RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH 367 



There are two essentials in the inception of this organized campaign 

 against disease on a scientific basis. The first is to demonstrate clearly 

 to the public mind that modern scientific medicine arose from the ex- 

 perimental or research method, that it was only when experimental ob- 

 servation of the laws of health and disease, in animals and man, com- 

 menced on an organized and broadcast basis that medicine and surgery 

 leaped forward and the remarkable achievements of the past fifty years 

 began. Also that it is only by the organization and endowment of med- 

 ical research that future discovery and advancement are possible. The 

 second essential is to convince the public that a national system must 

 be evolved placing medical science and medical practise in coordination, 

 so that the discoveries of science may be adequately applied in an or- 

 ganized scheme for the prevention and treatment of disease. The 

 method in which discoveries have been made in the past suggests an 

 amplification and organization along similar lines for the future, and the 

 banishment of many diseases by public health work in the past suggests 

 that it is more efficiently organized and widespread public health work 

 in the future, extended from the physical environment to the infecting 

 individual, that will be most fruitful in banishing other diseases. 



If it be queried by any one here, what has physiology to do with dis- 

 ease, it may be replied that the question comes at least fifty years too 

 late. The methods evolved first by physiologists in experimentation 

 upon animals have become the methods of all the exact sciences in medi- 

 cine. Bacteriology is the physiology of the bacterium, and the study of 

 protozoan diseases the physiology of certain groups of protozoa, Or- 

 gano-therapy had its origin in physiology, and many of its most bril- 

 liant discoveries were made by physiologists, and all by scientists who 

 used physiological methods. Serum therapy, experimental pharmacol- 

 ogy, and the great problems of immunity all arose from the labors of 

 men with expert training in physiology who branched out into prac- 

 tical applications achieved by the extension of the experimental, or 

 research, method. The modern methods of medical diagnosis and the 

 brilliant technique of contemporary surgery, what has opened the door 

 to these but the experimental method ? From the days of the first suc- 

 cessful abdominal operation to the present day research in laboratory or 

 in the operating theater has pioneered the way, and the sooner this 

 simple truth is known to all men the better for medical science. Every 

 time any surgeon first tries a new operation there is in it an element of 

 experiment and research of which the ethical limits are well-known and 

 definable, and any person who logically thinks the matter out must see 

 that it is the research method which has placed the science and art of 

 surgery where it stands to-day. Exactly the same thesis holds for 

 medicine. How could any physician predict for the first time, before 

 he had tried it experimentally on animal or man, the action of any new 

 drug, the effect of any variation in dosage, the result of any dietary, of 



