NEW OUTLOOKS IN MEDICINE. 373 



public life in the interest of what he conceives to be professional 

 ethics is capable of a richer fruitage yet, in the defiance of mis- 

 construction, when impelled to whatever performance of public 

 duty he can justify to himself. 



While the penalties of ignorance in things sanitary and hy- 

 gienic are growing more severe as our communal life becomes 

 more complex and crowded, there are, as we have seen, a good 

 many ways in which the lessons of modern sanitation can be 

 learned. Some of these lessons may wisely, as I think, be woven 

 into the educational equipment of the young. They may be 

 acquired in later life from books. Many may be assimilated 

 under the kindly offices of the physician. Much is taught by such 

 public measures as health boards may enforce. But, learned 

 these lessons must be sooner or later, and learned they are too 

 often now at the bedside and the grave. 



Physicians know well enough that a stringent system of dairy 

 inspection should be at once and widely enforced, and it is really 

 for them more than for any other class of citizens to say how 

 many more object lessons will be necessary like those recently en- 

 forced at Montclair, at Waterbury, and at Stamford, before all 

 such caterers shall be compelled to conform to the rules of sani- 

 tary decency. The prevention of pollution of water supplies, the 

 compelling of reasonable cleanliness in public vehicles for human 

 transportation by land and by sea, the enforcement of precautions 

 against the spread of disease in public hostelries and places of as- 

 sembly, the organization of a national health bureau these are all 

 tasks which must speedily be undertaken, and they may be led to 

 rich accomplishment if the physician will but hold more clearly 

 in his consciousness his primal duty as a citizen. 



In all that which I have urged about the more precise physical 

 and, I might almost say, mechanical nature of the professional 

 duties which in the new light the physician is called upon to as- 

 sume, I have purposely left largely out of sight his more intimate 

 personal relationships to those to whom he ministers. And yet, 

 lest one should fear that in our eager search for light we overlook 

 the man in the machine, I should like to assure the timid that all 

 that which always has and ever will dignify and ennoble his call- 

 ing, as one who is strong serving the weak, remains unchanged in 

 the physician, and is potent or feeble, not in ratio to his scientific 

 knowledge, but as he is more or less honest, keen of insight, high 

 of purpose, sympathetic ; and finds its highest fruition joined to 

 good judgment and self-reliance, and to whatever confidence- win- 

 ning and hope-inspiring qualities he can command. 



It is not easy to estimate accurately the scope and value of 

 contemporary achievement. But as I look over the field of medi- 

 cine, with all its varying lights and shades, it seems to me that 



