[Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council.

  • West Sussex (England). County Council.
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Appendix H A COLLECTION OF CHESTERISMS* Compiled by J. SAUNDERS, f.c.i.s., f.h.a. Principal Administrative Officer, West Sussex County Health Department, Chichester The World Around Us {The basic law of human experience). I am as good as everyone else but nobody is as good as me. In a democracy only the squeaking wheel gets oiled. Nothing sharpens the wits more than a lack of money. You do not need to be a cobbler to tell where the shoe pinches. I do not believe that the best work can only be done by a poor poet with pulmonary tuber¬ culosis living in a hovel. Human beings have an uncanny knack of identifying their interests with their ideologies. The basic decisions of life and death are often taken in the Athenaeum over lunch. All history is a transition from the acceptable to the unacceptable. In human affairs, reason is sometimes the compass but emotion is always the steam. A crazy man can sometimes do more good than harm. In the social services, everybody wants to do research. Mankind would be better served if ninety per cent of it were never conceived. Most theories are eventually accepted not because of their validity but because of the retirement or death of their opponents. However you throw the cat it will always land on its paws. Are people the best judges of their maximum faculties ? In some countries, despite the activities of the secret police, all the doctors seem to have convinced their governments that they should remain in the principal towns. {The comment of a negro who had witnessed several people in a post office queue being harassed by the counter clerk). It is such a pleasure to be in a country where everybody is badly treated. {Of a politician). His eyes were gleaming with insincerity. {The comment of an ambitious man). I don’t care what you say about me so long as you say it. All life consists of multiple contradictory objectives which have to be ironed out by plain common sense. Health is no longer a privilege; it is now a right. {Comment of a Habsburg monarch). The position is impossible but not serious. The perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good. The English have a great regard for their traditions but they are always ready to start a new one. *Delivered by Professor T. E. Chester, c.b.e., Department of Social Administration, University of Manchester, during the first and second multi-professional courses in the management of integrated health care held at the University in 1972. Professor Chester does not claim authorship for some of these aphorisms - just a good memory! Reprinted (with permission) from Health and Social Service Journal (1973), LXXXIII* 142-143.