An essay on some aspects of medicine in Malta between 1934 - 1990

Abstract

It has been wisely said that experience is not what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you. Especially the young tend to sneer at one who is always ready to justify whatever he says or does by saying that is what experience has taught him. This is hardly fair since he who quotes his experience is really only offering to present his listener with what he has acquired by his own exertions. In this essay I will in many ways offer to the reader what experience has taught me for which gratitude should be a fit reward. It is clear that what the "Medical Association of Malta" requires is an essay, qualifying this only by saying that "authors may choose any subject" as long as it has a medical variant, which is rather broad as a term of reference. It seems to me this could suggest the description of some clinical condition or procedure, of some technique or some special therapeutic measure. It could also mean presuming the eassayist is a medical man that the writer would be describing in biographic terms some part of his life which he had assumed to be of medical interest. Since I am one of the oldest doctors living in Malta and since I have had a varied life it is along these lines that this essay will be cast.