James Paget

“ I shall speak only of national health. In consideration of his own self, a man may be deemed healthy who lives idle, comfortably, and long; who enjoys every day of his life, and satisfies every natural appetite without consequent distress. And when such a one dies of old age, with a timely, uniform, and painless decay of every part, he may be deemed to have been completely healthy. And yet it is possible that he may have enjoyed his own health in the midst of a poor, unhealthy, and unhappy nation, to which he has done no good whatever. ”

“ We had better not compete where wealth is the highest evidence of success; we can compete with the world in the nobler ambition of being counted among the learned and the good who strive to make the future better and happier than the past. And to this we shall attain if we will remind ourselves that, as in every pursuit of knowledge there is the charm of novelty, and in every attainment of truth utility, so in every use of it there may be charity. ”

“ Many of us must, for practical life, have a fair acquaintance with many parts of our science, but none can hold it all; and for complete knowledge, or for research, or for safely thinking out beyond what is known, no one can hope for success unless by limiting himself within the few divisions of the science for which, by nature or by education, he is best fitted. Thus, our division into sections is only an instance of that division of labor which, in every prosperous nation, we see in every field of active life, and which is always justified by more work better done. ”

“ The history of science has many similar facts, and they may teach that any man will be both wise and dutiful if he will patiently and thoughtfully do the best he can in the field of work in which, whether by choice or chance, his lot is cast. There let him, at least, search for truth, reflect on it, and record it accurately; let him imitate that accuracy and completeness of which I think we may boast that we have, in the descriptions of the human body, the highest instance yet attained in any branch of knowledge. Truth so recorded can not remain barren. ”

“ Yes—to the far better future; for there is no course of Nature more certain than is the upward progress of science. We may seem to move in circles, but they are the circles of a constantly ascending spiral; we may seem to sway from side to side, but it is only as on a steep ascent which must be climbed in zigzag. ”

“ I have, therefore, chosen the relation between the national health and work; especially as it may be shown in a few of the many examples of the quantity of work which is lost to the nation, either through sickness or through deaths occurring before the close of what may fairly be reckoned as the working-time of life. I think it may be made clear that this loss is so great, that the consideration of it should add largely to the motives by which all people may be urged to the remedy of whatever unwholesome conditions they may live in. ”

“ Nay, we may be able to observe the utility even of error. We may not, indeed, wish for a prevalence of errors; they are not more desirable than are the crime and misery which evoke charity. And yet in a congress we may palliate them, for we may see how, as we may often read in history, errors, like doubts and contrary pleadings, serve to bring out the truth, to make it express itself in clearest terms and show its whole strength and value. Adversity is an excellent school for truth as well as for virtue. ”

“ I dare to claim for it that, among all the sciences, ours, in the pursuit and use of truth, offers the most complete and constant union of those three qualities which have the greatest charm for pure and active minds—novelty, utility, and charity. These three, which are sometimes in so lamentable disunion, as in the attractions of novelty without either utility or charity, are in our researches so combined that, unless by force or willful wrong, they hardly can be put asunder. ”

“ The best work of our International Congress is in the clearing and strengthening of the knowledge of realities; in bringing, year after year, all its force of numbers and varieties of minds to press forward the demonstration and diffusion of truth as nearly to completion as may from year to year be possible. Thus, chiefly, our Congress may maintain and invigorate the life of our science. And the progress of science must be as that of life. ”

“ We may thus declare that as we who are many are met to be members of one body, so our work for science shall be one, though manifold; that as we, who are of many nations, will for a time forget our nationalities, and will even repress our patriotism, unless for the promotion of a friendly rivalry, so will we in our work, whether here and now or everywhere and always, have one end and one design—the promotion of the whole science and whole art of healing. ”

“ It has encouraged that fallacy to which we are all too prone, that we have at length reached an elevated sure position on which we may rest, and only think and guide. In this way specialism in doctrine or in method of study has hindered the progress of science more than the specialism which has attached itself to the study of one organ or of one method of practice. This kind of specialism may enslave inferior minds: the specialism of doctrine can enchant into mere dreaming those that should be strong and alert in the work of free research. ”

“ It is not only that the pure science of human life may match with the largest of the natural sciences in the complexity of its subject-matter; not only that the living human body is, in both its material and its indwelling forces, the most complex thing yet known, but that in our practical duties this most complex thing is presented to us in an almost infinite multiformity. For in practice we are occupied, not with a type and pattern of the human nature, but with all its varieties in all classes of men, of every age and every occupation, and all climates and all social states ”

“ We want more ambition for health. I should like to see a personal ambition for renown in health as keen as is that for bravery, or for beauty, or for success in our athletic games and field-sports. I wish there were such an ambition for the most perfect national health as there is for national renown for war, or in art or commerce. And let me end soon by briefly saying what I think such health should be.
I spoke of the pattern healthy man as one who can do his work vigorously wherever and whatever it may be. ”

“ Let us resolutely hold to this when we are apart: let our internationality be a clear abiding sentiment, to be, as now, declared and celebrated at appointed times, but never to be forgotten; we may, perhaps, help to gain a new honor for science, if we thus suggest that in many more things, if they were as deeply and dispassionately studied, there might be found the same complete identity of international interests as in ours. ”

“ I will only observe that the subjects selected in every section involve questions in the solution of which all the varieties of mind and knowledge of which I have spoken may find their use. For there are questions, not only on many subjects, but in all stages of progress toward settlement. In some the chief need seems to be the collection of facts well observed by many persons. I say by many, not only because many facts are wanted, but because in all difficult research it is well that each apparent fact should be observed by many; for things are not what they appear to each one mind. ”

“ I am ashamed of making money appear as a motive for doing things for which sufficient motives might be found in charity and sympathy, and the happiness of using useful knowledge; but it seems certain that these are not yet enough for all that should be done for the promotion of the national health; therefore, it seems well to add to them any motives that are not dishonorable; and so I add this, that we lose largely not only in happiness but in wealth by the deaths of these poor children. ”

“ We were taught this in our schools; and many of us have taught that all the parts of medical science are necessary to the education of the complete practitioner. In the independence of later life some of us seem too ready to believe that the parts we severally choose may be self-sufficient, and that what others are learning can not much concern us. A fair study of the whole work of the Congress may convince us of the fallacy of this belief. We may see that the test of truth in every part must be in the patient and impartial trial of its adjustment with what is true in every other. ”

“ In truth, the fault of specialism is not in narrowness, but in the shallowness and the belief in self-sufficiency with which it is apt to be associated. If the field of any specialty in science be narrow, it can be dug deeply. In science, as in mining, a very narrow shaft, if only it be carried deep enough, may reach the richest stores of wealth and find use for all the appliances of scientific art. ”

“ And of all the races of men they are the mightiest and most noble who are, or by self-adjustment can become, most fit for all the new conditions of existence in which by various changes they may be placed. These are they who prosper in great changes of their social state; who, in successive generations, grow stronger by the production of a population so various that some are fitted to each of all the conditions of material and mode of life which they can discover or invent. These are most prosperous in the highest civilization; these whom nature adapts to the products of their own arts. ”

“ For, as men become in the best sense better educated, and the influence of scientific knowledge on their moral and social state increases, so among all sciences there is none of which the influence, and therefore the responsibility, will increase more than ours, because none more intimately concerns man's happiness and working power.
But, more clearly in the recollections of the Congress, we may be reminded that in our science there may be, or, rather, there really is, a complete community of interest among men of all nations. ”

“ In every one of all these conditions, man, in mind and body, must be studied by us; and every one of them offers some different problems for inquiry and solution. Wherever our duty or our scientific curiosity, or, in happy combination, both, may lead us, there are the materials and there the opportunities for separate original research.
Now, from these various opportunities of study, men are here in Congress. Surely, whatever a multitude and diversity of minds can in a few days do for the promotion of knowledge, may be done here. ”

“ We that can read in memory the history of half a century might look back with shame and deep regret at the imperfections of our early knowledge if we might not be sure that we held, and sometimes helped onward, the best things that were, in their time, possible, and that they were necessary steps to the better present, even as the present is to the still better future. ”

“ Happily the natural increase in the variety of minds in all cultivated races is—whether as cause or as consequence—nearly proportionate to the increasing variety of knowledge. And it has become proverbial, and is nearly true in science and art, as it is in commerce and in national life, that, whatever work is to be done, men are found or soon produced who are exactly fit to do it.
But it need not be denied that, in the possession of this first and chiefest power for the increase of knowledge, there is a source of weakness. ”

“ I do not know whether health or knowledge contributes most to the prosperity of a nation; but no nation can prosper which does not equally promote both; they should be deemed twin forces, for either of them without the other has only half the power for good that it should have. ”

“ If, therefore, we or any other people are to continue ambitious for the extension of that higher mental power of which we boast, or for the success of the bold spirit of enterprise with which we seek to replenish the earth and subdue it; if we desire that the lessons of Christianity and of true civilization should be spread over the world, we must strive for an abundance of this national health—tough, pliant, and elastic—ready and fit for any good work anywhere.—Journal of the Society of Arts. ”