Concerning the radiologist and the future.

Abstract

One of the duties of your President is to address the Annual Conference of Teachers of Clinical Radiology. Immediately upon notification of this task, I began to become concerned as to what I should attempt to say. In my search for an idea, I was reminded of the message on a placard alleged to have been posted on the mantel in the home of Irving Bacheller. It is this: “Dear Mr. Burglar: Please excuse this barren waste. The truth is, others in your line got here first. The money is mostly in their possession. You will find the family jewels in a pill box on the parlor mantel. The only other thing here worth having is my opinion of these evil days. If you care for that come and wake me. There is an unfinished novel on the desk in the study. Please don't start to read it, as the last month's electric light bill is not yet paid and the cook objects to have guests at breakfast. If, after looking the ground over, you wish to leave some money for the children for Christmas, please put it in the green vase on the parlor table.” I am in very much the same dilemma as the thief who was told that others had been there before him. Many eminent speakers have preceded me. Like every speaker today, I can find a mechanism to allow me to state that the world is undergoing rapid changes, as though you were not aware of the fact, and as though the world were not constantly changing, albeit more rapidly at one time than another. All of these changes have been and are irresistible, and the best you and I can do is to attempt to direct to as good purposes as possible what is new, using what has been learned from the old. It is certain, too, that the present time is one of extremes. But have we not always had extremes, and will we not until the Utopian age when all of us will be calm and intelligent? It is, after all, only the occasional philosopher who can quietly search for middle ground and adopt it. History demonstrates that most of us proceed to and by extremes and only slowly reach a middle ground, which, having attained, we retain but temporarily, soon to be off again on a rampage of extremes. You and I can be proud of some of the things that the American College of Radiology has accomplished and is attempting to do; for instance, the self-examination of the morning program: “Deficiencies in Resident Training as Revealed to the Practising Radiologist,” and the exploratory program of the afternoon entitled: “Conference on Radiology in Rural Health.” Such programs have to do with “setting our sights” for the future. The medical profession has been accorded certain privileges by society. The specialty of radiology has been accorded certain privileges by the profession at large. By having pioneered a new field of enormous scope and value, radiology has assumed a position of leadership for itself, and the profession at large now looks to the specialty as a select group possessing authority in certain aspects of the science and art of medicine.