Remarks by President McAleese at the 400th Anniversary Dinner of the Royal College of Physicians
Remarks by President McAleese at the 400th Anniversary Dinner of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons
President MacKay, Lord Provost, First Minister, Fellows of the Royal College, Distinguished Guests.
Tá gliondar orm bheith i láthair tráthnóna agus muid ag céiliúradh ceithre chéad bliain ag dul chun chinn an choláiste seo. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as fáilte fíorchaoin.
Many thanks for your kind invitation to join you in celebrating the four hundredth birthday of this distinguished College and for the warm welcome to this sister Celt from that other island.
Earlier today I was privileged to receive an Honorary Fellowship from the College. I regard it as a personal honour to be woven in this special way into the story of such a distinguished seat of scholarship and training. My warmest thanks the College President, Colin MacKay, and the members of the Council for affording me such a special privilege. Dr Jim McFarland from Northern Ireland was good enough to act as my sponsor and to him I also offer my sincere thanks. I am especially grateful to all those who, despite lives consumed by pressures and responsibilities, made space to attend this afternoon’s ceremony
We are privileged to live in an age when the extraordinary accomplishments of medical science have become so commonplace, that in the rising tide of expectations and demands we have almost lost our capacity for awe and maybe even for gratitude. The medical profession is respected and held in high public esteem. It is trusted and admired because of the rigour of its training, its stringent, uncompromising professionalism. You who are the custodians of that trust know only too well how hard earned it is and how much conscientious effort goes in, day in and day out, to sustaining it from generation to generation.
If you were to line up all those who have laboured in this place for the past four hundred years and offer them their choice of eras, there would be a serious rush for this one. I wonder how many would willingly volunteer for the bleak 16th century landscape which prompted the visionary Glaswegian Peter Lowe to establish an institution in his home city dedicated to improving standards of health care? Or as he put it rather more graphically - to prevent the abuse of his fellow countrymen by “the surgically unskilled and unlearned”. That act of faith in education and in medicine became the cornerstone of these four centuries of excellence in the education of physicians, surgeons and dentists here in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons.
There is a saying in the Irish Language ‘Tús maith is leath na hoibre’ – a good start is half the work. The subsequent history of the Royal College is a catalogue of achievement which has vindicated time and again the ambitions and vision of the founders. It was out of a desire to recognise these achievements that I was glad to accept your President’s invitation to the College on this special anniversary occasion.
I think of the pioneering and world-renowned work of Joseph Lister in the field of antiseptic surgery which had such a dramatic effect in reducing mortality rates from surgical procedures. His work helped seedbed the astonishing 20th century advances in surgery that have increased life expectancy and improved the quality of life for those affected by many previously untreatable conditions.
The twentieth century has its dark side. Modern warfare, combined with greed and hatred, have shown us a graphically unredeemed and ugly side of humanity. I visited the Burma Railway museum on the River Kwai in Thailand some years ago and saw in that very humble, modest little place, the photographs of those young men whose lives were a living nightmare. And yet the picture which I remember best, which stays with me over all the grim, stomach churning stories, is of an Australian surgeon standing knee-deep in water, his own flesh rotting, as he performed lifesaving surgery with the most rudimentary of equipment in the most hostile of environments. 16th Century Glasgow was not too far away.
Through the worst of human misery there have always been the hope-bringers, the healers. They have redeemed this century, transforming it into an age of miracles. There is much in this century we cannot hope to be proud of, which is precisely why we are all the more proud of the remarkable and rapid progress in healthcare. It is a precious gift given generously to this century by the medical profession, among them many who lived and died in very different times but whose care for the sacredness of human life kept a small but unquenchable light burning through the darkness.
Today’s success brings of course formidable new challenges, for the public appetite is whetted and what was revolutionary yesterday is expected to be routine today. You have to deal with competing priorities, limited budgets, profound ethical questions and a host of other clamouring issues besides just getting the job done. Happily the medical profession has long been an exemplar of global partnership and co-operation.
Links between the professions in Britain and Ireland have always been strong and in particular the Royal College in Glasgow and the Royal Colleges in Ireland which serve both parts of the country, are very close. It strikes me that the relationship that exists between the Royal Colleges here and in Ireland is a microcosm of what we would wish to see develop as part of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement
This is a time of enormous hope and expectation in Ireland. We have a precious opportunity to put behind us the agonies of generations of conflict, to commence the healing which will transform the landscape of life not just in Northern Ireland but on both these islands. Scotland is also called to play its part in moving all of us to that empty space in the twenty first century which we want to colonise with respect for diversity and joyful curiosity about each other.
The Good Friday Agreement provides for Scottish participation in a new British-Irish Council. It will be an important part of the infrastructure supporting, developing and sustaining the rooting of peace and the growing of healthy relationships between the peoples of these islands. For too long those relationships have been skewed by a level of distrust, fear and ignorance which masked the journeys we have shared, the galaxy of things we have in common, the deep friendships we have established over centuries. Here, more than in any other part of this island, there exists a complex web which links you to both parts of Ireland. You are the possessors of a resource, a pocket of experience and insight we need to share with you. Now, at last, we will be able to bring these into the light, to build on them and to craft a different kind of future - one to be proud of.
It is a happy coincidence that the development of the peace process should have come about at the same time as the coming of Scottish devolution. People are learning to live comfortably with change, to embrace it and to relish its potential. For both of our homelands, on the brink of the next millennium, these are times of fascinating energy and opportunity. Each of us has our distinctive way of looking at the world, our own special particularity and we look forward to listening to each other humbly and sharing with each other generously.
Your invitation to me was an act of generosity, a capturing of the new mood we who exit this century have been blessed to experience. I hope we will all find the courage to embrace and change the future in the way that generations of students and staff of this College have done.
My renewed thanks to you all and my best wishes for the next four hundred years!
Guím rath agus séan ar bhur gcuid oibre, agus oraibh go léir.