... the space of one man's life is insufficient for him to know anything but the rudiments of our art in many branches, and be, at the same time, in a position to advance in any degree the boundaries of its smallest province... we may pause (therefore) I trust (for) a just consideration and appreciation of the labor of our predecessors. Our knowledge has been built up... not by the mushroom activity of any one period, or of any one school of medicine, or by the premature birth of an idea or theory, but by the painstaking, laborious exertions of many generations of earnest men, working, for the most part, without expectation or perhaps desire; certainly without the attainment of those rewards, by which not only the layman, but alas, even the average member of our own art, measures what he calls success.
These words, written in 1902 by Jonathan Wright,