Remarks

John E. Fogarty

Dedication of Emma Pendleton
Bradley Hospital Recreation
Therapy Building

Thursday evening, Sept. 29, 1960

Riverside, Rhode Island

I am very happy to be here with you this evening. I feel honored,
moreover, to have been asked by Dr. Laufer to represent and speak on
pehalf of the National Advisory Board of the Emma Pendleton Bradley
Hospital.

I want to begin by telling you a story. It is a very serious
story about dedicated men and women of science, some of whom we know as
friends and coworkers, and about forward-looking medical institutions,
some of which we call our own.

For four years now--including two and a half years of intensive
preparation--a long-term research attack has been getting under way to
seek out the causes of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and other
neurological and sensory disorders of infancy and childhood--disorders
which afflict one in every 16 children born annually in the United States.
The hope is that this knowledge will make it possible to prevent such
disorders and thereby enable every child to lead a full and useful life.

Some 50,000 expectant mothers wilivoluntarily take part in this
study and their children will be observed, examined, and tested until
they reach school age.

Cooperating with the PubiiceHealth Service in this vast study are
15 medical centers in 12 cities across the nation. The yearly cost of

the study is but a fraction of what these disorders cost the American
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people each year in lost wages, medical expenses, and public assistance
funds--not to mention the suffering and heartbreak to the individuals

and families involved.

As I am proud to be chairman of the appropriations subcommittee
in the House of Representatives which is responsible for the review or
this study, as well as all other Public Health Service supported medical
research, so all of us here should be proud to know that Providence,
Rhode Island, is one of the cities where the study is being carried out.

Now why was Providence chosen as one of the study sites? I am
sure it was chosen because our State and its capital city have for
many years led in the fight against disease and disability.

Providence was chosen, moreover, because there are people and
institutions here like Drs. Walter S. Jones, William Reid, William
MacDonald, George W. Anderson, and Harmon P. B. Jordan, of Providence
Lying-In Hospital; Oliver J. Pratt and Dr. Vincent Zecchino, of the
Rhode Island Hospital; Margaret Langdon and Drs. Eric Denhoff, Raymond
Holden, and Gerald Solomons, of the Meeting Street School; Dr. I. Herbert
Scheffer, of Miriam Hospital; Mildred Hatton, of the Providence District
Nursing Association; Drs. Barnaby C. Keeney, J. Walter Wilson, and Glidden
Brooks, of Brown University; and because there are men and institutions
here like Dr. Maurice W. Laufer, of the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital.
All of them and a host of others are playing or are planning to play an
important role in the Providence Child Development Study.

I have told you this story because the beautiful building that

we are dedicating here this evening stands as a symbol of the foresight

that has made Providence a leader in the field of medical research.
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But this new recreational therapy building symbolizes many
other things.

In constructing this building, the men and women who direct
the affairs of the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital have shown that
they are not content to rest on the reputation that 30 years of
leadership in the fight against nervous disorders of childhood has
given them.

They have shown, moreover, that they recognize the importance
of play in the treatment and rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed
or neurologically handicapped children.

And they have shown how private institutions, endowed by generous
and humanitarian individuals like Mr. and Mrs. George lL. Bradley, can,
with some support from an enlightened Federal Government, help fill the
serious gap in our medical resources.

In naming this addition to the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital
the "Arthur H. Ruggles Building," you have wisely chosen to honor one
of Rhode Island's most illustrious sons. If any one man can be called
the "guiding spirit of the pioneering effort" represented by the opening
of this hospital, that man is Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles, who took on the
challenging position of first superintendent even though he was already
superintendent of the Butler Hospital, Chairman of the Scottish Rite
Masonic Committee on Dementia Praecox, and a teacher at Yale University.
Dr. Ruggles, your life as a a healer, teacher, and leader of men will
always inspire us, your friends and coworkers, and will, I am sure,

serve others as a model for years to come.
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With this additional resource, we now move one step closer to
a full acceptance of the challenge for better health that lies ahead--a
challenge that all of us share as citizens of a nation that has already
charted high standards of health. In fact, I believe there are 2 challenges
that lie ahead of us in the search for better health.

First, we must find ways to bring more effectively, and to more
people, the benefits of today's knowledge in the prevention, control,
and treatment of disease.

Second, we must acquire new knowledge. Great walls of ignorance
surround many of the diseases that cripple or prematurely kill us. These
walls must be torn down and destroyed.

How, as a nation, can we reach toward the goal of better health?

We can do it by giving our support, both as individuals and as
groups, to those actions and measures which represent expansion and
improvement in medical and public health practice. What is involved here
is more physicians, more widely distributed, to care for our growing
population; modern hospitals and other medical facilities, carefully
placed geographically to assure their availability to all who are in
need of care; health and welfare plans which permit the best in medical
care to be available to the individual without regard to his economic
status; carefully designed and executed public health programs which
protect the community against illness; specific measures to meet the
health needs of the aged and to protect against the heavy burden of long

and costly illness. Portions of such programs should be and are being

carried out by action, both public and private, at the national and State
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levels. But the community itself is at the heart of all programs with
the objective of applying today's knowledge in the prevention and treatment
of disease.

The other factor in the equation for better health is the acquisition
of new knowledge through medical research. I am proud to say, as I look
back over the record of this and preceding years, that in its support of
medical research the Congress has clearly acted in a manner that is
responsive to a primary goal set by the people. And I am particularly
proud that I have been privileged to have a key role in establishing
the size and defining the nature of these Federal programs.

We have sought to strengthen medical research in this country both
by increasing support of today's researchers so that there may be full and
effective use of the people and other resources now available, and by
training young investigators and building new research facilities so that
an even stronger medical research program can be carried out in the years
ahead.

When the people establish their goals in a democracy and work toward
the realization of these goals, they have something that is very specific,
practical, and immediate in mind. In this instance, it is not the
abstraction of "better health" that the people want. Rather, they want
such things as freedom from the dread of cancer, from the fear of death
from heart attacks, from the agonies of crippling arthritis, from the
life-long disabilities associated with diseases of neurological origin,

from temporary or permanent illness of the mind. They particularly want
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children to have every chance for normal birth and a youth free from
disease that impairs or retards normal growth. And for adults, both
young and old, they want not so much the simple extension of the life
span, but rather the opportunity for happy and productive life with-
out the ravages of crippling disease or the tragedy of premature
death.

And so as we dedicate this fine new facility to the cause for
which it was created, we must accept an over-riding and greater
challenge that faces you and me and the citizens of this great State
and of our nation. That is the challenge to work continuously, each
in our own sphere, for the improvement of health of all mankind.

I know that each of you will strive to meet that challenge in
the days and years ahead. I can assure you that I shall continue to

devote my efforts to meeting that great and vital challenge.