1 Professor of Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tenn.
Editors: PAUL A. HARPER, M.D..
IT IS a pleasure and a great honor to come to the Old North State from a daughter state, Tennessee, to speak to you on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the foundation of your Medical Society.
The conventional address for such an occasion would be a historical one. Certainly, old records of this Society provide extraordinarily rich and attractive material for the historian. Your current program of medical education, medical research and medical administration in relation to the improvement and extension of medical care, both preventive and curative, is a source of pride and stimulation for all of the southern states. North Carolina is leading the way in the South.
But I do not plan to review in detail the past or current accomplishments of the profession in North Carolina. This has just been done for us in a scholarly and inspiring address by Dr. Hubert A. Royster. Suffice it to say that the membership of your Society has exhibited a capacity, unusual in organized medicine, for self examination and self evaluation and has been alert to change. Your membership has been judged courageous and progressive, and the country in general and the South in particular has become accustomed to look to North Carolina for guidance and example. Perhaps some of you hardly recognize yourselves as I talk! Maybe there are a few of you like the thieving, prowling, lying and intemperate colored man on judgment day who read, as he arose from his grave at the sound of the trump, the inscription on a tombstoneprovided by the faithful, generous wife who survived him"Here lies an honest man, a faithful husband, a truthful citizen and a temperate, devoted churchman." "Scuze me, Lord," said our friend, "I done come up outer the wrong grave!"