Forty years on.

FORTY YEARS AGO, this month, I started in practice, I confess without the benefit of vocational training; that came two months later when my chief had his first coronary. I was extremely fortunate in becoming assistant, and later partner, to John Taggart of the Antrim Road, one of the most distinguished practitioners of his day. Taggart was a County Antrim man, with all the bluntness and sagacity characteristic of County Antrim men, yet full of compassion. He was respected and loved by his patients and held in the most friendly esteem by his colleagues and such men as R. J. Johnston, James Craig, Tommy Houston, Sam Irwin, W. W. D. Thomson, R. J. McConnell and many others. To many of you here tonight they are just names from the past, but I can assure you they were all eminent and distinguished doctors. As I worked with Taggart I soon found how these men admired him as a man and as a very competent physician. I am ever grateful for the four years during which I had the privilege of working with him, before his early death. What he taught me, in a very quiet way, more by example than precept, not only of medicine but also the right relationship with patients and the conduct of practice, has been of inestimable value to me during my professional life. I may say that all his colleagues continued to be most kind and helpful to me after his death.