These are handwritten notes and a draft of the speech that Wilder Penfield gave at the Bon Voyage Dinner at McGill University’s Faculty Club on March 30, 1940. In the speech Dr. Penfield encourages the Montreal Neurological Institute staff that are deploying to serve at the No. 1 Neurological Hospital to remember their importance in the war and that they are healing rather than killing. There is a note for A.D. [Ann Dawson] to type the speech in wide margins.

text.manuscript.black and white 21.7 x 17.1 cm

English

Penfield, Wilder, 1891-1976.
Montreal Neurological Institute -- History.
World War, 1939-1945.

Wilder Penfield Digital Collection

Wilder Penfield Fonds P142 -- Series A (Administration) -- Sub-Series A/N (Administration, Neuro)

Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University

Draft of Bon Voyage Dinner Speech. [Online image]. Wilder Penfield Digital Collection Wilder Penfield Fonds P142 -- Series A (Administration) -- Sub-Series A/N (Administration, Neuro) . Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University . Retrieved December 22, 2024 from http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/penfieldfonds/fullrecord.php?ID=10086

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Penfield, Wilder, 1891-1976.

The transcription reads: "A.D. Please copy c [with] wide margin. War brings to us the strangest contradictions of principle. The commandment "thous shalt not kill" is outlawed, replaced by a strange new beatitude - blessed is he who shall kill and shall starve all those created enemies by public declaration. But surely your fellow Canadians who sail with the the combatant forces take no joy in this new code of morals nor in the death of any individual German. They remember, no doubt, that general MacNaughton has called this expedition a crusade and that the defeat might mean the overthrow of democracy, the loss of an individual freedom which many of us would prize more dearly than our lives. In these times, how much more fortunate is a physician than his non-professional brethren! You medical officers who have answered the call are going overseas not to kill and to destroy but to save lives to relieve suffering and to fortify the spirits of men when at lowest ebb they find themselves demoralized by terrors that for the moment they must face. At a time of great crisis you may go to do the very thing that fired you to enter medicine. Furthermore, this unit is unique. It aims to save those wounded men who in other wars and with other (?) have been abandoned to die because their condition was too desperate to beat on the field of battle. You hope to salvage the characters of those soldiers whose spirit has broken under fire and to do it before they have been allowed to acknowledge to themselves their personal defeat. We who remain behind will go over with you in spirit. We will support you absolutely and will come to your assistance whatever shall come."

A/N 11-2