Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet.
- Thomas Addis Emmet
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
509/631 page 372
![to me by your committee to be present at this dinner to honor Dr. Emmet, as, apart from the reverence I hold for his scientific work, to know him was to love and respect him. In travelling over Europe I have found that no name was so frequently mentioned in continental clinics as that of Emmet. This was true not only in the larger cities, but even in the smaller university towns. Practical gynaecologists thought no encomium too high to pay to his worth as a man and a surgeon. Personal friends of his, living in the same city with him, know that he well deserves the expression which the French inhabitants of Canada sometimes use with regard to one whom they thoroughly respect— “He is white all through, ” II est blanc partout. It is not his books—and they are most valuable—nor his many important methods of treatment and opera- tions, which have counted most in Emmet’s career. But it is the example of his sterling honesty in his professional life and in the fact that he was never addicted to the doing of anything small or petty. Never did he do an opera- tion for the sake of doing it, nor for the iclat or profit which its successful performance might bring to him. With regard to one operation which has been much vulgarized in recent years. Dr. Emmet once said to me that he would rather a few women should have suffered without alleviation than that so many should have been operated upon without reason and without necessity, and that he would almost prefer not to have been the originator of the operation. In Canada, Dr. Emmet is held in as high estimation as in his native country, and the tribute of respect meted out to him here fairly represents the feeling of the profession across the sea. Introduction of Dr. Emmet by Dr. Dudley There is, perhaps, a question as to whether it is good form for one to drink to his own health. Let us, however, propose the health of our beloved leader in such a way that he will have to join us: When we are seventy-seven, may we mentally, morally, and physically stand as straight as he does now. I was called on at so late an hour that I made but a few extempora- neous remarks, having but little reference to what I had intended to say, but what I had prepared has been already worked into the narrative of the Incidents. I -was reported to have said [from the Medical News, New York, June 3, 1905]: In his closing address. Dr. Emmet said that an Irish friend of his, who was very old, announced that he expected to see his friends only once more, and that at his funeral. Personally he is very glad that he had the-opportunity to see his friends before the funeral. During the week that had passed since he learned of the dinner that was to be given him, he had felt that if he were a woman he would go off into a corner and have a good cry over it. Some of the memories of the past came crowding back, and perhaps there is](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28034776_0514.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
