Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-01-21
ALEXANDER WEPT BECAUSE
HE HAD CONQUERED THE WORLD
" Tears Are Shed Today II Is Because
We Have Got a Foothold in Only
the Outlying Provinces Of
unexplored Realms

S"SNP'O'Co NCdiTno
THE public celebration last night Of the
L eighty fourth anniversary of the birth OF
DIR. William Williams Keen was more than
tribute tn on" of the most distinguished
citizens of Philadelphia.
1t was in a very real sense cclebra ion
of the primacy of this city in medicine and
surgery, a prmacy which 1t shares with
Vienna. The first medical school in Amer.
ica was established here, and in all the inter
vening ycnrs attention has been given to
training men to treat the ills of the body
and to prolong life. The list of great men
devoted to tn" healing art who have prac-
ticed here is long and brilliant. Pepper.
Willard. Gross, Agnew. Deaver, Van Len
nep. Northrup and Da Costa to namc only
few. living and dead. have achieved fame
that has spread as far as the science of
medicine and surgery is known.
DR. Keen is a splendid representative Of
the medical skill Of this city. He is a cor
responding member of the French and Bel.
ginn societies of surgeons. of the Clinical
Society of London. an honorary fellow of
the Royal College of Surgeons of London
and of Edinburgh and of two Italian surgi.
cal societies. He has received honorary de.
gr"rS from several American universities and
from universities in Scotland and in Sweden.
And he is the author of n large number of
books on his profession which have long been
accepted ms standard works. But he would
BE- tn" last man TO deny to his brethren in
his profession the glory that is theirs.
Besides being q celebration in honor of the
position which this city occupies in the realm
of the healing arts. the occasion last night
was recognition of the perpetual youth of
the human mind. A mans body grows old,
but the mind remains ever young, with an
insutabl" curiosity searching out new things.
Statistics dealing with the longevity of the
great men of the earth are always interest
ing. but they are not particularly important.
We like to know that Titan and Isocrates
were more than ninety years old when they
died. and that GautamH, the founder Of
Buddhism. lived to similar age, and that
Sophoclcs and Thomas Hobbies and John
Adams and Sir Christopher Wren belong in
the same group Of nonagPnarians.
1t satisfies an idle curiosity to be told
that of thousand of the greatest men in
history the average age of the physicians
was the longest. being little more than
seventy years; that the statesmen and orators
lived little more than sixty nine years
and that the poets. whose average age was
sixty years, lived year and Il half longer
than the kings and rulers
When have studied these figures we
have learned nothing that will profit u.s. 1t
is necessary to go behind the statistics to
discover whether the world has progressed
since the days of SophQcIcs. who lived more
than ninety years and Is still regarded as
one of the great men of earth He died in
the year 405 Il. c. There was born about
Nv lufn ,,.I,,,
his period He conquered the known world
and died at the age of thirty-two after
having wept that there was nothing left for
him to conquer.
Those who take the trouble to give a little
thought to the intellectual activities of the
modern world as sugg'S 'Strd by last night
celebration will discover that something has
happened in the two millcnniumS that have
passed since the death Of Alexander.
Men are not weeping today because there
are no more worlds TO conquer. They know
that there are vast realms still awaiting con.
quest and that they have succeeded in getting
fOothold in only the outermost fringcs of
those uncXplorcd and "nticng Kingdoms.
They weep, If they weep at all, that they are
not to be allowed to live until the secrets Of
these kingdoms have been wrcStpd from them
and until the mind of man has mastered all
their mysteries.
Yet such progress has been madc in modi-
cine, for example, during the lifetime uf DR..
Keen that "" ar" sometimes inclined 10
boast a. though we knew all about the cause
and cur" Of disease. Eighty four years ago
anesthcticS w"r" unknown and when surgical
operations w"r" performed the patient
felt every cut Of the knife and III" grinding
teeth Of IN" saw n it rasp"d through the
bones, Tn" common operations Of the
present tim" were impossible then
AntiS"Dtics were not then used and when
an operation had been successfully performed
tn" patient died from blood poisoning induced
by the Unch'an instruments and hands of the
operator. Hospitals were burned down in
an attempt 10 get rid of the poison which il
was thought infected them, but when it
dnwncd upon one or two men that the trou-
bic was lack Of what We know now as surgi-
cal cleanliness the reform began and an in
fcctrd surgical wound is now rare
Following the lead suggcS ed by antiScpsiS.
men b"""u t. study the germ theory and
bartcri"I"gy was developed as the hand
maiden IT medicine, Because of this. yellow
fever and typhoid and d!phthpria have been
shorn Of their torrors, and there is hope that
tuberculosis and cancer will in time BE- con.
Qu"rcd.
The "onHu"S's over disease made by quiet
and painstaking investigators working in
laboratories during the last eighty four
years are of greater benefit to the world
than all the military conquests from the
siege Of Troy to the defeat Of the PruSsians.
We have conquered the destroyer of life in
two or thre" outlying provinces, where we
have intr"n"hed ourselves preparatory to
pushing still further into the hostile country.
But it is not in medicine alone that We
have accomplished something. Gilbert X.
Chcstcrton in his latest book reminds us that
we have mad" political progress since Rome
succrrdcd the empire Of Alexander as the
dominant political power. The Roman
citizen could not conceive Of a state without
slaves BcrauS" of something that happerrd
in Jerusalem and th"rruboutS the French,
when they rcyoltcd against the abuse Of
royal power, could not conceive Of u state
in which there were slaves. And today
there are hopeful and enthusiastic souls who
are looking forward to a state in which there
In Ia, nd AZ we'll NJ nnIiti,uI