468 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



from all kinds of payments, for education and even for feeding their children, 

 as well as for other benefits, seems to us to be a pernicious one which helps to 

 pauperise the whole country. The fact is that most working men can afford 

 to pay for their beer and for rides in trams for short distances, not to mention 

 numerous attendances at the very silliest cinematograph shows ; and they 

 can therefore afford to pay for many other things. To a man with a hundred 

 pounds a year, a glass of beer costs as much as a bottle of wine costs to a man 

 with a thousand a year — and a tram ride to the former costs as much as a 

 taxi-ride to the latter. If a man can spend a shilling a day for beer and amuse- 

 ments he can afford the same for medical benefit when he is ill. Moreover, 

 we are by no means so confident of the alleged great success of the voluntary 

 hospitals. It is doubtful whether medicine in this country is as advanced as 

 some pretend ; and we have heard the opposite stated by distinguished 

 foreigners. We could mention many facts in support of this doubt, such as 

 the former opposition to antiseptic surgery, to the introduction of bacteriology 

 and parasitology, and to many other innovations in practice and science ; 

 and to-day the medical profession is managed, not by its most distinguished 

 members but by quaint people who have never really done anything but who 

 get their names upon committees and acquire wealth and influence by means 

 of a skilfully elaborated " bedside manner." Medical science remains, of 

 course, in the doldrums, in spite of the Medical Research Commission and its 

 considerable funds ; and there are a hundred different lines of research which 

 are now being neglected entirely, in spite of grants, learned societies, univer- 

 sities, and scholarships — for the simple reason that " science does not pay." 

 A national hospital system brought into closer contact with the needs of the 

 people might do a great deal ; and we are certainly of opinion that the vast 

 body of medical practitioners should have greater power than they now 

 possess — and so should the few men who have really advanced medical 

 science and who are at present conspicuous by their absence from among those 

 who occupy the seats of the mighty in medicine. 



Medical Congress Resolution in Brisbane 



The recent Australian Medical Congress held at Brisbane, Queensland, 

 spoke emphatically on the policy of a " White Australia" which it strongly 

 endorsed. The main resolution which was carried stated that: "After 

 mature consideration. Congress is unable to find anything pointing to the 

 existence of inherent or insuperable obstacles in the way of the permanent 

 occupation of tropical Australia by a healthy indigenous white race. They 

 consider the whole question of the successful development and settlement of 

 tropical Australia by white races is fundamentally a question of applied 

 public health in modern science, such as has been demonstrated and 

 practised, with success, amongst civil populations, under far more difficult 

 conditions, by the American authorities in the Philippines prior to the 

 Great War, and throughout the military forces of every Allied Power during 

 that war. They consider the absence of semi-civilised coloured peoples in 

 Northern Australia simplifies the problem very greatly, but they desire to 

 emphasise, in the strongest manner, that any considerable extension of 

 population and settlement under the existing loose conditions of sanitary 

 administration and sanitary practice (using these terms in their modern, 

 wider sense) which prevail at the present time in tropical Australia cannot 

 hope for lasting success, and cannot fail to result in ultimate disaster. Con- 

 gress recognises that a large amount of work still requires to be done 

 in working out the practical details of any scheme of settlement, but they 

 consider it presents no difficulties beyond those of the organisation of the staff, 

 time and money. They realise that a great national question is involved, 

 but they are unable to discern any obstacles which cannot be overcome by 

 the earnest and skilful application of the principles of statecraft." 



