James Knight. In 1842, when public clinics were first introduced in our medical colleges, Dr. Valentine Mott, Professor of Surgery in the University Medical College of New York, appointed Dr. Knight, who had devoted much attention to the construction of surgical apparatus and the treatment of deformity, to take charge of the orthopedic branch of the Institution. Vast numbers of poor cripples and ruptured persons applied for treatment, and Dr. Knight supplied not a few of them with surgical apparatus at his own expense, which drew heavily on his slender means, but which nevertheless greatly enlarged his practice, and became in the end a source of wealth. At a later period Dr. Knight became one of the visitors of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and on these visits he often found helpless cripples whom he believed might have been made useful and self-supporting if they had received proper treatment in early years. Dr. Knight had long felt the necessity of a society to undertake the improvement of this class of sufferers. He at different times issued circulars to the benevolent of the city, setting forth the subject, urging the importance of an organization, but received no response. He next prepared a paper which he presented to the principal surgeons, the mayor the and to several other distinguished gentlemen, who gave it their signatures. With this encouragement he next sought the co-operation of Mr. R. M. Hartley, the corresponding secretary of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. This thoughtful philanthropist had long felt the necessity of such an institution, but had been deterred from any movement in that direction from want of professional aid. He instantly recognized in Dr. Knight the aid he had so long needed, and on the 10th of April, 1862, he brought the subject before the managers of the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, and introduced the Doctor to that body. After due consideration, the Society was, on the 27th of March, 1863, incorporated under the act of 1848.