Presidential Address—1976: Whither Pediatrics

We had better plan for the future, and in participation with others. It just might come. We need humility and not arrogance in these endeavors, determination and not abrogation, firmness without preconceived notions, self-confidence without too much self-interest, self-advocacy in the sense that we speak for our silent, other selves—our children. Even as we reflect in this bicentennial year on our illustrious past—and try to look into the future through our somewhat opalescent crystal balls—the present tends to overwhelm us. By the very nature and definition of our efforts, the practicing physician lives in the instant present—to the benefit of our patients, perhaps, but sometimes to the detriment of our own and our families' interests. Despite our deepest concerns and the nagging awareness of man's capability for his own destruction, we must take time to use the past's lessons and the present's problems to try to integrate a functional future. I speak for practical idealism. Even as independence was the rallying cry of Colonial times, so was interdependence the modus operandi within the Colonies themselves—constricted though it was by what we would now call "poor communications." Now our "poor communication" is autogenic rather than ecogenic!—the way we cope with the means they did not have. Try to think of pediatrics without the telephone! If we think things are not going to change, let us ponder a bit on what has happened in pediatrics in the last 200 years, the last 100 years, the last 40 years, the last 10 years.