THE OUTLOOK FOR HUMAN HEALTH 159 



science guard so jealously from the profane the secrets of 

 their art, for all the world as though they were veritable 

 mysteries of Isis and they the priests of her temple. As an 

 instance of this attitude let us take the famous — is that quite 

 the word ? — manifesto on the use of alcohol issued less than 

 four years ago in the Lancet. Previously various investigators, 

 taking different lines of research, with much accuracy, diligence 

 and endeavour to eliminate adventitious factors, had arrived at 

 the conclusion that alcohol, except as a drug, affected injuri- 

 ously the human organism. Did the signatories to this manifesto 

 refer to or refute the reasoning of these investigators? Not 

 at all. After a reference to the use of alcohol in medicine — 

 which need not here concern us— they announced with due 

 decorum and solemnity that in their opinion " the universal 

 belief of civilised mankind as to the beneficial results of a moderate 

 use of alcoholic beverages is amply justified." Now that kind 

 of thing may be good theology, but it is uncommonly bad 

 science. Never, indeed, did Council of Trent thunder forth 

 dogmas with greater unction or a more invincible authority 

 than that assumed by these hierarchs of the medical world. 

 (The clerics had, however, this advantage, that whereas their 

 doctrines were enunciated under the solemn arches of cathe- 

 drals, this latter-day creed of the medical profession has filtered 

 down to the laity chiefly through the agency of delighted 

 publicans.) In the discussion that followed it seems quite 

 natural and fitting that one physician, naively abandoning all 

 reference to modern science, should endeavour to bolster up the 

 case for alcohol with the aid of a text from the Book of Judges. 

 By what abysmal depths is not this fulmination divided from 

 the patient collection of facts, the admission of possible causes 

 of error, the frank and full examination of arguments that 

 distinguish a Darwin or a Pasteur? Can we any longer feel 

 surprise at the halting progress of medical science when such 

 convincing expressions of opinion, such illuminating arguments 

 are tendered in all seriousness in a scientific journal on a matter 

 of science pure and simple ? Surely it is not through methods 

 such as these that knowledge advances and the spirit of human 

 thought makes wide her boundaries. 



In the therapeutics of non-parasitic disease, as distinguished 

 from their prophylaxis, some progress has indubitably been 

 effected. Thanks to a notable advance in diagnosis, errors of 



