Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Chicago Medical Center Reopening [PAGE 16]

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the commonwealth. Not for the benefit of the young men themselves who wish to practice but for the benefit of the people whom they will practice upon in the future, either ignorantly or wisely. I wish to say this for the gentlemen who have conducted the medical school of the University of 'Illinois and the medical school of the College of Physicians and SurgeonB, I believe they have made the best medical school in the United States supported solely by the fees of students. I have admired the patience, persistence, energy and skill with which these men have brought this institution along and kept it in the list of first-class medical schools adopted by the American Medical Association, even though the minimum required for that classification is all too low. From this class, however, it is sure to fall, and that very quickly, unless the state gives the funds necessary to make and keep it a first-class medical school. Personally I have never been able to understand how a thoughtful, sensible citizen who is subject to illness, who sees members of his family suffer, who sees people all around him perish for lack of knowledge, just as they did in the days of the old Hebrew prophet,—I say that I cannot understand how such a man can fail to insist to the extent of his ability that the state of which he is a part shall make adequate provision; so that as far as we can, in the light of our present knowledge or so far as we can by increasing this light as much as possible and by securing the best training of our young people, we shall make such headway as we may in the great struggle against human disease. I cannot understand how *he average man is stiU willing to permit the state to set its stamp of approval upon unqualified people to go out and practice upon the helpless and ignorant masses of the population of which he is, himself, of course, one. It makes no difference to the average physician looked at merely from his point of view, as a physician and a money maker whether he knows very much or not. In fact the medical faker still reaps large harvest. But it does make a vast difference to his fellow citizens upon whom he practice whether the so-called physician is an ignorant charlatan or whether he is keeping himself abreast of all the results of advancing medical science. 'I say all this with due regard to the fact that human disease is a very subtle thing. That it is largely subjective, that it may be cured sometimes by hypnotism; in some cases by imagination; in others by prayer; in still others by the laying on of hands; and the connection between the psychological and religious influence and the actual presence of disease and the cure of disease is something so subtle and complicated that none of us understand it fully; hut after all, while this covers a part of the field, there is still a great portion which can be cultivated and improved by scientific knowledge and scientific advance, and it is this particular part and only this, in my opinion, which the state University can undertake to promote. It is our business to establish and maintain a school of scientific.medicine which shall train young men in the use of all the knowledge we have, and in the ambition to increase this knowledge, to broaden and deepen and to hold high advanced the scientific ideal before the people of this commonwealth on every occasion, in season and out of season.

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