On Talks

What I have to say may be regarded as provocative or even insulting, but I think it needs to be said. In the history of medicine, a substantial number of lectures, seminars, and papers given at conferences and symposia-let's call them talks-are very difficult to follow, and a few are utterly incomprehensible. Very rarely is this because speakers have failed to master their subject. It is simply because of the way that talks are given. No doubt the same applies to other disciplines; but here I am concerned only with the history of medicine talks I have attended-the excellent, the good, the bad and the awful-during the last twenty or so years. And one thing has struck me again and again. When I meet young historians informally and ask them about their research, almost invariably they describe what they are doing simply and clearly in colloquial terms. They know their subject. They are excited by it. They are keen to tell you about their research and do so without difficulty. Yet, when it comes to a seminar or a conference, the very same people produce a written text in which they bury their head, reading their paper as fast as they can as if terrified of not getting to the end in the allotted time. They seldom lift their head to glance at their audience. The pauses between sentences are imperceptible. Long and tortuous sentences, packed with provisos and subordinate clauses, bombard the mind like an artillery barrage. "Vogue" words, seldom if ever used in ordinary speech (epistemological seems now to be in fashion), are thrown in as a mark of the scholar, the professional historian. Some commit the cardinal sin of reading out statistics in sentences such as the following: