Remarks by the Honorable Culbert L. Olson, Governor of the State of California, at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Langley Porter Clinic of the California State Department of Institutions - April 5, 1941

We are here to lay the cornerstone of a building which is important enough just because of its size and cost, but which is of transcendent importance because of what it means to the science of medicine, because of what it means to government, in general, and our State government in particular, and above all because of what it means to the people.

It is altogether probable that the people of our great land have never experienced such a prolonged or so prolific debate over what government should or should not do to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty, as during the past ten years. Much of this public debate has had to do with unemployment and its train of poverty, malnutrition, sickness and general misery. It has been a debate between those, on the one hand, who demand that government take no steps toward a planned economy, that government let things go as they may in the struggle for existence and advantage, let private and public bankruptcies proceed to their logical conclusions, let those survive who can, let economic activities re-establish themselves at whatever new levels time might bring; and those, on the other hand, who, believing that social upheavals and violent revolution are the inevitable result of the do-nothing policies of a laissez-faire society, demand that government do something to rationalize our economy, eliminate poverty, establish economic and social security, and restore and rehabilitate the physically and mentally handicapped members of society.

Porter Olson and Sproul lay the corner stone

(L to R) UC School of Medicine Dean Emeritus Langley Porter, MD; Governor Culbert L. Olson; and UC President Robert G. Sproul lay the cornerstone for the Langley Porter Clinic. (click here to view larger)   Photo: UCSF Psychiatry archives

I draw attention to this because, in the midst of so much debate, it is so great a pleasure to take note of real action on the part of government to actually promote the general welfare.

And this is exactly what vie are doing here today; taking note, rejoicing, because government, in this case our State government, is undertaking an expansion of its general welfare activities. As measured by its cost in dollars, this particular expansion may not be so very large, but it is of far more than ordinary significance as a measure of advance in human progress, responsible social thinking and responsible social action.

We gather to celebrate the start of construction and to lay the corner stone of an addition to the State's physical plant for the care of those suffering from brain and nervous disorders, and the mentally deranged. At the same time, it is also an addition to the facilities of our University of California School of Medicine; not only for the teaching of medical students but also for the broader training of those who now administer our State institutions for the care of the mentally sick. And, over and above all this, it is also to be a center for research into the as yet hidden mysteries of mental diseases, their causes and cures and their relations to other body ailments.

To the general public, and to us assembled here, I am sure that these objectives are wholly praiseworthy; the proper subject of acceptance and approbation by all respectable people. But we have to cast back into history only a very few years in order to realize that this venture, this hospital and the activities which will be carried on in it, are in reality a most important milestone of advance, of true progress, in medical science, in social, legal and economic concept, in social practices, and in society's attitude toward the social sciences, the exact sciences, and the humanities.

As for the humanities aspects, history reminds us that up to the time of the French Revolution, patients afflicted with mental disorders were customarily committed to the prisons, there to be cared for by the prison officers and guards; or else they were committed to the mercy of the poor-law authorities. In some church institutions, they were placed under the supervision of the clergy.

But during the French Revolution, it so happens that one Philippe Pinel, a physician, became interested in the problems of insanity. As a result of his studies, he evolved and advanced the then revolutionary theory that mental disorders were properly the business of the medical sciences and medical doctors. He succeeded in putting an end to the practice, universal until his time, of keeping mental patients in chains. He studied these patients from a medical standpoint and he was the author of the first systematic textbook on mental diseases. His works led to the segregation of the insane, not in prisons or poorhouses, but in special institutions referred to as insane asylums.

In these days when no one any longer questions the philosophy underlying Pinel's reforms, it is difficult to realize that at this time, they were subjected to the bitterest of opposition. It is difficult to realize that even though they were segregated, insane patients received care but little more humane than before Pinel 's time.

It has required many years of patient struggle ever since then to change public thinking from the concept of asylums, with mere custodial care, to hospitals, with scientific medical treatment and observation. In fact, the latter have become common only in very recent years.

History also discloses that we have achieved great progress in respect of the scientific and research aspects of the venture we here undertake. In the seventeenth century the great physician and scientist Malpighi was the object of innumerable, and, to us, absurd attacks because he hoped to discover, by the processes of dissection, experiment, observation and research, the causes and cures of human ailments. One of his contemporaries undertook to prove the futility of his scientific methods and wrote as follows: "Of what use is the knowledge of the structure of the lung and stream of blood through it? Everyone knows that animals breathe, but no one knows why, and it may be said that even in this modern seventeenth century, with all this new knowledge at our command, we are not even quite as successful in curing pneumonia as were the fathers of old."

"Everyone thought, until the work of Wirsung, that the pancreas was just a cushion to support the stomach. What better off are we to know that it is a duct? Above all, of what use to cut up plants and study the hatching of eggs? Can we cure the troubles of women, knowing how the hatching of eggs goes on?"

And such was indeed the attitude of medical men at that time, when the barber surgeon had the techniques and the physician had only the theories. We of today know that those who then so hopelessly delved into the complex material that no one knew what to do with, did perform a great service, We have abandoned their notions which, in their sum, we of today would be inclined to call a sort of "jurisprudence" of medicine. We no longer talk about the divine purposes of the various organs of the human body in an attempt to make it appear to be a logical and rational piece of construction.

To a layman, like myself, it does indeed appear that we have made true progress.

A cornerstone is for the information and edification of those who come this way long after we shall have passed on. So, in a very exact sense, the things we say here are said as much for the benefit of our children's children's children, as for ourselves. Some day this building shall have served its purposes. It will be torn down, or perhaps destroyed by some catastrophe. And they will pry into the metal box in this cornerstone and read the account of this simple ceremony and the high purposes for which we are about to erect this building. To them we declare our belief that our generation stands at a level of culture and civilization which represents most substantial progress since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when capitalism was only emerging out of its feudalistic chrysalis to try its wings in the world of Adam Smith. We hope that, at least partly because of the researches which will be carried forward here, our children's children will be able to be as much impressed with their advances beyond us as we are impressed with the advances that have been made since the days of Malpighi and Pinel.

We hope that they and their nations and governments shall have learned how to live in peace and in harmony. We hope they shall have learned how to distribute rationally the great plenty that we have learned how to produce but not how to divide. We hope that they shall have retained all the physical, mental and spiritual vigor that grow out of the struggle for existence, but, at the same time, we hope that they shall have achieved the full blessings of liberty. We hope they shall have learned that there may be a very real difference between prosperity and security. And we hope that they shall have both.

In what I have said I do not intend to imply that this Clinic, when completed, will have materialized out of nature's pure evolutionary processes. It is built on this spot, and at this time and for the purposes I have mentioned, primarily because of the vision, the demands, the efforts, the persistent efforts of a handful of thoughtful, determined men and women; flesh and blood people whom we know.

We name this hospital the Langley Porter Clinic because Dr. Langley Porter was for many years, ending only a short while ago, the Dean of this great medical school. During those years of service he integrated its parts, perfected its organization, and helped raise it to the high standing it now commands as a seat of learning and of service to mankind. His social-minded interest, his determined advocacy, served to promote public recognition of the very practical results that we have every right to expect from the healing services to be rendered, the learning to be gained, and the richly fruitful research to be conducted in this, the Langley Porter Clinic.

To me, the prime mover of the project to build this hospital was Dr. Aaron J. Rosanoff, the State Director of Institutions, Two years ago, after the State budget had been fixed for submission to the Legislature, (a budget in the making of which he had had no part) he persuaded me to include in it the cost of this project which I did, although with but little notion that it would receive legislative approval. But thanks to his tireless efforts acquainting the Legislators with the lasting benefits that would accrue to the mentally afflicted, to society in general and to the University School of Medicine; to say nothing of the substantial savings that would accrue to the Department of Institutions, the appropriation was approved. To this audience it is not necessary to recount Dr. Rosanoff's outstanding achievements in the field of applied psychiatry, I have found him possessed of keenest intellect, a sure knowledge of his profession, broad vision and highly social attitude. These, combined with his rare tact, executive ability and sure sense of the needs of his ;department, account not only for the success with which he has met in his profession and in his work of administering the State Department of Institutions, but also for his success in obtaining the Legislative appropriation which made this Clinic possible.

To him, and to the members of his able administrative staff, great credit and this publicly expressed thanks are due for making this Clinic a reality.

It is proper, at this point, to render praise and to publicly thank the following persons and organizations whose valuable efforts and support wore necessary to and become a part of this project:

To Dr, Robert Gordon Sproul, President of the University of California, and the University Regents, for making this ground available to the Department of Institutions. Much of the value of this Clinic will lie in the fact that it is made a part of the School of Medicine.

To Dr. Sproul and the Regents, and to the members of the staff and faculty of the School of Medicine, for their enthusiastic acceptance of the Clinic as a natural adjunct to and part of the School of Medicine, and for their strong and effective support of the project to build it.

To the members of the State Legislature who voted to appropriate the main portion of its cost.

I must confess to a personal pride in the part it has been my good fortune, as Governor of California, to perform in bringing this great and beneficent project to fruition.

It would seem strange, not to say unseemly, if I failed to make mention of the fact that we are launching this undertaking in the midst of a world at war.

Let me observe therefore that this Clinic is a place for the pursuit of science, and an example of its application to the most humanitarian of objectives; the saving of human minds and lives, and the improvement of the race. It is peculiarly a project in pursuit of peace. But even so, it certainly provokes thought to realize that if we only knew how to apply, in the field of world politics, what men of science already know about abnormal psychology, particularly paranoia, we would today be having far less trouble with the dictator complexes which possess a few men who, unfortunately for mankind, happen to be in power. This, of course, is a negative statement. The positive, the hopeful statement is this: The proper and effective application in the field of politics and government, of what these men of science already know may well become one of democracy's most powerful and effective instruments, quite the equal of war ships, planes, guns and soldiers.

The present world situation is preparing for scientists the most urgent problems they have ever yet had to tackle. Epidemics of disease, famine, social dislocation and mass frustration are developing in the war countries. They will spread to the rest of the world. And at the very tine when most needed to combat these evils, the work of scientists is being disrupted. The prospect of serious impairment, the possibility of the permanent disablement of society by the disruption of science is particularly disquieting. We must persist in our efforts to understand and control the forces of nature. We must do this because it is essential for the survival of civilization. Without science, the world could not support more than a fraction of its present population.

Let us therefore make of this ceremony a prayer; a prayer that in this broad and beautiful land of ours, science shall continue to flourish and that we shall make of it, and keep it, an instrument of peace and democracy. Let us make of this a moment of quiet determination.