Remarks by Langley Porter, MD, at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Langley Porter Clinic of the California State Department of Institutions - April 5, 1941

"Without health wisdom is darkened, art eclipsed, strength disabled, riches worthless, and reason impotent." So said Herophilus of Alexandria 2500 years ago, and what he said then is as true today. Every human community in itself is a living organism made up of the individual beings who constitute it. Like any other organism, if it is to function effectively the community must be healthy, and the health of every living organism depends on the health of each one of the cells which go to make it up. Likewise, the health of a city, of a state, or of a nation is no more or less than the total bodily, mental and emotional well being of each of its individual citizens, "Public Health", said the great Disraeli, "is the foundation upon which rests the happiness of the people, and the welfare of the State, Reforms directed toward the advancement of the Public Health must ever take precedence over all others."

Long ago, California began to devise ways, and to provide means, for the fulfillment of that high duty. As a result, we have in this state today a notable Department of Public Health, a vigorous Department of Institutions - charged, among other things, with the care of the mentally ill - and we have this Medical Center, a part of the noble University of California, a Medical Center made possible by state support and the generous benefactions of many friends.

Langley Porter speaks during the cornerstone laying ceremony

Langley Porter, MD, delivers remarks during the laying of the cornerstone for the new psychiatric hospital named in his honor on April 5, 1941. (click here to view larger)   Photo: UCSF Psychiatry archives

The people of California ask three things of those of the Medical Center: first, good teaching; second, kindly care of the sick; third, revelation of new knowledge gained through research. The state expects that doctors and dentists and pharmacists, second to none, shall be trained here, shall be taught the best and most useful things that medicine has to teach, and shall be taught to devise and to employ the most effective techniques of the art. It expects that this training,, and the mastery of these techniques, will be turned to alleviating the pain, distress and disability of the sick who come here for relief. And, beyond the training of good doctors and surgeons, California expects and demands from the clinics and laboratories on this campus new knowledge about health and about disease, new knowledge about the abilities and disabilities of the human body and mind. It hopes that this information, when added to what we already possess, will be made the basis of still better training and of ever more effective ameliorative methods of diagnosis and treatment - methods of diagnosis and treatment applicable to the disabilities of the mind as well as those of the body.

The University, through the Medical Center, has accepted these responsibilities which the state has laid upon it, and here on this campus are to be found scores of devoted workers who spend laborious days - and many of them parts of their nights - searching out new knowledge. It is a matter of pride that these efforts have not been in vain. Important knowledge has come to light in the laboratories of the Hooper Foundation, of the Medical School, of the Dental School, and of the School of Pharmacy. This knowledge contributes much to the amelioration of human suffering. the strengthening of our citizenry, and the betterment of community life. And the work goes on - it does not falter - and the state can look forward with confidence to further and ever greater contributions.

During the years that this Medical Center has been growing up from its small beginnings, the world has changed much, but nothing in it has changed more than thought about medicine as a science and an art. As a result of these changes in thought, there has been a prodigious advance in mankind's knowledge of chemistry, physics, physiology, pathology and bacteriology. All of those sciences have been usefully applied to the art of medicine, and because of these applications there came revolutionary new developments in the fields of diagnosis and of treatment of those diseases which affect the physical structure of man's body. Typhoid fever, dysentery, infantile diarrhea, scarlet fever, have been almost wiped out; tuberculosis and malaria greatly lessened; diabetes controlled; food poisoning done away with; and it has been possible effectively to protect our shores from deadly exotic- tropical diseases. Yet, during a long part of this time, alas, the approach to the study of mental diseases was less realistic.

When emotion tinges thinking, reason is inhibited. Residues of ancient popular beliefs about the mentally ill give way but slowly. Nobody today really believes that those unhappy fellow men of ours who suffer from emotional and mental disturbances are possessed of evil spirits. But still the reverberations of that idea persist too influentially in the public mind. No one truly believes that it is right to treat the excited, the confused, or the alienated as criminals. Still, in the minds of too many people the mental hospital is primarily a place where the dangerous are detained in custody, rather than a hospital for the treatment of sick people and the cure of their illnesses. Within my own lifetime the attitude of m.any older members of the medical profession was to dismiss those who suffered from mild emotional unbalance as "weak sisters" or hypochondriacs. That, happily, is a point of view no longer acceptable. The family physician of today is expected to minister to neurotics and to mild psychotics, as well as to those whose ills are physical. He is called upon to patch up the victims of the strenuous life, as well as the victims of the speeding automobile. He is expected to remove anxiety neuroses as well as appendices. His aid may be asked for relief of mental disturbances as slight as insomnia, on the one hand, or as serious as attacks of emotional excitement or of mental confusion on the other.

One of the most fundamental advances that medicine has made in recent years is the recognition that soul and body are not divided, are not two entities. This recognition has brought the understanding that damages to the body inevitably cause at least some injury to the mental and emotional control of the individual. It has also made it clear that there are injuries arising in the environment - social and personal hurts, psychological damages - which act to produce bodily disabilities and diseases.

Long ago it become evident to those responsible for the conduct of the Medical School and of the University Hospital, that progress in our power to deal with mental diseases was all too slow. Progress in the field of mental diseases seemed especially to lag .When it was compared with the constantly growing power of the profession to deal with purely physical diseases. For the past many years it has been the hope of the University administration and of the various professional schools at the University Medical Center that the time would come when the same techniques and the same standards of research and practice could be applied equally well in both fields - the physical and the mental. All over the world new facts are being discovered in research laboratories. Through the generous spirit of science, these facts become available to everyone, no matter in what laboratory or in what land they come to light. To this body of facts our own research workers continue to contribute substantially. This constantly growing wealth of knowledge becomes available at this Medical Center to all those who responsible for its dissemination, as well as to those who come here for the aid it can give.

With the erection of this psychiatric hospital a dream of better things has come to pass. It was a dream that had been haunting Dr. Twitchell and the psychiatric staff, and Professor Kerr, for more than two decades. The administrative staff, and the President of the University, for many years have sought to convince the rulers of the state that the dream was one worthy of realization. A few years ago a Director of Institutions, Mr. Harry Lutgons, was convinced. He cooperated in a plan which, through the shortsighted policy of his superiors, failed.

Happily, in California there come into the high office of Governor a gentleman whose philanthropic convictions led him to believe that no problem among the many urgent problems of public welfare confronting the state was more important than the modernization of the administration of the State's Department of Institutions. That is the Department responsible for the care and treatment of our unfortunate mentally and emotionally disturbed fellow citizens.

The Governor was so impressed with the gravity of this problem that he wisely decided to give the administration of the Department to a psychiatrist. His choice fell on a social minded, scientifically trained physician, Dr. Aaron J. Rosanoff , a man whose contributions to psychiatric literature and whose teaching in psychiatry place him among the foremost practitioners of that specialty.

And what a happy choice for the State of California. Dr. Rosanoff knew the developments that had already taken place on the campus of this University, He was well aware of the interest of the University administration and the faculties of the professional schools in the difficult problems of mental illness that he had to solve. With those things in mind, Dr. Rosanoff brought his problems to the University Medical Center. He planned to further humanize custodial care; he was determined to devise more effective methods of mental hygiene than had heretofore been available in California; and he was insistent that newly developed therapeutic techniques be tested and applied. To carry out this program he needed a modernly designed psychiatric hospital, and a staff of professional men skilled in the various sciences which medicine uses for research and practice. At the University of California Medical Center he found such a staff.

This hospital will have a well planned outpatient department, and an adequate social service staff. It will be able to care, in their homes, for patients who heretofore have had, of necessity, to be custodial charges. This in itself is a great advance in preventative mental hygiene, and an economy of the state as well. To carry out this program of development Dr. Rosanoff enlisted not only the support, but the enthusiastic help, of Governor Olson and of the members of the State Legislature, without respect to party.

With that effective help, funds were made available for the building; its foundations were begun; and you, Governor Olsen, today are honoring us by laying it cornerstone.

The State of California owes a debt of gratitude not only to its Governor, to Dr. Rosanoff and to President Stroul, but also it owes thanks to the State and the University architects and engineers, and to Superintendent Durie of the University Hospital. All of these gentlemen have striven untiringly to bring this Psychiatric Hospital into being. Thanks also are due to Surgeon General Parran for his assignment of Dr. Walter Treadway to the University. Dr. Treadway's experience in construction and organization of psychiatric hospitals for the Public Health Service has made his help in this project invaluable.

The rise of this Psychiatric Hospital is the result of an understanding cooperation between two great units of the State government - the University Medical Center and the Department of Institutions. Through this cooperation the professional schools of the Center have brought much to the Department of Institutions. On the other hand, the opportunities the Department offers are numerous and very important. They are important to the medical profession and to the whole body of citizens of the State of California which medical men serve.

Aristotle, "the greatest of those who know," as he was justly called, said that "the good life is the true and of the State," and that "the full and free service to the State to the individual is our of the utmost advantage to the community." The healing services that the State of California is providing through this hospital will insure that many who, because of ill health, might have missed the opportunity, will be able to enjoy "the good life."

Your Excellency, Governor Olson, Dr. Rosanoff, President Sproul and my colleagues of the Professional Schools, to you, all of you, who have the wisdom, insight, and good will to compose differences, to erase difficulties, and to encompass this great medical and social achievement, to you your fellow citizens are deeply grateful.