To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

Chicago is already recognized as the center of culture of the United States. Fredr. P. Fish, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Boston man, said at a banquet in Chicago:

“Chicago is on the culture center ...... For all time the Middle West as represented by Chicago will remain the center. We must graft the Western point of view on our Eastern ideas if we are to progress.” Surely a wise man and a prophet has come out of the East.

As Chicago is “the culture center” of the United States, the part she played at the last meeting of the Pan-American Medical Congress is not without significance. She sent the largest number of delegates of any city or nation and, if we may believe the evidence of their senses, ran the Congress. If she chooses she can organize a Pan-American Medical Congress all by herself that will run itself. She can furnish all of the scientific essays and discussions, the banquets and the banqueters, the reputation and the reverberation and, if necessary, the attendance and the talking.

However, to come back to where we started from, the Illinois Central, it was that Chicago railway which provided the chief engineer who cut the red tape and started a revolution in methods. He cut the Gordian knot by cutting the whole business. The Illinois Central was, of course, the best railway for me to take for my trip to Panama, but as I was to attend the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association on my way, my Chicago modesty suggested the patronage of a Southern railway, which to my surprise gave me as good a ride as the Illinois Central gives. The only fault I found with it was that its express trains were too accommodating.

For Doctors Only.

The association met at the interesting and mushroom-growing, mining and manufacturing center, Birmingham, Ala., the “New City of the New South,” where men and money are said to make each other—doing it by modern methods, and in large quantities. In this Chicago of the South I hoped to get some pointers on medical, surgical and social customs and curatives appropriate to Southern climates, preparatory to trusting myself in the deadly tropics, where water is laden with germs, the air full of infection and meat is spoiled before it is fit to eat.

And I was not disappointed in my expectations, for the profession of Birmingham, in return for the heavy feast of science afforded by the visitors, gave us a banquet which put our Northern idealizations and realizations to shame. It was celebrated in the immense square banquet hall of Hotel Hillman. The tables were placed around the room near the walls, leaving a square space in the center about forty feet in diameter decorated to represent the Vale of Cashmere. This space was adorned with immense prostrate mirrors for water, a profusion of tubs of tropical plants for islands, electric flashlights above for twinkling stars, and the expansive toastmaster’s face at one side to represent the rising full moon. The flowers and lights and reflections in the central space, bordered by the ornate and sumptuously provisioned tables, constituted one of the most beautiful and intoxicating sights and experiences of the kind I had ever seen and partaken of, and led to the most exuberant five hours’ flow of wit and humor of which I have any personal knowledge.

The toastmaster was a physician who had developed into a politician and post-prandial celebrity, and who made witty speeches enough to render the occasion memorable, even if no one had responded to his toasts. He infused his political inversion and irresponsibility of speech into the minds of those upon whom he called, so that the most solemn and scientific of our Northern laboratory plodders and surgical experts mixed the most unexpected and absurd exaggeration into their carefully prepared scientific and soporific remarks. They forgot to be instructive and became entertaining.

Even the Irish were outclassed. Hereafter I shall always speak of our Southern wit and humor as the most spontaneous and exuberant in the world. The North is witty because it is partly Irish, the South is wittier because it is entirely American.

For Women Only.