WHAT OF YESTERDAY 



T ? 



of work on yellow fever. Through his experiments, he revealed 

 to the entire world the painstaking methods characteristic of a 

 true scientist as well as the fearless persistence of a martyr. 



Noguchi had solved the problem of yellow fever in South America, 

 but the facts he found in that country did not seem to hold true for 

 the African type of the disease. He, therefore, journeyed to Africa 

 to make further studies. He contracted the disease and died 

 before completing his work. He is one of the heroes of to-day. 



What of yesterday? Consider the strides surgery has made 

 since the early days of this science. For generations the chief 

 medical and surgical treatments were sweating, bleeding, and 

 amputations. In the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, one of 

 the men became ill. Captain Clark described the treatment given 

 him. A big hole was dug in the ground and a fire was built 

 in it, in order to make the ground hot. Then the fire was re- 

 moved and the man was laid on the hot earth and securely 

 covered so that he would sweat. After this treatment he w^as 

 bled. Not having any other knife. Captain Clark used his pocket 

 penknife to open the blood vessel. Need- 

 less to say, the man died. Among primi- 

 tive people of to-day similar methods are 

 still in vogue. The medicine man in a 

 certain primitive tribe still places people 

 in holes heated to high temperatures, to 

 sweat them. If a member of the tribe 

 suffers from chronic headaches, the medi- 

 cine man cuts a piece out of the sufferer's 

 skull. 



In civilized communities, surgery, as Physicians of yesterday practiced 



bleeding for many ailments. 



a scientific study, began with the hypothe- 

 sis of Louis Pasteur, about 1860, that disease was usually due 

 to the presence of microorganisms. Realizing that most of 

 the surgical cases died from infections rather than the actual 



