Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

268 HENRY BAIRD FA V ILL
live? Until we have attained that merit, and until we think
and act under that motive, we are in a measure an apology
for a profession.
Two things are essential to our development in this
direction. The first is solidarity in the profession.
I am willing to consider the merit in organization and
solidification in any group of workers upon the basis of
self-interest. Self-protection is essential to growth and
growth is the essence of efficiency. But that self-interest
should be our final and most imperative motive is unthinkable.
Unless our organizations proceed toward
altruism and social regeneration, they will crumble and
become a mockery. Already the day when we cry out for
organization, that we may be more powerful for our own
advancement, is past.
To-day the shibboleth of medical organization is the
public weal.
If we seek power, it is to that end, and whatsoever
perverts or deflects our organic being from that course
is reprehensible and in the end futile.
is essential to our progress.
Hence, our solidarity
Herein lies the hope of the individual, that he may fulfill
his obligation to himself; that he may, by combination
and cooperation, come into his full power and influence
so far as concerns his purely medical functions.
The second essential to our progress is cooperation with
all corrective social forces.
The discouraging complexity of
the practical problems
leads us unerringly to this conclusion. Conditions of living,
in their relation to health, no matter how intelligently
comprehended, can not be controlled without the most
radical corrective effort.
It is
idle to discuss mental or moral or physical health
in the terms of a slum. It is wasteful to expend unlimited
money on hospitals and other corrective institutions, while
at the same time we broaden and deepen the social morass
which feeds them. It is immoral laboriously to cut down