ADDRESSES AND PAPERS

ADDRESS OF WELCOME

HON. JAMES C. HAYNES

Mayor of Minneapolis

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:-It is customary when state organizations are assembled in conventions of this nature for the chief executive of the city in which they meet to extend a word of greeting, and, in pursuance of that custom, I am before you this morning at the kind invitation of your presiding officer and executive committee.

I wish the weather were more fitting for a word of welcome, but you all know that Minneapolis is customarily a "wet" city, and it is carrying out its reputation this morning.

I often think when I am called upon to speak to my medical friends of the immense change that has taken place in your profession, as well as in the material interests of the country since I chose my profession, that of the law. I never have occasion to face a body of medical gentlemen without recurring to my early experience, and the kind invitation I received from my old family physician to become one of your number, and the answer I gave him, which, at that time, was more appreciated than at present, especially mere appreciated in the country than in the city. He had asked me once or twice when I had finished school if I would not come and study medicine with him. On the third occasion I met him on the road one morning, and he said to me, "James, have you decided what profession you are going to take up? Are you not going to come into my office? Perhaps it is your best gait." I remember that phrase distinctly. I said, "Yes, doctor, I have decided upon a profession." "What are you going to do?" he

asked. "I replied, “I am going to read law. When I tell you the point that determines my conclusion you will see how little ambition I have to become a doctor." He said, "What is it." I replied, "Simply this, doctor; when I go home at night, and retire to my bed I want to stay there till morning."

Now, the old time practitioner of the country and the country village, and some of the new time practitioners who are in general practice in smaller towns, realize exactly what that meant, and to my boyish mind that was sufficient. It shows what a little thing will sometimes change a man's views on an important question. But I had made up my mind to take the other profession, and perhaps the dread of being called out at night at all hours was not the sole reason. I think every young man in choosing a calling follows a natural bent. He may not understand it, but it is there. He responds to it. There is something in the proposed calling of a life-time which appeals to him for one reason or another, and which enlists his hearty sympathy and his determination to take hold of some calling in life and to make the most of it, and, in that connection, to make the most of himself.

I wish to congratulate you upon this convention, and upon this splendid purpose which brings you together in this consultation, this exchange of ideas. I think perhaps at the present time the profession, perhaps the least progressive, of any-the law. Necessarily so. I can say in all candor that your profession is, of all of the learned professions, the most progressive, and necessarily so from the very condition of things. The law deals with human rights, principles of political economy, and the duty and practical. administration of public affairs from the standpoint of the legal right of each and every citizen. You deal with the physical welfare of man, primarily and essentially. Each of the so-called learned professions has its origin in the repressed instincts of the human heart and mind. This is the case in each one, the clerical, the medical and the legal; each has its place and part in the grand economy of every

sound government, and each is doing its part for the betterment of society, the uplifting of man, and the gradual fulfillment of Almighty God in working out the destiny of a free people.

I have admired, as I think every man must, the marvelous progress that has been made in recent years in the medical profession,-a progress that speaks for the highest and best thought of the strongest men and women among you. Perhaps this is due to the simple fundamental truth, that men only begin to live for themselves and the society of which they are members when they grasp the thought that it is the good of the whole that is at stake, and not a fee in a particular case; not the mere compensation, which is indispensable in the practice of any profession, but after all, that is the least, although an absolute necessity, but the real thing, the highest thing, is that which makes, not for the treating of disease, be it physical, spiritual, moral, or financial, but for the prevention, the elimination of the causes which produce the various illnesses from which the body politic suffers; and I can say to you, in all conscience and candor, without any attempt at flattery, that you are performing a tremendous service in doing your part in your profession, and that you do it best when you assemble and discuss the various theories which underlie or outrun the principles you practice. There must always be a sound theory before there can be a successful practice. This is true of law; it is true of medicine; it is true in every human undertaking. There must always be a high ideal before there can be any approach to sound practice, and it is the man, young or old, who grasps that thought and puts it into effect that constitutes the loyally good citizen.

Right here I want to say a word for the men and women who work hard and faithfully and are hardly ever heard of-men and women who never hold, or care or expect to hold a so-called honorable position. In my judgment, and as I measure men in life, it is not the men in prominent places that society owes the most to—by no means; it is the men and women in any given calling or profession who put into that profession the best that is in them, morally, in

tellectually, and industrially. They may never be heard from, but as a part of the whole they are doing their whole duty-they are doing it nobly and faithfully, doing all that anyone can ask of them; and it is to the large numbers of those brave servants of right-doing that the world owes its debt of gratitude, and it is upon them we must depend for the whole social fabric of civilization to hold together. If they do not do their work well, if they become faithless, the prominent man, who is the honorable head so-called, will be of little consequence. He is simply a servant of the rest where we put him, and it is the faithfulness of the masses of the profession and of the whole community, whatever calling we may be placed in, that we must depend upon for the maintenance of our civilization and the perpetuity of our free institutions. Now, because I do feel that you represent the best thought and feeling of a learned profession, a liberal profession, I feel that you are not met together simply for the purpose of promoting your own personal aggrandizement and welfare, but to advance and assist the best interests of society, to bring happiness to homes, to consider those subjects which relate to our physical welfare especially, and thereby contribute a large sum to the human welfare-it is for such reasons that I rejoice to welcome you here this morning to our fair city, and to extend to you the greetings of our citizens.

We are glad to have you with us, and we hope you may enjoy yourselves with us during your visit, and, let me say, when I welcome the Minnesota State Medical Association to this city I do not greet you in the name of the city of Minneapolis alone, but in spirit I join with the mayor of our sister city to greet you to the great metropolis of the Northwest, a city of over 400,000. If we only properly understand it, we are the eighth city in the Union, not the nineteenth or twentieth, but the eighth, with all the prestige that goes with such an aggregation of wealth and power.

We are glad to have our friends from all over the state, especially from the city of St. Paul, with us to-day. I hope. your deliberations, as I know they will be, may be harmonious and successful, and that out of this meeting there may come great good for the future.

I thank you for your kind attention. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF MEDICINE

CHARLES LYMAN GREENE, M. D.

St. Paul

However old its art, the science of medicine belongs to the 19th and 20th centuries, and its advance in the past one hundred years has been greater than during the whole period from the birth of Esculapius to the death of Jenner. Empiricism has yielded to reasoning and deduction, fact born of scientific experiment has displaced and supplanted theory and the snap diagnostician has met his death at the hands of the modern pathologist.

The modern physician has lost none of his humanitarian spirit, and with the wiping out of distinctions of school has come a broader and more receptive mentality that augurs well for the future.

One of the greatest advances within the profession itself is the tendency to the closer union of the physicians themselves. For years the medical society, county, state, or national, has represented only a spirit of good fellowship and a desire to give and receive the mutual stores of learning and experience. The societies have been loosely organized and poorly attended; they have lacked cohesion and authority, and in consequence have accomplished far less than they should for the individual physician, for the profession, and for the public. The re-organization of the American Medical Association has changed all this in a wonderfully short time. Now the county medical society finds itself an active vital part of a great and powerful organism; in a single year the state association finds its active membership doubled by the accession of accredited numbers, and as if bathed in the magic fount its old and infirm body takes on at once the vigor and promise of a lusty youth. The value of