The Conquest of Pain

BEFORE beginning my address I have to record with regret the deaths during the past year of two members of the Hospital Staff. Mr. James Andrew Craig died last December in his 87th year. Mr. Craig was the senior member of the Honorary Consultant Staff, having been appointed to the visiting staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital before it was moved to the present site in 1903. He gave many years of devoted service to the Royal until his retirement in 1937. During the war years he returned from retirement to his former post at the Hospital to release his junior colleagues for war service. In 1913 he was appointed Lecturer in Ophthalmology and Otology at Queen's University and his special clinical skill and teaching ability were recognised by the University in 1951 when he was awarded the honorary degree of M.D. His quick wit and incisive speech were not always appreciated by the more garrulous of his patients, but he will be best remembered by the skill of his surgery and the kindliness of his nature. Mr. William Marshall Swan was one of the leading dentists in Belfast, where he had practised for more than fifty years. He was appointed Honorary Dental Surgeon to this Hospital on the 8th January, 1920. This appointment, with that of Dr. J. S. O'Neill, made up the original staff of the Dental Department. The following October Mr. Swan was appointed Lecturer and Examiner in Dental Surgery to the Queen's University. This was one of six appointments made to start the Dental School at the University. The Dental School owes much to the pioneer efforts of Mr. Swan in these early days of its existence. Three members of the staff are due to retire this year. Dr. Hugh Edwin Hall has been associated with the Royal since 1921. During most of this time he has worked away unobtrusively at his own unmentionable speciality in a place set slightly apart from the main hospital. In the Royal Navy during two world wars he has travelled the lFength and breadth of the globe from the Arctic wastes of the North Pole to the burning deserts of the Equator. A raconteur of no mean repute, his many stories are strongly flavoured with material gained from his life's work. An authority on old Belfast and its ancient monuments, he contrasts this interest with a superb skill in making modern furniture in his own home workshop. Mr. Hugh Theodore Alexander McKeag was one of the original band of six appointed to start the Dental School at Queen's University in 1920, but it was 101