On Reading and Humour

North Canterbury Gazette, Volume 8, Issue 36, 1 September 1938, Page 4

On Reading and Humour

Dr Robert Hutchison, .M.D., D.S.c, L.L.D., President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, in an address to the London. Hospital College students, report the "Lancet," said:— -^

"Some will find their refreshment in art, other perhaps in music, and happy are those of you who are able to practise either of these even in the humblest way. In others literature will be a refuge—both current literature and those great masterpieces of prose and verse which are beyond the influence of fashion and are untouched by time. "I would urge you therefore not to allow your professional reading to crowd out general Take to heart' the daring of Darwin, who deplored in his later life that he quite lost his earlier taste for poetry. So close-linked too are language and thought that the cultivation of literature will make you think more clearly and express yourself, even in your professional writing, more accurately, and confused thinking and slovenly writing are, alas, all too common in our profession.

"My last and best gift would be a sense of humour. You may think it curious that humour should be a valuable gift for a doctor to possess, but I assure you that it is so. "It will help you to bear with the vagaries of your patients and still more with those of their relations and to derive amusement instead of annoyance from the eccentricities of your colleagues. Humour will save you also from two great besetting sins of the doctor—faddery when he is young, pomposity when he is old—for if you have a sense of humour you will often hear a still small voice within you which at the critical moment whispers 'humbug.' "It will prevent you also from taking yourself and your work too seriously and will remind you that there are other things in life worth having besides health. The world just now badly needs a sense of humour, for if it w«re more widespread the prancing and posturing of Dictators would be impossible. Humour, however, is a gift which is not to be cultivated in'solitude, so if you wish to develop it in yourself you must mix with your fellows."