[President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the National Institute of Health]

Robert Trout: The President of the United States dedicates the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Six hours ago, the Presidential special train rolled into Washington's Union Station, bringing the President back from his one-day New England tour, which ended in Boston last night. [Bethesda, Maryland, October 31, 1940]

And now the President has come by automobile to the National Health Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington.

Here on a pleasant Indian summer afternoon, a moderate sized audience has gathered before the white column, red brick administration building set in the green, rolling Maryland hills, and surrounded by trees thick with red and yellow autumn leaves. [Speaking: Robert Trout, CBS News]

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

[Applause]

President Roosevelt: Mr. Coy, Dr. Thompson, the Governor of Maryland, Governor O'Connor, ladies and gentlemen. Nowhere in the world, except in the Americas is it possible for any nation to devotee great sector of its effort to life conservation rather than life destruction.

All of us are grateful that we in the United States can still turn our thoughts and our attention to those institutions of our country that symbolize peace. Institutions whose purpose it is to save life, and not to destroy it.

It is for the dedication of these noble buildings to the service of man that we are assembled here today.

The National Institute of Health speaks the universal language of humanitarianism. It has been devoted throughout its long, distinguished history, to furthering the health of all mankind,

in which service, it has recognized no limitations imposed by international boundaries, and has recognized no distinctions of race or creed or of color.

The total defense that we have heard so much about of late, that total defense which this nation seeks, involves a great deal more than building airplanes and ships and guns and bombs.

For we cannot be a strong nation unless we are a healthy nation. So we must recruit not only men and materials, but also knowledge and science to service our national strength, and that is what we are doing here.

We have recognized the strategic importance of health by the creation of a Health and Medical Committee in the Council of National Defense itself.

That committee has the job of coordinating the health and medical aspects of national preparedness.

That Committee is assisting the government in the mobilization of the medical and health resources of the country to serve the best interests both of the military and the civilian elements of the nation.

To do this will require the best energies of professional and technical leadership everywhere in the United States. To do this will require the fullest cooperation between the government and the hospitals, the medical, the dental, the nursing, and other professions.

We seek the same partnership that we seek for industrial production in the Advisory Committee. Neither the American people nor their government intend to socialize medical practice any more than they plan to socialize industry.

In American life, the family doctor, the general practitioner performs a service which we rely upon and which we trust as a nation. No one has a greater appreciation than I of the skill and self-sacrifice of the medical profession.

And there can be no substitute for the personal relationship between doctor and patient, which is a characteristic and a source of strength of medical practice in our land.

Although we have a great deal to do, the nation today, I'm very certain, is better prepared to meet the public health programs of our emergency than at any previous time in the history of the country.

Since the passage of the famous Social Security Act, with its health provisions, in 1935, federal, state, and local health and medicine are cooperating more broadly than ever before.

Our people are better informed on health matters than ever before. Scientific knowledge of the causes of disease, and also the conditions for health has exceeded any previous limits.

Facilities for health and medical service are more numerous and they're better. The Public Health Service of the United States is a very old institution and it’s done magnificent work, but it has only recently, in the past few years that the federal government has indicated that it can do infinitely more…

that disease disregards state lines as well as national lines. That among these states there is, as we know, an inequality of opportunity for health. In such cases, the Public Health Service is helping and must continue, even more greatly, to help.

That partnership, and I emphasize that word, in regard to health and medicine throughout the land, that partnership is making definite progress among many diseases.

Among the buildings of the National Institute of Health to be dedicated here today, stands the National Cancer Institute, created through provisions of the act which I signed on August 5, 1937.

The work of this new institute swell underway. It is promoting and stimulating cancer research throughout the nation. It is bringing to the people of the nation a message of hope, because many forms of the disease are not only curable, but even preventable.

Beyond this it is doing research here and in many universities to unravel the mysteries of cancer. I think we can all have faith in the ultimate results of these great efforts.

These buildings that we dedicate represent new and improved housing for an institution that has a long and accomplished background of accomplishment in this task of research.

The original demonstration of the cause and method of preventing pellagra, for example, has been followed by other important contributions. Great work has been done in the control of tularemia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, typhus fever, yellow fever, malaria, and sinacotis [?].

Now that we are less than a day by plane from the jungle-type yellow fever of South America, less than two days from the sleeping sickness of equatorial Africa, less than three days from cholera and bubonic plague, the ramparts we watch must be civilian in addition to being military.

[Applause]

For the very beautiful and very spacious grounds on which these buildings stand, we are indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Luke Wilson, who wrote to me in 1935, asking if a part of their estate in Bethesda, in Maryland, could be used to the benefit of the people of this nation.

I would tell her now, as she sits beside me, that in the capacity, the compassion of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson for suffering, in their hope for human action to alleviate it, she and her husband symbolize the aspirations of millions of Americans for a cause such as this, and we are very grateful.

[Applause]

Today, the need for the conservation of health and physical fitness is greater than at any time in this nation’s history. In dedicating this institute, I dedicate it to the underlying philosophy of public health, to the conservation of life, to the wise use of the vital resources of the nation.

I voice, for America and for the stricken world, our hopes, our prayers, our faith in the power of man's humanity to man.

Robert Trout: The President of the United States has dedicated the National Institute of Health, a collection of six buildings set in the sloping hills of Bethesda, Maryland, a few miles from Washington.

[Music]

The President spoke in this pleasant rural setting in Bethesda, Maryland near Washington D.C. this afternoon after a quick automobile drive from Washington D.C., the capital city, in which he arrived a few minutes after ten o’clock this morning.

And now the small audience which has come out to watch the President dedicate this National Institute of Health is now moving away and the President will soon motor back to the White House in Washington.

This is Bob Trout speaking, this is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

[President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the National Institute of Health]

[Produced by Audiovisual Program Development Branch, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications National Library of Medicine]

[Historic Photographs courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, National Archives, Prints and Photographs Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Visitor Information Center, National Institutes of Health]

[Roosevelt Speech Audio courtesy National Archives, WTOP Radio]

[National Library of Medicine Bethesda, Maryland 20894, 1991]