THE OUTLOOK OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 



the sciences of zoology and botany there would be no 

 public health. 



The contributions of chemistry also are innumerable, and 

 they have recently been ably and amply presented to the 

 public in many attractive forms. It is sufficient to allude 

 to the indispensable part played by chemistry in physiology 

 in leading to an understanding of bodily functions, both 

 normal and diseased; to the applications of chemical dyes 

 in the study of bacterial and other parasites; and to the 

 preparation of valuable drugs which play a great part in 

 health work. 



The third great division of the physical sciences is 

 physics; and here, too, the contributions have been indis- 

 pensable. For what would public health work amount to 

 if there were no microscopes or other optical electrical and 

 mechanical apparatus devised by physicists? How helpless 

 the health official would be without the physical knowl- 

 edge which he now employs in many of his major health 

 undertakings: water purification, waste disposal, illumi- 

 nation, heating, ventilation, the pasteurization of milk. 

 Again, the physics of the radiant spectrum is already play- 

 ing an important part in diagnosis and therapeutics — 

 both of which have important health applications — and 

 promises a brilliant future of usefulness. The science of 

 physical chemistry, according to the prognostications of 

 many students of public health, is destined to make some 

 of the most fundamental of all contributions to both 

 theory and practice. It must be remembered that with the 

 development of modern conceptions of the atom, the claim 

 of chemistry to finality regarding the composition of 

 matter has been challenged, and in so far as this challenge 

 may be sustained, the more fundamental and far-reaching 

 discoveries will be expected from the province of physics. 

 That medicine and public health will share in these dis- 

 coveries cannot be doubted. 



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