EVER since accepting the kind invitation of your President I have known what I wanted to talk to you about tonight. However, when it came to giving my talk a title—a label which would suggest my main theme—then I was stumped. I want to talk a bit about a number of things—about the Child Research Council, about human growth, about education, about pediatric research, and about the responsibilities of the pediatrician in the half century ahead of us. I might then call the talk a "Pediatric Potpourri." The only difficulty with this title is that Mr. Webster, in his fourth definition of the term, says, "a literary production composed of parts brought together without order or bond of connection." While it may be that some of you will decide by the end of this talk that it has been a veritable potpourri yet I hope to succeed in welding a definite "bond of connection" between the various topics discussed. Perhaps the growth, the development, and the adaptation of the human organism is the cementing substance which should run as a golden thread of continuity from the beginning to the end of my discourse.
I have used the term "human development" rather than "child development" because my talk tonight is as much concerned with the development of mature and thoughtful pediatricians as it is with the sound and happy development of children who may some day become physicians, lawyers, engineers, businessmen or senators. In fact I'm going to start talking about the Child Research Council not merely as a particular sort of research approach to child development but also as an educational experience for the investigators involved in the venture.