After a day in sober scientific endeavor by this Society, I believe that I have been given a difficult assignment by President Kempe to address you at this hour. He said that I might be dull or funny, scientific or practical, dirty or clean and proposed various other alternatives. I suggested, "How about simply inarticulate?" I am reminded of the "Treasurer's Report" presented by Robert Benchley in one of the productions of the Ziegfield Follies—so dull, so detailed, that only its deadly dullness became excruciatingly humorous. I am no Benchley and I shall not attempt this. We agreed that I should be brief; if the converse of long-windedness is shortness of breath, the use of S.O.B. as a term of affection is easily understood.
The suggestion that I might speak on the subject of research in clinical pediatrics depends on the fact that I have more or less worked both