1011466 THE AMERICAN GYNECOLOGICAL AND OBSTETRICAL JOURNAL. JULY, 1900. THE PERSONAL FACTOR IN THE WORK OF THE BY ELY VAN DE WARKER, M.D., SYRACUSE, N. Y. A QUARTER of a century is the unit of measure in the evolution of a people. It is the life time of an idea. The seed thought is sown, it germinates, it reaches maturity and involves multitudes of other brains, and if it is one of those thoughts that is worthy of life, it becomes a part of the conscious being of all who think, and gains force and complexity as time moves on. The men who conceived the idea of this Society and had the diplomacy and energy to give their idea staple form and unity were, I believe, the product of the intellectual awakening that was taking form a quarter of a century ago and had proved itself worthy of survival. Previous to that time we were reading English books. The tradition of the formative period in American letters were brought down by a trinity of superb American poets. The American novelists— the men who were inspired by native types had not yet received recognition. We were without a drama indigenous to our people, but the stage was occupied by foreign play-wrights who introduced exotic characters. In medicine and surgery we were slavishly subservient to foreign models of thought and methods. American publishing houses were laying the foundations of great fortunes by pirated reprints of foreign medical authors, while the young physician who hoped to reach the teaching rank was powerless to realize his ambition without foreign study. * Read before the American Gynæcological Society at Washington, D. C., May 3, 1900. |