PEDIATRICS AND THE ADOLESCENT

Abstract

It gives me particular pleasure to participate in this ceremony today because of personal associations with the two men we are honoring by it. When, in 1946, as a very green convert to pediatrics, in my fourth year of on the job training at the Children's Hospital, I found myself about to take over the responsibility for a distinguished academic department, Dr. Richard M. Smith, knowing full well the deficiencies in my pediatric training, wisely told me that I ought to go to Rochester, Minnesota and see what Andy Aldrich was doing in his comprehensive child health care project there. For nearly a week I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the pediatric staff at the Mayo Clinic, particularly the Helmholtzes and the Aldriches, and spent my days with Dr. Aldrich, watching him as he made his rounds in the newborn nursery or counselled mothers in the child health clinic. It was a rare privilege to be able to sit at the feet of a great master, and learn from him in the one-to-one relationship which has always been the basis of the best in education. I remember well his infectious enthusiasm for detecting temperamental differences in babies in their first few days of extrauterine life. He used to carry a spring scale for weighing fish in his pocket, with a loop at its end which he'd put around the baby's ankle, in an effort to quantitate the differences in muscle tone, which might, at some later date, be correlated with motor development or emotional responses in the growing child.