450 OTOLOGY AND LARYNGOLOGY 



the pleasant duty conferred upon me. Needless to say, I will do my 

 best to do justice to the otological part of my address as well, but 

 it will be intelligible to my hearers, and will, I trust, be pardoned by 

 them that the lion's share of my remarks will be devoted to subjects 

 rather of which I can speak from personal experience than to ques- 

 tions with which my work is less intimately connected. 



If my first feeling on receiving your invitation was naturally and 

 properly a sense of gratitude for the high distinction conferred upon 

 me, this feeling was run very close by the sincere pleasure I expe- 

 rienced in thinking that I should have been selected to cooperate in a 

 work so entirely sympathetic to me as is this great undertaking. It 

 was stated in Professor Newcomb's invitation that the object of this 

 Congress was "to discuss and set forth the uniformity and mutual 

 relationship of the sciences, and thereby to overcome the lack of 

 harmony and relation in the scattered special sciences of our day." 



I do not know whether I was selected as having upheld throughout 

 my scientific career this leading idea, but I can say without fear of 

 contradiction --and in proof thereof, I may point to my literary 

 work that I have consciously and intentionally striven, wherever 

 opportunity offered itself to me, to maintain the principle which 

 animates the organization of this Congress. 



I should not be a specialist if I did not firmly believe in the neces- 

 sity of specialism in medicine. The immortal aphorism, "Life is short, 

 art is long, technique is difficult," applies to-day with even greater 

 force than when it was uttered two thousand years ago by the Father 

 of Medicine. Whilst the span of life has since his time remained very 

 much what it was then, his art has been and is making giant strides. 

 Economical considerations stand in the way of indiscriminately 

 prolonging the time of medical study, and more and more work has 

 to be compressed within the span of the few years which serve to 

 prepare the future medico for his professional life. No wonder, then, 

 that it has become extremely difficult, nay, almost impossible, to 

 equip our students so thoroughly that they can enter practical life 

 with full knowledge of their craft in every branch of medical thought 

 and work. Even the few who, endowed with good health and strength, 

 with exceptional abilities, and with equally exceptional industry, 

 succeed during their students' career in mastering all the details of 

 current medicine will, with very rare exceptions, find it practicall} 7 

 impossible, when once they have plunged into practice, to keep 

 abreast of the rapid progress which is the signature of the times in 

 which we live. 



Under these circumstances division of labor has become a logical 

 and unavoidable necessity. The old line of demarkation between 

 internal medicine and surgery, to which, at a somewhat later period, 

 gynecology and midwifery were added as independent branches, no 



