Let me express my heartfelt thanks for the honorary fellowshipthat your organization has bestowed upon me, and for your kind invitation to address you on the occasion of the International Congress of Surgeons. While complying with your invitation, I am aware of my inadequacy for this undertaking, on which I should never have ventured on my own.
During the past 20 years, however, I have become enough of an American not to be too much afraid of you. Last year, I even had occasion to experience, myself, how accomplished you have become in the art of making your victim’s lot easy to bear. But it is something altogether different that fills me with respect: Specialization in almost all branches of human endeavor has, to be sure, resulted in unprecedented achievements—however, at the expense of narrowing the individual’s field of vision. Thus it is hard nowadays to find anyone able...
