MEDICAL RESEARCH. 529 



of the life of the individual and the community. We all know that 

 much of the daily work of the physician goes to charity, that the 

 public health authorities and sanitary officers are but scantily com- 

 pensated for their arduous and often dangerous labors. There can be 

 no question that as a profession medicine stands at the head in disin- 

 terested service; but there is still room for improving the relation 

 between medicine and the public. How can this be done? 



Perhaps, next to the education of physicians of the highest 

 standards, the immediate duty of the university medical school is the 

 development through research of preventive medicine and sanitary 

 science and the education of sanitary officers. This, it seems to me, is 

 the best way in which our debt to society can be discharged; for it 

 is the way through which medicine has moved during the past quarter 

 century to its present commanding position; it is, in fact, the way of 

 least resistance for the human race to evade or mitigate the penalty 

 incidental to advancing civilization. Preventive medicine is the ap- 

 plication of medical science to the mass as well as to the individual. 

 It attempts to arrest disease before its momentum has carried it beyond 

 the means of help. It is the truly modern as contrasted with the 

 medieval point of view. 



Nobody will deny that much has already been done in the de- 

 velopment of preventive medicine and sanitary science. It will be 

 claimed, and with justice, that more has been done than the public 

 is willing and prepared to accept and live up to. We know that to- 

 day municipalities continue to permit the unnecessary sacrifice of 

 lives to epidemic disease, that politics is permitted to disorganize 

 efficient boards of health in large and small communities and to put 

 the best material interests of family and social life into untrained 

 hands. We know that the public continues, in spite of warnings, to 

 consume noxious drugs, widely and boldly advertised in the daily 

 press. These difficulties are very real, but they should not discourage 

 us. The medical profession is in a sense to blame for this condition; 

 for the household remedies and cures of to-day are those of the doctor 

 of a generation ago, and the medical practise of to-day will crop out 

 in the daily life of the next generation. Likewise, the indifference 

 of the physician and health officer of a generation ago is reflected to- 

 day in the attitude of the mass of the people. 



The university medical school has here a great function to perform, 

 for it is the legitimate source of knowledge pertaining to hygiene and 

 sanitation. There are few problems which have not been suggested 

 by contact with disease. Sanitary science is broad and rests upon 

 many foundations, and the means of disseminating its teachings are 

 many, but its origin is in pathology. Without the stimulus of the 



