To Dr. Flick from Dr. Welch
125 W. St. Paul St., Baltimore,
March 24, 1904
My dear Dr. Flick:
As I have written Dr. McCarthy, I shall be most happy to accept the invitation of the staff of the Henry Phipps Institute to dinner at 7.30 on Monday evening March 28th.
I understand your position with reference to the Bell and Lewis Congresses. The Bell affair is absolutely out of any consideration. The question is whether the Lewis society is as bad as you think it is. I confess that I do not know much about it, but it has the support of men who will have to be reckoned with on account of their official positions as for other reasons in a National Crusade against tuberculosis, and whom it would not be desirable to alienate. The organization seems to be almost inchoate, and probably could be molded into any desirable form by those who took hold of it.
It is too bad that there should have arisen such a muddle, and possibly the best course may be to let troubled waters settle before the leading men in the profession take any positive course of action. I feel that men like you and Trudeau who have given strength and direction to the antituberculosis movement in this country should have the main say in determining what is best to do under the circumstances.
Yours sincerely,
William H. Welch.