RT Journal
A1 Harrison TR
T1 THe young aesculapian
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1959
FD September 12
VO 171
IS 2
SP 167
OP 174
DO 10.1001/jama.1959.73010200004010
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1959.73010200004010
AB Americans are usually considered to be doers rather than thinkers. This is not surprising in view of our relatively recent emancipation from the frontier, where sheer survival often depended not on thought but on action. However, during the past century we have begun to experience, as did Athens, Western Europe, and Britain before us, the impact of economic growth and of a rising living standard on our cultural mores. Thus, in medicine we now have not only persons who make fundamental scientific discoveries but also scholars and philosophers. To mention a few of the possible many we may cite the senior Holmes, Osler, Weir Mitchell, James B. Herrick, and Alan Gregg. It is to this expanding cultural tradition that Dr. Major belongs. A lecture in his honor might properly deal with some aspect of medical history, a subject to which he has made important contributions. There is little I could