Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub
[graphic][subsumed]

CENTENARY CHURCH, ST. JOHN, N. B., 1839.

The Building with Smoking Chimney, in Rear of Church, was Canada's First Asylum for the Insane. Opened November 14, 1835.

[blocks in formation]

MEDICAL

AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF

LIBRARINSANITY

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS-THE INSANE IN CANADA.1 By T. J. W. BURGESS, M. D.,

Montreal, Canada.

Gentlemen: My first duty is to reiterate my thanks to you for having called me to this chair, a distinction I can attribute only to the fact, that in honoring me you sought to honor, not me alone, but the Canadian members of the association. 'No man

66

is born without ambitious worldly desires says Carlyle, and

surely there could not be a more laudable ambition than to become the president of this the oldest of American medical associations, a position of which Dr. John S. Butler said, on his elevation thereto, in 1870, "In my opinion, to be elected President of this Association, is the highest honor of the profession." Rarely, however, does gratified ambition bring peace of mind, and I, alas, have been no exception to the general rule. The thought of occupying a position that had been held by such intellectual giants as Woodward, Bell, Ray, Kirkbride, Butler, and Earle, all members of the "glorious original thirteen," beside many other illustrious men, abashed me-made me fully conscious of my inability to fill it properly. Nor did the sense of my demerit lessen as the days rolled by. On the contrary, the long list of presidents, whose names are familiar to us because of their attainments in psychological medicine, loomed continually before my eyes, added to which the task of to-day's address haunted me like an ever-lengthening shadow. I had but one thought to reconcile me to the greatness your generosity had thrust upon me. It was, that the kindness which prompted you to

'Delivered at the sixty-first annual meeting of the American MedicoPsychological Association, San Antonio, Texas, Tuesday, April 18, 1905.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »