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Page 19
A second phase of great importance is that institutions like
Bloomingdale have promoted the study of psychology far more than any
other factor, particularly because in them the personality stripped of
some of its intricacies, the diseased personality, permits analysis,
which the normal complex has so long defied. That it is high time that
mankind was undertaking this knowledge of himself is particularly
emphasized by the unrest and aberrance of human behavior now startling
and disturbing the whole world. If mankind does not take up this self
study as Trotter has said, Nature may tire of her experiment man, that
complex multicellular gregarious animal who is unable to protect himself
even from a simple unicellular organism, and may sweep him from her
work-table to make room for one more effort of her tireless and patient
curiosity. Psychology should be taught to every doctor and to every
lettered man.
Digressing for a moment, to every one capable of understanding it, there
should be imparted a knowledge of that simple economic law announced
from the Garden of Eden after the grounds had been cleared and the gates
closed: "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread." The
economic phase indeed constitutes a highly important aspect of modern
psychology, for abnormal elements are antisocial, and from pickpockets
to anarchists flourish on the soil of pauperism. The key-note of the
future is responsibility. To the educated and enlightened man who still
asks, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain has bequeathed a drop of his
fratricidal blood; and he who spurns to do his share of the world's
work, electing instead to fall a burden upon the community, deserves the
fate of the barren fig-tree.
However, amidst the social unrest, buffeted and perplexed by the cross
currents of our time, we should not be pessimistic but should look
forward with courage, parting reluctantly with whatever of good the past
contained and living hopefully in the present. As Ellis says: "The
present is in every age merely the shifting point at which past and
future meet, and we can have no quarrel with either. There can be no
world without traditions; neither can there be any life without
movement. As Heraclitus knew at the outset of modern philosophy, we
cannot bathe twice in the same stream, though as we know to-day, the
stream still flows in an unending circle. There is never a moment when
the new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a moment when the
sunset ceases to die. It is well to greet serenely even the first
glimmer of the dawn when we see it, not hastening toward it with undue
speed, nor leaving the sunset without gratitude for the dying light
that once was dawn."
So to-day I bring to you from the New York Academy of Medicine
felicitations on your one hundredth anniversary and greetings to your
guests who have come from all over the world to join in your birthday
celebration.
ADDRESS BY
DR. RICHARD G. ROWS
_The Chairman_: Besides the Royal Charter, the New York Hospital is
indebted to Great Britain for invaluable encouragement and financial aid
in our natal struggle in Colonial days. Dr. Rows has added charmingly to
that debt by journeying from London to take part in these exercises. His
subject will be, "THE BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS."
As Director of the British Neurological Hospital for Disabled Soldiers
and Sailors, at Tooting, he is giving the community and the medical
world the benefit of his rich professional experience in the trying
years of war as well as in peace, and gaining fresh laurels as he
marches, like Wordsworth's warrior, "from well to better, daily
self-surpast."
DR. ROWS
I must first express to you my keen appreciation of the high honor you
have conferred on me by inviting me to come from England to address you
on the occasion of the centenary celebration of the opening of this
Hospital.
It is perhaps difficult for us to realize what resistances lay in the
way of reform at that time, resistances in the form of long-established
but somewhat limited views as to the nature of mental illnesses, as to
whether the sufferer was not reaping what he had sown in angering the
supreme powers and in making himself a fit habitation for demons to
dwell in; in the form of a lack of appreciation of the need of sympathy
for those who, while in a disturbed state, offended against the social
organism or in the form of an exaggerated fear which compelled the
adoption of vigorous methods of protecting the social organism against
those who exhibited such anti-social tendencies. The men and women of
the different countries of the world who recognized this and made it the
chief of their life's duties to spread a wider view of such conditions
and to insist that the unfortunate people should be regarded and
treated as fellow human beings will ever command our admiration.
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