George W. Guthrie / [Charles Harrison Frazier].

  • Charles Harrison Frazier
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: George W. Guthrie / [Charles Harrison Frazier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    FRAZIER: GEORGE W. GUTHRIE 3 of thousands of chariots! Arthur’s sword Excalibur! What is that to the steri¬ lized scalpel of the surgeon! And Aladdin and his wonderful lamp are far outdone by the wizard Edison with his electric lamps and by Roentgen and his rays.” There was Guthrie the surgeon, Guthrie the leader of his medical community, Guthrie the lover of good books and poetry. He not only appreciated the broad¬ ening effect of familiarity with good literature, history, and romance, but he loved poetry. Proud of his Scotch ancestry, he revelled in the romantic history of Scotland and her great men, but, of all, Robert Burns and his poetry held first place in his heart. His conversation and friendly greetings and his more formal after-dinner speeches were given an added charm by the freedom with which he quoted at random from his favorite authors. How few there are today who could match him, none who could excel. William James once wrote: “I am done with great things and big things, for great institutions; and I am for those tiny molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets or like the capillary oozing of water, but which, give them time, will rend the hardest monument of man’s pride.”1 Thus do I conceive the influence of Guthrie’s life. There were in his community no great institutions or large movements, but the tiny ripples of his influence spread, through his contacts with physicians of state and nation, over the length and breadth of the land. Thus the force of his character left its imprint for the good of his profession and for the making of a better world. 1 William James. The New Quest by Rufus Jones, page 92.
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