Source of "better than 50/50 chance of being cured or improved"?

[Joel S. Berson]

Can anyone (Fred?) identify the source of this quotation?

A correspondent asks

>I am trying to identify the author and a quote attributed to
>him.  It involves something about it being at the beginning of the
>twentieth century (other time?) when for the first time a patient
>could enter a hospital and then emerge with a better than 50/50
>chance of being cured or improved.  I think the source might be
>Lewis Thomas but I am not sure.  Can any of you stalwarts out there
>help me with the exact quote and its source?

It appears to be Harvard biochemist Lawrence J. Henderson, who put
the year as 1912, and the exact quotation may be "... for the first
time in human history, a random patient with a random disease
consulting a doctor chosen at random stands a better than 50/50
chance of benefitting from the encounter."  (Turned up with some Googling.)

But I don't have the primary source, or its date.

Joel

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