EMERGENCE OF MODERN MEDICINE— ALVAREZ ^11 



Perhaps the main reason why quackery thrives today is that there 

 are still so many diseases which the scientific physician cannot cure. I 

 feel confident that eventually many of these will be conquered, but I 

 doubt if my profession will ever be able to make over those millions 

 of poor, broken-down men and women who either inherited bodies and 

 nerves too frail to stand up to the strain of life or else had burdens laid 

 on them heavier than they could bear. These people throng our 

 offices every day begging for help, but in so many cases "the contractor 

 put in poor materials," and the only way in which one could hope to 

 work a cure would be to begin with a different set of grandparents. 



Nor can the physician yet replace defective or worn-out parts, or 

 parts already destroyed by disease, when the patient comes for help. 

 When a fire in a big conduit burns out some wires, and part of a 

 town is left in darkness, down the manholes go the linemen and soon 

 new wires are strung. But when the poison of infantile paralysis has 

 eaten a hole through the cable of nerves supplying the leg muscles of a 

 little boy or girl, there is no way in which the neurologist can get in 

 and repair the damage, and no one who knows what has happened 

 would think of promising the poor, worried parents a complete cure. 

 Much that is helpful can be done by an expert orthopedist, but he 

 cannot put back the injured nerve cells. 



Similarly, the physician cannot take out grandmother's creaky 

 knees and say, like an automobile repair man might do: "See, there, 

 the rubber cushions and the oiling system are practically gone and 

 the surface of the bone is burred over from much pounding, just as 

 in the case of an old chisel. You'd better let us get you a new pair of 

 joints from the factory!" 



Some day surgeons may be replacing such parts, because already 

 they have developed the necessary techniques. The only reason why 

 they are not doing it now is that as yet research workers have not 

 learned how to keep the transplanted parts from being digested away 

 by the blood of the recipient. But Dr. Stone has made a hopeful 

 start toward overcoming this difficulty, and eventually we may be 

 putting new kidneys into the patient with Bright's disease, and per- 

 haps even a new heart into the man whose cardiac arteries have begun 

 to plug up with scar tissue. 



In the meantime, the huge army of the weak, the unfit, the psycho- 

 pathic, the crippled, and the ailing will ever be on the lookout for a 

 worker of miracles. And one cannot blame them: They are desperate 

 and ready to try anything once. They and their loved ones will 

 always be scanning the horizon for hope, and they will always be 

 ready to spend the last penny of their savings on a journey to the 

 home of some new wonderworker. 



