The eightieth birthday of William Henry Welch : the addresses delivered at the ceremonies in Memorial Continental Hall, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1930, and an account of the celebrations in honor of Dr. Welch in many parts of the world.

Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The eightieth birthday of William Henry Welch : the addresses delivered at the ceremonies in Memorial Continental Hall, Washington, D.C., April 8, 1930, and an account of the celebrations in honor of Dr. Welch in many parts of the world. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/42 page 17
    ician. One of the contributing influences, it appears, was a small incident. He was the winner of the Seguin prize, offered by the Professor of Neurology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, where he studied, that prize being an excellent microscope. A microscope, in itself a trifling instru¬ ment, to one who means to be a pathologist is an emblem, and such it was to him. He went abroad to study in Germany, and through a set of happy circum¬ stances was diverted from conventional pathology. He did not go to Berlin, to study with the great pathologist, Virchow, but to Breslau, a much less eminent university, where he came under the influence of a triumvirate that has not had its equal in another day. He became the pupil of Cohnheim, a great experimental pathologist, and the colleague of Weigert and Ehrlich — two men who have carved their names deeply into the history of the science of pathology. Upon returning to the United States not only gifted as he was by nature, but trained by these and other happy circumstances which time does not permit me to describe, he was equipped to establish pathology in the United States with a breadth and depth, the equal of that of any other country; and by virtue of the qualities which distinguish him, of personality and ability, he not only accomplished this great purpose, but he accomplished it in such a manner as to be unsurpassed in the whole world, perhaps even to supersede the best that the world up to his period had been able to produce. Think of all the activities in which he has been engaged, a scientist, an investigator, no one so learned in the history of his science as is he; a teacher of extraordinary capacity for discovering the able student, of a depth of gen¬ erosity which inspired every able student to do more than his best; an educator who introduced a new era into medical education, not confined wholly to this country but one slowly and surely permeating the educational thought of all the developed countries of the world; a great citizen in the sense that he has used his knowledge in order to bring the results of science to mankind and to apply them for its benefits. There is no human being in this country who is not his debtor, many mil- x7
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3