Descripción
27 pp. Original wrappers. Very Good. First Edition. INSCRIBED BY HARVEY CUSHING: "Greetings/ H.C." (see photo). The word "professional" on the first page has been corrected in ink, in the margin, to "professorial" (see photo). I think the correction was made by Harvey Cushing. Copy of Walter Bett, with his signature on the verso of the front wrapper and his small book label "W. R. Bett", with pencil date of May 1937, on the bottom outer corner of the verso of the front wrapper (see photo). Was Walter R. Bett the recipient of this offprint from Harvey Cushing? Although Bett's name is not in Cushing's inscription, Bett probably was the recipient, as Cushing did inscribe to Bett an offprint of a different paper published two years before (1931). Cushing Bibliography no. 309: "Presidential address, read before the XVth Congress of Physicians and Surgeons at Washington D.C., May 9, 1933." This was included in the posthumously published collection of essays by Harvey Cushing entitled "The Medical Career and Other Papers" (1940). "Immediately after the [Brigham Hospital] reunion H.C. was in Washington giving his presidential address at the XVth Congress of Physicians and Surgeons on the theme, 'Medicine at the crossroads,' before an audience of 1,500 people (and as many were turned away). One who attended referred to Cushing that night as 'a man who, through the guise of allegory always light and never severe, attempted conscientiously to convey something of the richness of his own life's experience. His comments on the ethics of the medical profession assumed the form of gentle advice but it was impelling and authoritative' " (Fulton, Harvey Cushing, p. 632). Writing almost 60 years after John Fulton, Michael Bliss in his biography of Harvey Cushing chose to characterize the address in a quite different way: Cushing portrayed "a profession being seduced by the false gods of overspecialization and science, and falling prey to modern society's love of 'Babylonian' hospitals and laboratories. The next big public issue, already on the table, was a Report of a Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, created by several charitable foundations, recommending that America move to some form of national health insurance. Harvey [Cushing] argued in his speech that the profession should have no interest in 'socialized medicine' [I do not find that phrase in Cushing's address]. The best voluntary health insurance that citizens could take out would be to cut out their tobacco usage, he claimed, speaking from painful experience. Medicine needed fewer commissions made up of well-intentioned philanthropists, sociologists, economists, and lawyers. It needed more humanist and historians to speak from and for its great traditions" (Bliss, Harvey Cushing, p. 486). ABOUT THE RECIPIENT Walter R. Bett: A very useful article is online and can be read for free: Nadeem Toodayan, " 'The Iniquity of Oblivion': Dr Walter Reginald Bett (1903-1968)", Osleriana, Vol. 1, July 2019, pp. 75-111. N° de ref. del artículo 16871
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