512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 8 



diagnosis and treatment of disease as practiced some 3,500 years 

 B. C, carry recognizable descriptions of many diseases prevalent in 

 the modern-day world. The observations of the beloved late Prof. 

 Elliott Smith, who by 1930 had examined the remains of some 30,000 

 ancient Egyptians and Nubians representing every period of the last 

 60 centuries, and the microscopic studies by the late Marc Armand 

 Ruffer of carefully restored and sectioned mummified tissues, each 

 independently bear direct testimony to the diversity and similarity of 

 human pathologic processes, then and now. 



Thus, from time immemorial man has dreamed and speculated and 

 philosophized about the nature and the significance of life, and has 

 shuddered and shrunk and fled from famine and war and pestilence. 

 This amazing world in each succeeding epoch has presented an ever 

 increasing variety of problems, which have challenged the best minds 

 of each age. At the very extreme of complexity, and the last to be 

 satisfactorily approached for solution on a rational scientific basis have 

 been the problems of human health and disease. The true physician 

 has ever stood at the crossroads, receiving the slowly and painfully 

 accumulated facts from any and every scientific source, and has then 

 appropriated, reinterpreted, and applied them in the alleviation of 

 human misery and suffering. As a result, like the shedding of a 

 chrysalis, the basis for health was transformed at the turn of the cen- 

 tury from a speculative, descriptive, cumbersome classification of dis- 

 ease to an exact experimental science for the accumulation of verifiable 

 facts about disease. Today, we are seeing the natural result of this 

 metamorphosis in method and technique, derived from the basic natu- 

 ral sciences, in a transfer of the major emphasis in medicine from empir- 

 icism to mechanism — from the "cure" of disease to the "prevention" 

 of disease. One by one superstitions based upon error, or upon incom- 

 plete knowledge, are giving way to more exact methods of procedure, 

 until we may envisage the composite, ideal physician of the future as 

 embodying an appreciation and a working knowledge of all of the 

 intricacies of fact deriving from the social as well as from the physical 

 sciences. 



If there is any lesson which we of this era should have learned from 

 the past it is the basic necessity for cooperative effort. If the common 

 problems which civilized man faces today are to be solved successfully, 

 the cooperative intelligence of many minds, wherever existing, irre- 

 spective of race, color, creed, or narrow sectarian viewpoint, must be 

 focused sharply upon them. Peace — progress — our very existence are 

 seriously threatened through failure to appreciate fully the universality 

 of this fundamental principle — applied economically, socially, and 

 politically, as well as scientifically. Medical leadership in recent years 

 has perhaps recognized this challenge more clearly, and realized its 

 sine qua non for survival more fully, than many in other walks of life. 



