PROGRESS OF MEDICINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



By Dr. John S. Billings, U. S. A. 



Director New York Public Library. 



The word "medicine,'' as used in the title of this paper, includes 

 all branches of the art of prevention and treatment of disease and 

 injuries; all discoveries of methods of diminishing physical pain and 

 of prolonging- life, and also that part of modern science which is con- 

 cerned with accurate knowledge of the structure and functions, normal 

 and abnormal, of the human body, and of the causes of disease. In 

 other words, it includes not only therapeutics, medical and surgical, 

 but also physiology, pathology, and hygiene. 



In all these branches of medicine greater progress has been made 

 during the last century than had been made during the previous two 

 thousand years. This progress has been largely due to improvements 

 in methods of investigation and diagnosis, resulting from increase of 

 knowledge in chemistry and physics; to better microscopes and new 

 instruments of precision; to experimental work in laboratories, and 

 to the application of scientific method and system in the observation 

 and recording of cases of disease and of the results of different modes 

 of treatment. The introduction of statistical methods in the study of 

 cases of disease and of causes of death; the discovery of general anes- 

 thetics; the adoption of antiseptic and aseptic methods in surgeiy,and 

 the development of modern bacteriology, each marks a point in the 

 history of medicine in the nineteenth century. 



The scientific demonstration that some diseases are due to the growth 

 and development of certain specific micro-organisms in the human 

 body dates from about twenty years ago, although the theory of such 

 causal relation is much older. Since 1880 it has been proved that 

 anthrax, Asiatic cholera, cerebro-spinal meningitis, diphtheria, one 

 form of dysentery, erysipelas, glanders, gonorrhea, influenza, certain 

 epidemics of meat poisoning, pyaemia and suppuration in general, pneu- 

 monia, tetanus, relapsing fever, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and 

 typhoid fever are due to minute vegetable organisms known as bacte- 

 ria; that malarial fevers, Texas cattle fever, and certain forms of dys- 

 entery are due to forms of microscopic animal organisms known as 



1 Copyright, 1901, by New York Evening Post Company. Reprinted from the 

 Evening Post, January 12, 1901, by special permission of G. P. Putnams Sons. 



637 



