HEALTH AND DISEASE 323 



of the fermentative diseases of wine and beer, evolved his concept of animal 

 diseases the result of invasion of the tissues by microscopic organisms, that 

 scientific medicine acquired a solid foundation upon which to build. 



Upon Pasteur's concept Koch quickly founded the science of bac- 

 teriology. Lister, from the same concept, developed antiseptic methods 

 which phenomenally reduced the hazards of surgery and made possible 

 the dramatic progress of that branch of the healing art. Sanitation, public 

 hygiene, immunology, preventive medicine, and the other modern methods 

 which have all but robbed communicable diseases of their terrors followed 

 one upon another, almost without pause. Today's developments of the sulfa 

 drugs and penicillin are milestones on the road originally opened up by 

 Pasteur. 



The new ability to cope with infectious diseases, viewed in the light of 

 the cheerful Victorian ideas of progressive evolution and human perfecti- 

 bility, at first was hailed as presaging a wonderful new world of supermen 

 living in unalloyed happiness and health. 



The dream has failed to materialize. True enough, the great plagues of 

 smallpox and typhus no longer decimate the populations of entire coun- 

 tries; the incidence of such infections as diphtheria and scarlet fever is in- 

 significant compared to that of little more than a generation ago; even 

 venereal diseases are under control; ^ virtually every infectious illness ex- 

 cept the common cold is on the decline. Nevertheless, the sum total of 

 human disease has increased and continues to increase. 



Another kind of disease — degenerative disease — increasingly exercises 

 a selective effect against civilized men. These are the disorders character- 

 ized by deterioration of the body tissues in which disease-producing agents 

 such as bacteria play no part or at most a secondarj'^ part — diseases such as 

 dental caries and periodontal diseases, rickets, osteomalacia and other 

 diseases of the skeleton, arthritis, nephritis, arterial sclerosis, heart ailments, 

 etc. And the medical profession, by reason of its success in reducing infant 

 mortality and in keeping the chronically disabled alive and its comparative 

 helplessness in preventing these diseases of degeneration, stands accused 

 by men respected in its own ranks of unwittingly helping to defeat natural 

 selection and hastening evolutionary degeneration. 



Evolutionary degeneration! The very words come as a surprise and a 

 shock to modern man. For in no other time has the average man been so 

 pleased with himself as in the present era. Quite a few things have happened 

 in the past 150 years to give him a fine opinion of himself. For one thing, 

 he has achieved a considerable measure of political freedom and is accus- 

 tomed (in the United States) to hearing himself and his fellows referred to as 

 the "sovereign people" — as kings. By reason of the inventiveness, thrift, and 



1 "Dr. Thomas Parran, surgeon general of the United States, said recently in an 

 Office of War Information report that there is every reason to predict that syphilis 

 and gonorrhea will be eliminated as a major public health problem in five years." — 

 Chicago Daily News, March 13, 1945. 



