Shadows.

It is almost 160 years since Dr James McDonnell delivered an address to the students entering the Belfast General Hospital. Since that time it has fallen upon a member of this staff to welcome those students who have commenced their first year in the clinical branches of medicine. This year it is my privilege and honour to address and welcome you on behalf of the medical and dental staff of this hospital, a hospital with a great tradition and one which, I believe, is the 'leaven that has leavened the whole lump'. As your hospital work of the next three years unfolds before you, and you are instructed in the many branches of medicine, in the various clinics, lecture rooms, and at the bedside, I hope that you will come to appreciate the immense practical value of a thorough understanding of radiological principles; that you will get to know their worth, limitations, dangers and to some degree the cost of such a service along with its financial implications, especially as diagnostic radiology now plays such an important part in the making of clinical decisions and in patient management.1 In the United States of America it is not uncommon for medical students to receive many hours of formal radiological teaching. The student may also elect to attach himself to the radiology department for a period of one month. For this to obtain in the United Kingdom, additional university academic departments of diagnostic radiology would heve to be created something which the Education Board of the Royal College of Radiologists has been pressing for, for many years. The creation of such departments would, however, depend upon the willingness of the State to finance them. There has been a technological revolution in radiology in the last three decades which has made it a most exciting and engaging discipline. Some would say that a high degree of intelligence and the ability to use effectively advanced technology is an important asset in medicine as practised today. Such technology, however, should not be permitted to distance you from the patient, who above all else requires compassion, tenderness and understanding. Samuel Johnson said: 'To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has