366 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The problem of national health is one of peculiar interest to physi- 

 ologists, and to the exponents of those experimental branches of med- 

 ical science which have sprung from the loins of physiology, for it was 

 with them that the new science of medicine of the last fifty years arose, 

 and they ought to be the leaders of the world in this most important of 

 all mundane problems. 



It is well worth while to consider our opportunities and responsibil- 

 ities and raise the question whether our present system and organiza- 

 tion are the most suitable for attaining one of the most sublime am- 

 bitions that ever appealed to any profession. By definition, our science 

 studies the laws of health and the functions of the healthy body, there- 

 fore, it is ours to lead in the quest for health. Is this object best 

 achieved if we confine ourselves to research in our laboratories, and to 

 the teaching of the principles of physiology to medical students, while 

 we leave the community as a whole uninstructed as to the objects of our 

 research and its value to every man, and trust the medical students 

 whom we turn out to communicate, or not communicate as they choose, 

 the results of their training and our research to the world at large ? 



There is little question that much of the ignorance abroad in the 

 world, and much of the fatuous opposition to our experimental work 

 and research, arise from this aloofness of ours. Here also lies the 

 cause of much of the latent period in the application of acquired knowl- 

 edge to great sociological problems, and the presence of untold sickness 

 and death which could be easily prevented if only a scientific system of 

 dealing with disease could be evolved. 



The position occupied by scientists in medicine at the present day 

 is largely that of schoolmasters to a medical guild, and even at that, 

 one constructed upon lines which have grown antiquated by the prog- 

 ress of medical science. It ought now to become the function of the 

 scientist to remodel the whole system so as to fight disease at its source. 

 The whole situation at the moment calls out for such a movement. On 

 the one hand, there exists a widespread interest on the part of an awak- 

 ened community in health questions, evidenced by recent legislation 

 dealing with the health of school-children, with the health of the 

 worker, with the sanitary condition of workshops, with the questions of 

 maternity and infant mortality and with the communication of infec- 

 tious diseases. On the other hand, there is chaos in the medical organi- 

 zation to meet all these new demands, and the ample means recently 

 placed at the command of the nation and of municipal authorities are 

 being largely wasted by overlapping and misdirection for lack of skilled 

 leadership. Surely it is a time when those who have laid the scientific 

 foundations for the new advances should take counsel together, assume 

 some generalship, and show how the combat is to be waged, not as a 

 guerilla warfare, but as an organized and coordinated campaign. 



