32 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1306 



that a man who has both a medical and a 

 public health training will possess peculiar ad- 

 vantages as an administrator. It is for this 

 reason that the principal eastern universities 

 offer the highest degree in this field, the 

 Doctor of Public Health, only to medical 

 graduates and require that it be earned by 

 a rigorous course of two years of academic 

 study. 



It will be long, however, before the supply 

 of doctors of public health is nearly adequate 

 to the demand, and for some time to come ad- 

 ministrative positions, as well as laboratory 

 and statistical positions, and those concerned 

 with social reorganization, will be open to the 

 college man or woman of marked ability who 

 devotes a single graduate year to study for 

 the Certificate in Public Health. 



It can be said with very literal truth of the 

 field of public health to-day that the harvest is 

 ready and that the laborers are few. On all 

 hands there comes to us the call for bacteriol- 

 ogists and statisticians, for industrial physi- 

 cians and school physicians, for public health 

 nurses, and for health officers. The American 

 Red Cross is inaugurating a nation-wide cam- 

 paign for the development of health centers 

 throughout the country. Each one of the thou- 

 sands of health -centers to be started under this 

 plan will call for an expert personnel which 

 does not exist at present. The state of Ohio 

 has just conducted a civil service examination 

 for a list of candidates for 110 positions as 

 full-time health officers within that state, at 

 salaries ranging from $3,000 to $6,000 a year, 

 with permanent appointment under the civil 

 service law ; and it was necessary for the state 

 to organize a special course of instruction in 

 order to have anything like the number of 

 fairly qualified candidates for the responsible 

 positions within its gift. 



The science and the art of public health 

 have progressed to a point where they can 

 render to the public a service to be measured 

 in the saving of hvmdreds of thousands of lives 

 in this country every year. Public authorities 

 and private agencies from one end of the land 

 to another are realizing these possibilities of 

 service and are ready to provide the necessary 



funds and to give the necessary powers to 

 properly qualified experts. The lack in the 

 whole scheme of things at the present moment 

 is the lack of personnel. As a prominent offi- 

 cial of the Rockefeller Foundation said to me 

 the other night, " The way they are appropri- 

 ating money for public health in the southern 

 states frightens me, because we haven't the men 

 to send to them to help them spend it wisely." 

 We stand, I believe, at the beginning of a new 

 phase of human history, a phase in which the 

 physical and mental health and efficiency of 

 the human being will be transformed by sci- 

 ence as the physical background of civiliza- 

 tion has been transformed in the past half cen- 

 tury. In the name of the need that confronts 

 us for the personnel to carry on this work I 

 believe we have the right to say boldly to the 

 college men and women of America that we 

 need them in this great business. We can 

 promise to the college graduate, whether his 

 leanings be toward work in the laboratory, 

 toward sanitation in the field, toward the tasks 

 of social propaganda and social reconstruction 

 — ^we can promise to the medical student, and 

 we can promise to the graduate nurse — ^liiat 

 each and all of them will find in the public 

 health movement of the future careers which 

 will compare favorably in security and in ma- 

 terial rewards with the average return which 

 is won by the college and medical graduate in 

 other fields. Above all we can promise the op- 

 portunity of a kind of service which brings a 

 satisfaction deeper than any material reward. 

 There are great unsolved problems waiting 

 for the Pasteurs of the future. Influenza, 

 pneumonia, cancer and the rest of the uncon- 

 quered plagues will some day yield to the pa- 

 tient assault of science, and it may well fall to 

 the lot of young men who are entering our 

 laboratories to-day to write the obituary of 

 these diseases as Walter Reed did that of yel- 

 low fever in 1900. Two of Reed's letters to his 

 wife after he and his associates had made the 

 great discovery that ensured the conquest of 

 yellow fever in the ensuing year, are so full 

 of the solemn dignity of such a victory that I 

 will quote them. 



