348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PKEVENTIVE MEDICINE.* 



By General GEORGE M. STERNBERG, U.S.A.. 



TT^EOM the earliest times physicians have taken the lead in all that 

 -*- relates to the prevention of disease. In times of epidemic their 

 advice is sought by afflicted communities and they have been instru- 

 mental in securing most of the legislation which has been enacted with 

 a view to preventing or restricting the prevalence of infectious dis- 

 eases. As members of boards of health, they are largely responsible for 

 the enactment and execution of proper sanitary legislation, and as 

 medical officers of the Army and Navy, they are charged with the duty 

 of guarding the health of soldiers and sailors enlisted in the service of 

 their country. 



While the principal function of a physician engaged in civil practice 

 is to give proper advice and treatment to the sick, he is constantly 

 called upon to point out the most effectual methods of preventing the 

 extension of infectious diseases in the homes of his patients; to indi- 

 cate the proper diet and mode of life to be followed by convalescents 

 and other members of families which he regularly attends, etc. All 

 this he does cheerfully, although he rarely receives any compensation 

 for advice of this kind and his professional income is diminished in 

 direct proportion to his success in the prevention of disease among the 

 families constituting his clientele. 



The compensation for voluntary work in public or domestic sanita- 

 tion is to be found in the consciousness of good accomplished and of 

 high and humane motives worthy of the profession to which we belong, 

 and the willingness to perform such voluntary service is one of the 

 most noteworthy distinctions between the educated and honorable 

 physician and the ignorant and mercenary quacks who prey upon the 

 community with no other object in view than that of gain. The bene- 

 ficent results of preventive medicine are seen in the greatly reduced 

 mortality rates in civilized countries generally, and especially in the 

 fact that certain pestilential maladies which formerly prevailed as 

 wide-spread and devastating epidemics, causing the death of hundreds 

 of thousands of human beings annually, have to a great extent lost 

 their deadly potency as a result of the progress of our knowledge with 

 reference to their etiology and the best methods of combating them. 



* Address introductory to the course in preventive medicine, given on 

 January 12, 1903, at the opening of the Washington Post-graduate Medical 

 School. 



