Medicine and Medical Men in the United States.

Abstract

knowledge of transatlantic medicine and medical men. That is why I have to ask the pardon both of my countrymen and of all of you, but mainly of the French gentlemen here assembled, for using\p=m-\or,perhaps, misusing \p=m-\a language not my own, but better known to most of you than mine. In this way I hope to serve the ideal of the International Congress, which admits the delegates of medicine from all over the globe, recognize three languages as equivalent, listen to contributions on all possible topics connected with medicine and its numerous tributaries that are offered by the glory-crowned heads of the profession and by those on whose shoulders, now young, will rest the future of medical science and practice, and thus give an example of cosmopolitanism, the universal realization of which must be left to the coming century.Many millions of the population of the United States are European immigrants or their offspring; commercial interests between the two hemispheres are numerous, and there is a daily intercourse through correspondence, telegrams and travelers; the French and German languages are much studied in America, but while European literature is copiously imported into our country, our own is not so well known in Europe. Even European governments send to us representatives to study economical, mechanical and agricultural questions. But it appears that there are difficulties as regards the international appreciation of what concerns American medicine and medical men. Possibly it is because the intercourse between medical men is not sufficiently extensive and long. When our best men come to Europe it is for the purpose of rest; you find, unfortunately, but few of the great-mostly older--men at the international congresses. That of Washington in 1887 was not much frequented by Europeans for reasons satisfactory to themselves. Our young physicians and students who flock to European universities are not and should not be taken as fair representatives of American medicine. Your own great or well-informed men rarely come to us to see with their own eyes. Books on general American topics, like that of the superficial and clumsy L. Buechner, of Germany, or that of the ignorant and shallow, though elegant Bourget, of France, written after a few weeks' limited observations with narrow opportunities, are more apt to obscure the mental view than enlighten the mind. The spirit of de Tocqueville is no longer alive in the tourist.