Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/370

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JOHN B. MUBPHY 347 Well-equipped laboratories and libraries and assistants to make use of them are not enough. The surgeon must have diagnostic ability and technical skilly but, in order that the men in attendance may carry back home what was shown in the dinicy he must also have teaching ability. No one can teach unless he has personality. For teaching ability there must also be thorough informa- tion on his subject. This must include a knowledge of what has been written and judgment as to the values of the con- tributions of others. It also embraces knowledge of the field operated on and the meaning of pictures there portrayed. For want of a better term we say the surgeon to have teach- ing ability must have * * surgical sense. * ' By surgical sense is meant knowledge of the field in question, judgment in inter- preting conditions, common sense, and a capacity for sensing, for wisely guessing, that which is beyond demonstration or proof. The teaching surgeon must analyze accurately, must be log- ical as well as forceful, must be positive, dogmatic and asser- tive. He must have the capacity of coordinating his muscles, of judging situations and, simultaneously, of telling the stu- dent of what is being done in a way that will react in the mind of that student. The great teaching surgeon of this day is John B. Murphy. ' Through the influence of the surgical clinics of which the one at Mercy Hospital has been a leader, the small towns and cities have their hospitals in which the work is done by resident sur- geons. In lieu of the few of former days there are now thou- sands of hospitals and tens of thousands of surgeons. In consequence no longer are sufferers with emergency condi- tions dragged long distances on trains. The entire machinery of surgery has changed. The surgical customs of the people have changed. The result is due to the building by Murphy and the men of his group on the foundation laid by Koch and Lister and men of their groups. The medicine of the future will concern itself principally with human efficiency. Physicians will be efficiency engineers, v Service will continue to be rendered in curing developed dis-