-11L ' k. SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTR, THE RT. HON. R. G.
MENZIES, AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NATIONAL
HEART FL7q-DATION CAIPAIGN AT CANBEIRA, ON 28TH
" FRL, 1 ,61
Sir, Your Grace, Your Excellency and gentlemen:
I think I ought to begin by telling you two things that
have entered my mind very powerfully, first, since I read the
literature that was circulated; and second, since I came here
tonight. Here is my friend, Warren McDonald, a great
Australian, presiding over this appeal and saying to you quite
modestly, ? I want œ l millions". What in reality he -ants is
œ 2j millions: And this relresents a complete contradiction pf my
earlier and more respectable life as a Barrister. Because when
we wanted, on behalf of our client, œ 1U, 000., we always asked for
œ 2,000. He is revdrsing the process.
And the other preliminary observation is that when. I
read the book of the words, because having inveigled me into:
doing this task some time ago they then sent me masses of what
I believe is loosely called " literature" ( Laughter) and it had
hearts all over it, I read the rules to be observed to avoid
being a heart subject. I want to begin by confessing to you
that I have violated them all. You are not to be overweight.
( Laughter) Well, now, thank you, thank you so much for not
having laughed louder. ( Laughter) You are not to smoke too
much, whereas every time, and it doesn't happen too frequently,
that I am offered a good cigar, I smoke it, at once. And third,
you are to take regular exorcise. The only exercise that I ever
got cohsists of getting up out of my chair in my office and
going out into ry private secretary's office to kick up a
frightful uproar because something hasn't been done. But in
spite of that I hope to run for a year or two longer. ( Applause)
Oh, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let this have even the
merest hint of political significance. I hope to run for
another nine months. ( Laughter)
But my interest in this problem, my particular
interest in what is being done now, arose when some day
somebody brought into me a rather self-effacing, but very famous
man Dr. Paul Dudley White. ( Applause) Having got tired of
curing President Eisenhower he decided to have a look at me.
And he came in to see me. I learned more about the
possibilities of a Heart Foundation from him in one hour than I
think I might have learned by reading blue books and white
papers sounds rFther like Seidlitz powders, doesn't it?
( Laughter) for a long, long time. He introduced me to a new
outlook on this matter. All I want to say to you tonight is
something about my new outlook on this matter, because I
believe I was going to say I hope but I believe that the
Appeal that is being launched tonight will produce a responsive
chord in almuost every human being in this country.
I remember saying to the Doctor, " Well, of course when
I was a boy" which as my opponents would say is an incredibly
long time ago " and somebody was reported to have had a little
heart trouble, that somebody wtas put aside ' ell he's had a
little heart trouble' and he lay low, as yo i might say, and
was treated quietly." It was understood that he must not be
disturbed. Finally he almost frittered away his life because it
was understood that nothing must be done to disturb it. And I
said to him to our most distinguished visitor, " Is that true
any longer?" and he said, with that easy manner that a thin
man adopts when advising a thick one, " No, no, this is all quite
wrong. What happens is that if a nan has a little coronary
trouble good or bad as the case may be he rests until this
particular lesion is corrected. Then if he has been in the
habit of playing golf, he plays golf; if he has been in the
habit of walking, he walks; if he has been in the habit of
stepping in smartly to the division lists with the bells ringing,
he steps in smartly ( Laughter) and registers his vote. He is not
to be encouraged to gallop upstairs. dut subject to that let him
live a normal life and "' here is no reason why he shouldn4t live
for 25 years". Now thatt I thought, was a most illuminating
observation by Dr. Paul 4hiue.
Then when I was approached first about this matter and,
as I have been unkindly reminded, made a speech about it, about
two years ago was it? Anyhow my office produced it the other
day. At the time I thought it was terrible; and reading back on
it I thought " Jolly good, jolly good". Then it was, I think,
that I began to understand a few things, a few things that I hope
everybody in Australia will understand.
We have been accustomed to talking about, and indeed
doing something about certain major diseases. For example, what
we in this country have done about tuberculosis in th3 last
years is, I believe, almost fabulous. We have been as people
devoting as we think, a good deal of money, but as the great and
devoted experts in this field know, an immense amount of genius
and spirit and enthusiasm and skill to getting rid of certain
great complaints. Yet perhaps until this Foundation was mooted
we had never realised that although all of us some day will die,
because our heart ceases to beat, the fact is that more than half
of the deaths in Australia still occur from some disease of the
heart. And of those I'm no expert but of those I should
imagine quite a perceptible percentage are deaths ol people who
need not die, who need not become invalids, who need not be
treated as something odd, to be carefully respected on the
sidelines. If only we could discover the causes of heart trouble,
the proper treatment of heart trouble, the right way in which to
make people who have some heart trouble understand that they are
not out, but that they are still, under proper conditions, in the
full stream of life.
This, I think, is a tremendous adventure in medical
science. And like all other groat advanturos in scientific work
it is not just to be loft to Governments because Government
departments there are many famous heads of Department here
tonight can do a great deal. But when you attack an enormous
problem of this kind, then, as the people expect to have the
benefit, so the people must rally around and say " Lie are going to
have a hand in achieving this thing."
This is what I call, Sir, the " new wisdom". In my days
as a boy I so well remember as I have reminded you, " Poor old
chap", they used to say " hels had a heart attack, and therefore
he's out". And now the whole concentration of the greatest
cardiac experts in the world is not on smoothing the passing of
the man who has had a heart attack, but in bringing him back
into the full stream of life and to his full usefulness as a
citizen. This is really, when you think about it, one of the
greatest efforts at human reconstruction that has occurred in our
time. That is one of the reasons why I am here.
Now, Sir, like nest of you I have my own feelings of
respect and of affection for medical men. I know it pleases the
doctors to make disagreeable remarks about the lawvyers nothing
to the disagreeable remarks that the lawyers have made about the
doctors under suitable circuimstances. But when we got right
down home it's true, isn't it, that we all have a remarkable
feeling of confidence and trust in the medical man who looks
after us, who advises us, who treats us. This is a marvellous
and noble profession.
0 3.
But it isn't all a matter of looking at today's doctor
and saying, " Well, of course, he owes his skill to his own
genius". He may have no more genius than his father who was a
doctor before him. But if he knows more, if he has greater
skill, it is because things have been happening outside the
immediate practice of medicine that have enriched his
experience, enriched his knowledge, enriched his own technique.
Therefore, Sir, the truth is, in each generation,
that medical men, and we may all be thankful for it, are better
equipped than their fathers. And if they aro better equipped
it isn't because they are necessarily more able than their
fathers I've never laboured under that error it's because
research, investigation, experiment have increased knowledge and
skill in the new generation. Never let us forget that. Seventy
per cent of what did you say? œ 1 millions, œ 2 millions,
œ 2 millions, œ 3 millions that may be raised by this appeal
of it is to go to research. Now research is not a matter of
some man sitting down and having a brilliant inspiration and
writing it down on a piece of paper. Research, properly
considered in this world, is a matter of infinite pains, of
patient seeking, of patient recording of knowledge; it is
something that I am afraid most of us have never understood. We
think that research means suddenly having a bright idea. It
doesn't mean that, except in one case out of a hundred thousand.
If we are to have research into these matters, if we are to
discover the impact of certain physical conditions on the heart,
then clearly this will take years of work maybe months of work
in some aspects, years of work in others. It will require the
concentrated and organised labour of devoted and skilful people.
And so be it that the research be great, and the results be
great, shall we, or other people, in a few years' time meet
together and say: " This development of research into the
conditions of the heart was one of the greatest things to
happen in Australia". Now, Sir, that provokes me to say just one other thing.
We live, as I am constantly reminded, in a new world. And I am
constantly reminded, and no doubt, quite justly, that I am an
old-fashioned person. This is the " space age" and we are
invited to tremble, or applaud, as the case may be, at the
researches into space by clover modern men who know all about
propellants, who know all about putting rockets into orbit, and
monkeys into orbit, and men into orbit. This is no doubt
spectacular and magnificent. But I will still say this to you,
that from the point of view of the welfare of human beings, men
and women and children, the greatest researches and the greatest
discoveries in this century have not been in space, but on this
earth. ( Applause) When I an invited to quake because somebody has
launched a sputnik or a man or something my mind runs back to the
undoubted fact that in this century, so otheruise mangled by the
villainy of people, the greatest things that have helped mankind,
that have prolonged life, that have aided human happiness, have
been made by those people who have worked on the probleos of
health. My mind runs to the surgeons, the great developments
in surgery, the narvellous developnents among physicians, the
rarvellous, the miraculous work of the bio-chenists, the work of
the physiologists. Add then all up and you will find as I an
prepared to assert, that the simple truth is that of all the
people who gaze up occasionally and look at a sputnik in the
sky, quite a considerable number wouldn't be there to see it,
if it were not for the nagnificent work of medical research in
this century. ( Applause)
Those, Sir, I believe, have been the greatest benefits
to mankind in our time. s I am not disposed to believe that all
work is done and we must now turn to another, I believe that the
Heart Foundation in this country enriched by the experience o
our colleagues in the United States of America, will probably
produce in 0the next generation a ri~ volution in this fiel~ d,
compared to which the launching of rockets the putting up of
things that go into orbit, will in the ultimate judgment of a
just and wise mankind, be as nothing.
The last thing that I want to say to you is this:
This is our problem. I read the material that was sent to me
and I was delighted to find a passage from old John Donne I
wonder how many people can write English today as he wrote it
and I remind you of it:
" Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee".
Now this I think is the key note of this matter ' never send
to know lor whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee'. This is
our human problem. If, as a result of this appeal, to which I
hope every man woman and child in Australia will respond, if,
as a result of this appeal great things are done in this vast
field of medical know'ledge and the prolongation of human life
and of human health, then$ Sir 7 I would say that tonight we have
begun a great and humane exercise, not for one, but for all
the most remarkable essay in brothurhood that we have known in
our time. ( Applause)