President Butler, Dr. Anderson, and other members of the American Pediatric Society, to which with pride and affection I have belonged for so many years, I accept this great honor most gratefully as a measure of your friendship and esteem. The occasion is an unnerving one for me, as I suspect it may have been for my predecessors, and I face it with emotions of humility, pleasure, and gratitude. Since last December when Dr. McGuinness's timely telegram brought me Christmas tidings of great joy and amazement, I have labored unavailingly with the task of finding, to quote Dr. Butler's painful prescription, "words of wisdom and enlightenment" worthy of the occasion. Failing in this, I ask your indulgence if I merely offer a few rambling observations and thoughts on the extraordinary changes that have occurred in pediatrics, particularly in its preventive and therapeutic aspects, during the past four or five decades.