INTRODUCTION 11 



own growth, and other thousands who live by crime and procreate 

 their kind to feed on generations to come. We have our schools, 

 colleges, and universities, while our almshouses, insane asylums, and 

 penal institutions are full. In our cities we see the palatial homes 

 of the very rich, the splendid temples of trade and commerce, the 

 slums of want and poverty, and the homes, both rich and squalid, of 

 vice and crime. No nation in this condition can be given a clean bill 

 of health. Our hilltops are illuminated by the light of knowledge, but 

 our valleys are covered by the clouds of ignorance. We have not 

 emerged from the shadows of the dark ages. The historian of the 

 future will have no difficulty in convincing his readers that those who 

 lived at the beginning of the twentieth century were but slightly 

 removed from barbarism, as he will tell that the school, saloon, and 

 house of prostitution flourished in close proximity; that the capitalist 

 worked his employees under conditions which precluded soundness 

 of body; that the labor union man dynamited buildings; that while 

 we sent missionaries to convert the Moslem and the Buddhist, ten 

 thousand murders were committed annually in the midst of us, and 

 that a large percentage of our mortality was due to preventable disease. 

 Evidently there is much to be done before we pass out from the 

 shadows of ignorance into the full light of knowledge. In this great 

 work for the betterment of the race the medical profession has impor- 

 tant duties to perform. I do not mean to imply that the uplift of 

 mankind devolves wholly on the medical man. The burdens are too 

 many and too diversified, the ascent is too steep and the pathways 

 are too rough for one profession to hope to reach unaided the high 

 plateau we seek. Moreover, other callings have no right, and should 

 have no desire to shirk the moral responsibilities which rest alike on 

 all. But in past ages, medical men have been the chief torch bearers 

 of science, whose light is the only one in which man may safely walk, 

 and we must keep and transmit this trust and honor to those who 

 follow us. I know of no scientific discovery, from the ignition of 

 wood by friction to the demonstration of the causes of infection and 

 the restriction of disease, which has not sooner or later assisted in the 

 betterment of the race. It may be added that nothing else has so aided 

 man in his slow and halting progress from the pestilential marshes 

 of ignorance to the open uplands of intelligence. 



