Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics October 31, 1962.
ADDRESS: Girard College, Philadelphia 21, Pennsylvania.
PEDIATRICS, November 1962
AMERICAN
ACADEMY
OF
PEDIATRICS
836
PRESIDENTIAL
ADDRESS
THE
ACADEMY-I
961-1962
Carl C. Fischer, M.D.
INASMUCH as our by-laws specifically
state that “a nieeting of the Academy
shall be held each year, to be known as the
Annual Meeting, at which time the
confer-ring of Fellowships shall take place and a
presidential address shall be delivered,”
neither you nor I llave any cllOice in the
matter! Nothing is specified, however,
re-garding either the length or the content of
such an address so that this would appear to
be left to the discretion of each
President-leaving the membership to hope that he will
use this discretion wisely.
I have just finished re-reading each of the
Presidential Addresses given by my 31
pred-ecessors-and I heartily recommend that
you do likewise if you are interested in
re-ceiving a most stimulating review not only
of the history of our Academy, but of
Amen-ican pediatrics since 1930.
I found that these addresses varied
greatly as to length, style, and
content-re-fleeting the individual viewpoints and
nat-tires of their authors. Some were highly
opti-mistic, a few distinctly pessimistic, about our
specialty. Nearly all reviewed the major
ac-complishments of their year in office in
vary-ing detail, and many referred to the
in-fluence of the times in which they wrote
upon pediatrics in general and the Academy
in particular. Many reiterated the
impor-tance of the objectives of the Academy as
de-fined with prophetic vision by our
Found-ing Fathers, and despite the variations in
viewpoint and in time, all stressed, as I too
would like to, the broad emphasis upon “the
welfare of children” contained in the
open-ing sentence of Section I of Article II-”The
object of the Academy shall be to foster and
stimulate interest in pediatrics and
conre-late all aspects of the work for the welfare
of children wilich properly come within the scope of pediatrics.” It is this emphasis upon
“tile welfare of children” that has made our
Academy unique among medical
organiza-tions and, I sincerely feel, has accounted for
its almost phenomenal growth not only in
numbers and in material gains but in its
po-sition in relation to child care throughout
the Americas. I am most happy to be able to
report that this trend has, if anything, been
strengthened during the past year.
It seems fitting to remind ourselves at this
time of the uniquely appropriate nature of
the name selected by our Founders for our
organization. You will note that it is “THE”
not “A”; “AMERiCAN” (in the true
Ilemi-spheric sense of this word) and not
“UNITED STATES”; “ACADEMY”
mean-ing “an association of learned men to
pro-mote literature, science or tile arts,” rathex
than “ASSOCIATION” meaning “a union
of persons with and for a common interest”
or “COLLEGE” defined as “a society of
learned men”; and finally “OF
PEDIAT-RIGS” not “OF PEDIATRICIANS” with
the emphasis upon “the welfare of children”
and not primarily of their doctors!
That we have continued to live up to this
name with its true meanings, is, I believe,
amply brought out when one reviews the
ac-complishments of the past year.
If, however, one accepts, as I do, the
be-lief that the Academy is, in essence, a
composite body reflecting the composite
thoughts, ideals, and activities of all of you,
its Fellows, then in all consistency, you, not
I, should he the ones to review for
your-selves the year of 1961-62.
many of you regarding your feelings in this
regard, and I will attempt to outline, as best
I can, your impressions as they came to me.
ORGANIZATION
The first man to whom I turned was a
member of the Executive Board. “I wonder,”
he said, “how many of our members realize
tilat in order to care for the needs of our
rapidly growing membership (it has
al-ready passed the 7,500 mark) we opened
for use this year an 80% addition to our most
attractive as well as utilitarian executive
of-flees (originally built in 1954) adlacent to
the Northwestern University campus in
Evanston, Illinois, and that that property
now has a value in excess of one-half
mil-lion dollars, yet was built and paid for from
available A.A.P. funds without borrowing or
making any additional assessment upon
them? Do they realize also that under the
remarkably efficient supervision of our
Exec-utive Director, E. H. Christopherson, ably
assisted by Business Manager, W.
J.
Becker,Secretary Robert Frazier, and Health
Edu-cation Director Ellsworth Chunn, a most
loyal and hard working staff of 15 is
respon-sible for an average daily mailing of 1,250
pieces along with their many other
Acad-emy activities? Finally, I wonder if they
realize that tile members of the Executive
Board spend more than 3 weeks of each
year away from their practices, etc., on
Academy business, and with the able help
of the Staff, supervise a business that
in-volves over two million dollars per year?”
All I could say was that I doubt that they
(lid, but I would mention these things in my
address, and at the same time I wanted to
say how fortunate it was for the Academy
when a successor for “Cliff” Grulee was
Se-lected in 1950 that “Chris” was their choice!
Much tilat has been accomplished would
have been impossible without his careful
guidance and personally trained loyal staff.
EDUCATION
I next talked with a Fellow whose
pri-many interest was in continuing medical
education. His plea was for “a greater
reali-zation of the most unusual educational
op-portunities now available to all Fellows of
the A.A.P. The 2-day seminars on 10
differ-ent subjects are a unique feature of our
An-nual Meetings, while the 21 Round Tables
vie with the
7
General Sessions inedu-cational value and appeal. If we add to
these the Clinic Sessions at the Annual
Meeting and the special Closed Circuit
Television Programs at the Spring Sessions,
we have a truly remarkable opportunity for
continuing education. Few members know,
perhaps, that each subject and speaker are
hand-picked well in advance by our
hard-working Scientific Program Committee, and
it is rare indeed that one who is asked to
speak at our meetings declines, and then
only because of conflicting commitments.
The introduction a few years ago of a series
of postgraduate courses (six in all in
1961-62) put on by the co-operative effort of the
Academy (under the able supervision of
Secretary Frazier and our Subcommittee
on Postgraduate Education) and various
Teaching Medical Centers tilrOugilOut tile
country fill a much needed gap, for they are
designed especially for practicing
pediatni-cians as either general refresher courses or as
3 or 4 day reviews of the important features
of some special phase of pediatrics. It must
also be remembered that the Scientific
Ex-hibits at the Annual Meeting and the Spring
Session are particularly selected for their
educational value also. More than 2,500
Fellows attended one or both of our
meet-ings during the past year-ample testimony
to their value.”
PUBLICATIONS
Tile next Fellow to whom I spoke was
impressed by the “printed word” as it came
out from our Headquarters. “All of us,” he
said, “are well acquainted with the Blue
Book-our official fellowship list-but few
realize that improved methods of printing
and keeping the data current have made it
possible for each year’s copy to reach us
early in January. This year marked the
pub-lication of the thirteenth edition of the Red
Con-trol of Infectious Diseases, which has
lit-erally become the ‘Bible’ for all concerned
with that subject, not only in Pediatrics but
in Public Health and other branches of
med-ical practice. Among the new publications
of the year are the Directory of Safety Films,
Statement on the Use of Poliomyelitis
Vac-cine, The Application of Psychologic and
Psychometric Data to Pediatric Practice,
Selected References on Infant and Child
Feeding, several reports on various aspects
of their subject by the Committee on
Nutri-tion, and the new pamphlet, Pediatrics as a
Career, prepared by a special Committee of
the Executive Board, to serve as a concise
guide in interesting young men and women
in our specialty. All in all, more than 50
pub-lications are available from the Academy
of-flee on nearly every phase of Pediatrics. We
must not forget our News Letter, which
reaches us every month; and most important
of all we have PEDIATRICS, the monthly
sci-entifie journal of the A.A.P., which under
the leadership of the Editor, Clement A.
Smith, and his Editorial Committee,
contin-ues, we believe, to lead its field throughout
the world. So important has this general area
of Publications become that a special
Stand-ing Committee of the Executive Board has
been created to plan, review, and assist the
Central Office staff with them.”
COM M ITFEES
The next Fellow to whom I spoke was the
chairman of one of our National
Commit-tees. “I think,” he said, “our membership
should know that there are now 26 National
Committees composed of more than 250
dif-ferent fellows from all Districts of the
Acad-emy. All of these meet at least once
an-nually, and in recent years several of them
have held 2-day workshops at the Academy
Offices in Evanston when preparing for a
special publication or reviewing a particular
problem. If each Fellow has not read the
Annual Reports of Committees and Liaison
Representatives which is sent to him each
year, he is missing a golden opportunity to
learn what is currently important in
Pedi-atrics. It would be impossible to review here
the splendid work being done by all of these
committees individually, but we might tell
them that during the past year the
Corn-mitees on Nutrition, Fetus and Newborn,
Control of Infectious Diseases, Drug
Dos-age, Environmental Hazards, Medical Care
Plans, Accident Prevention, Medical
Educa-tion, and School Health, among others, have
been particularly active. It is significant of
our growing realization of the ever smaller
world in which we live that during this year
the Executive Board created The
Commit-tee on International Child Health, with a
Subcommittee on Latin-American Affairs,
under the capable leadership of immediate
Past-president, George Wheatley, just 20
years after Borden Veeder wrote in his
Presidential Address : ‘one of the most
im-portant events in the development of the
Academy since its founding was the action
taken at the last Annual Meeting creating
Region V in Central and South America,’
(now broken down into Districts IX and
XI).”
It is worthy of note that in recent months
our officers participated in the
Pan-Amen-can Congress in Venezuela as well as several
important pediatric gatherings in Mexico,
and the Academy officially sponsored
sev-eral lecture tours in Central and South
America by pediatric professors from the
United States, and plans are being made
to welcome one or more Latin American
professors here. It seems safe to say that
pediatrically, at least, the nations of the
Americas have never before been as close as
they are today.
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER CHILD
WELFARE GROUPS
My next informant said, “Why don’t you
remind our members of the continuing
em-phasis since the Academy was first formed
in all that was ‘for the welfare of children’
and what is being done to follow this ideal?
Tell them of the splendid work being done
by the more than 30 official liaison
American Academy of Cerebral Palsy, the
American Camping Association, the
Amen-can College of Obstetricians &
Gynecolo-gists, tile American College of Surgeons, the
A.M.A., tile A.P.H.A., the Boy Scouts of
America, The Girl Scouts of America, the
Child Welfare League of America, The
Na-tional Education Association, MEDICO,
The National Foundation, the National
Flealth Council, the National Research
Council, tile National Safety Council, etc.,
jtist to mention a few of them. They should
know, also, that scarcely a day goes by wilen
one or more National Organizations do not
contact our Central Office for advice,
guid-anee, or penilaps the attitude of the Academy
toward one or another matter relating to
ellildren. The frequency witil which these
contacts occur is more eloquent testimony
tilan any one could describe of the rising
position of tile Academy in tile area our
Founders presaged for us. Official
nepresen-tatives of tile Academy attended more than
30 national meetings by request during the
past year.”
PREP COMMITTEE
“How about the newly formed PREP
Committee”? asked another fellow. He then
went on : “Our members should know that
in February, 1962, the offices of the Joint
Committee on Pediatric Research,
Educa-tion and Practice were opened in our
Cen-tral Office Building in Evanston, when
Dr. Alex Steigman moved in as Director of
this project, which is jointly sponsored by
the Academy, the American Pediatric
So-ciety, tile Society of Pediatric Researcil, the
American Board of Pediatrics, and the
Pedi-atric Section of the A.M.A., to make a 3-year
study of tile status of Pediatric research,
education, and practice in the Americas. The Academy has given wilole-hearted
sup-port to this project and is eagerly looking
forward to its findings in the next several
years.” Dr. Steigman tells me that he
wel-comes the many letters and comments
cx-pressing the pediatrician’s views on the
problems facing the Committee.
SECTIONS
“Shouldn’t we remind our members of the
ever increasing importance of the Sections
of tile Academy,” another member among
you asked? “Of comparatively recent
yin-tage (the first, Surgery, having been created
in 1950) there are now six sections, namely,
Sections on Allergy, Cardiology, Child
Dc-velopment, Diseases of Chest, Military
Pedi-atnics, and Surgery. Each of these holds a
special program of its own in the days just
before the opening of the General Sessions.
Their scientific programs are open to all fel-lows and affiliate fellows, and their creation
has attracted into the Academy many of the
top experts in the fields allied to pediatrics.
Their success would seem to suggest that
we will be finding even more of them within
our structure in the years to come.”
PUBLIC RELATIONS
“How is the Academy doing in Public
Re-lations since the new department of Health
Education was set up a few years ago”?
an-other fellow asked. Tile Director of this
Dc-partment recently reported that for tile year
1961-62 publicity lineage relating to the
Academy totalled the astounding amount of
240,325 inches, as compared with about
one-eigilth that amount just 2 years ago. Radio
and television interviews, films such as “Safe
at Home,” “Tile Call of Duty,” and
“Hos-pital Sepsis” have all been very well
re-ceived and have shown the continuing value
of this medium for health education, both to
the profession and to the laity. A special
Committee of the Executive Board has been
working with the Director of this
Depart-ment and is looking forward to further
cx-pansion of this area in the years to come.
STATE CHAPTERS
A State Chairman very wisely added at
this point: “All these activities and
accom-plishments tilat you have outlined for us are
very fine, insofar as the National Chapter of
tile Academy goes, but what about the State
nec-ommendations of the National Committees
would mean little were it not for their
coun-terpants on the state level. In the final
anal-ysis, isn’t it what takes place at the local
level that really determines the success or
failure of the Academy in its goal of
improv-ing tile welfare of children”? This I had to
admit was quite true, and it is primarily
be-cause of the translation of the plans and
pro-grams of the National groups into action by
individual fellows and local units that their
effectiveness has been demonstrated. As
long as this continues to be the manner in
which the Academy functions, there is little
room for doubt about the future. Only you,
the members, and not your National officers
and central office staff, can insure the
con-tinuance of this progress.
In presenting this, my “swan song” it
seems to me appropriate that I close with
certain expressions of my appreciation and
gratitude to the many who have made p05-sible the progress we have made during the
past year.
First of all, not only for myself but for us
all, I would like to once again acknowledge
our eternal indebtedness to Dr. Clifford G.
Grulee, Sr., and the rest of the “Founding
Fathers” for their wisdom and foresight in
so ably laying the firm foundation upon
which all our progress has been based.
Next, I would like to pay my personal
tribute to my 31 predecessors in this high
office, not only for the inspiration their
presidential addresses have given me but for
the personal help and support many of them
have unselfisilly provided.
Like many of them, I would be most
re-miss if I did not take tiliS opportunity to
thank all of the official family of the
Acad-emy guided by our most resourceful
Exec-utive Director and his superb staff, and of
course including my associates on the
Exec-utive Board, Committee Chairman, and
many others without whose help the
Presi-dent’s task would be an impossible one.
It seems to me fitting and proper also to
publicly express my thanks to my wife, who
has so patiently shared the trials and
tnibu-lations of the Academy over these past
sev-eral years, and my professional and
teach-ing confreres, wllo have willingly carried on
for me \vilen official duties took me away
from my regular work.
And finally my gratitude to you, tile
Fel-lows of the Academy, not only for having
done me the signal honor of electing me to
this high office, but also for having provided
for me as my successor a man whose
under-standing of and devotion to Academy affairs
assures me that even greater progress may
be anticipated, and, in conclusion, for
hay-ing through your individual thoughts and
opinions, as outlined above, prepared my
Presidential Address for me!
