Our Hosts, Fellow Members and Guests:
The object of a Society such as ours is primarily to gather together all the representative men who are in this line of work into one National Society. Of necessity it must include all the men who are teaching Proctology throughout the United States. It is 23 years since the Society last met in San Francisco. It is 28 years since the first survey on the teaching of Proctology in the medical schools of the country was made by the late Dr. Dwight Murray, of Syracuse. I have with me a copy of the 1910 National Proceedings. The meeting was held in St. Louis. The officers at that time were: President Dwight H. Murray; Vice-President T. Chittenden Hill; Secretary-Treasurer Lewis H. Adler, Jr. All three of these have since gone beyond.

Dr. Murray received replies to his questionnaire from 32 of the 52 different medical schools throughout the United States at that time. An interesting thing is that those replies showed that in 29 departments of Proctology the teaching in Proctology was done under surgery. In one it was done under gastro-enterology, and in one under gynecology. There was a definite Proctologic unit in but one of the colleges.

In 1936 I prepared a report and presented it to you. It never appeared in the "Transactions." Hence the material was sidetracked. This report showed a vastly improved standing in the teaching of Proctology. There were 12 absolutely distinct and separate Departments of Proctology in medical schools. The Department Head had the rank of Professorship, and gave adequate courses. There were 32 others that had courses established and proper men in the department. So you can see that from one real course back in 1910, we had risen in 1936 to a total number of 33 satisfactory and adequate courses. This marked a step forward.