The Call of the Twentieth Century, an Address to Young MenJordan, David Starr
Philosophy
The Call of the Twentieth Century, an Address to Young Men
Jordan, David Starr
Conduct of life; Young men
The Twentieth Century will have its share in literature and art. Most of
the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written
for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent
times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not trained
to make time count, will be forgotten before the century is half over. The
books it saves will be books of its own kind, plain, straightforward,
clear-cut, marked by that "fanaticism for veracity" which means everything
else that is good in the intellectual and moral development of man. The
literature of form is giving way already to the literature of power. We
care less and less for the surprises and scintillations of clever fellows;
we care more and more for the real thoughts of real men. We find that the
deepest thoughts can be expressed in the simplest language. "A straight
line is the shortest distance between two points" in literature as well as
in mechanics. "In simplicity is strength," as Watt said of machinery, and
it is true in art as well as in mechanics.
In medicine, the field of action is growing infinitely broader, now that
its training is securely based on science, and the divining rod no longer
stands first among its implements of precision. Not long ago, it is said, a
young medical student in New York committed suicide, leaving behind this
touching sentence: "I die because there is room for no more doctors." And
this just now, when for the first time it is worth while to be a doctor.
Room for no more doctors, no doubt, of the kind to which he belonged--men
who know nothing and care nothing for science and its methods, who choose
the medical school which will turn them loose most quickly and cheaply, who
have no feeling for their patients, and whose prescriptions are given with
no more conscience than goes into the fabrication of an electric belt or
the compounding of a patent medicine. Room for no more doctors whose
highest conception is to look wise, take his chances, and pocket the fee.
Room for no more doctors just now, when the knowledge of human anatomy and
physiology has shown the way to a thousand uses of preventive surgery. Room
for no more doctors, when the knowledge of the microbes and their germs has
given the hope of successful warfare against all contagious diseases; room
for no more doctors, when antiseptics and anaesthetics have proved their
value in a thousand pain-saving ways. Room for no more doctors now, when
the doctor must be an honest man, with a sound knowledge of the human body
and a mastery of the methods of the sciences on which this knowledge
depends. Room for no more doctors of the incompetent class, because the
wiser times demand a better service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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