504 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1404. 



with the fact that the things that make people 

 die are to a large extent avoidable. Of 

 course we must all die some time. But knowl- 

 edge has enabled man to cut down very 

 materially the death rate from many causes 

 in the past few decades and with greater dif- 

 fusion of knowledge it is perfectly possible 

 to make tremendous strides further in the 

 same direction. 



It is not sufficient that this knowledge be 

 in the hands of the medical profession merely, 

 much as humanity in general might gain and 

 has gained by the application of this informa- 

 tion to the prevention and cure of disease. 

 The general public must be enlightened in 

 regard to the preservation of health if the 

 knowledge in the possession of the medical 

 world can be applied in the most effective 

 way. Imperfectly developed as medical sci- 

 ence may be at the present time, there is a 

 tremendous amount of sickness and death that 

 could be avoided if the great mass of human- 

 ity could avail itself of the resources of medi- 

 cal knowledge and skill that are now avail- 

 able. As Dr. Benjamin Moore says in his 

 book " The Dawn of a Health Age " in speak- 

 ing of conditions in England, 



At the present moment we possess sufficient 

 knowledge of medical science to enable us to save 

 at least three hundred thousand lives every year in 

 this country alone, and the saving of these three 

 hundred thousand valuable lives could all be effected 

 without costing the nation a single penny, but 

 rather at the same time many million pounds a year 

 might be saved which under present conditions are 

 absolutely wasted. 



For this deplorable situation there are a 

 number of causes, one of which is our com- 

 mercialized system of private medical prac- 

 tise, but another is the widespread lack of 

 information in regard to the preservation of 

 health and the proper utilization of the medi- 

 cal aids within reach. But besides the draw- 

 backs due merely to ignorance, there are 

 others that are due to traditional modes of 

 thought that have come down to us from the 

 days of the primitive medicine man and which 

 can not be properly appreciated except iu the 

 light of their historical development. We 



may no longer believe in sorcery and magic 

 but numerous individuals are still swayed by 

 various attenuated superstitions which may 

 determine their conduct when matters of life 

 or death hinge upon the correctness of their 

 judgment. Most of us set little store by 

 charms and amulets, but many are prone to 

 look upon medicines as effecting cures in a 

 quite mysterious way. Much mysticism and 

 superstition still linger in popular notions of 

 medicine. Cures are not infrequently at- 

 tributed to supernatural interference, and 

 the functions of priest and medicine man that 

 were originally performed by the same person 

 are by no means yet completely dissociated. 

 The old theory of demoniacal possession as 

 the cause of disease and the old practise of 

 exorcising the intruding spirits in order to 

 eilect a cure still survive, in a modified form 

 to be sure, but with easily recognizable marks 

 of their descent. As a scientific theory of 

 disease, by the way, this primitive belief has 

 a decided advantage over some of its modern 

 outgrowths in its relative simplicity and 

 rationality if we once grant the demono- 

 logical premise upon which it was founded. 

 And on account of the recent recrudescence 

 of animism in several quarters I rather look 

 forward to its being revived. 



There can be little doubt that the influence 

 of old traditional notions is no small factor 

 in determining the attitude of many people 

 towards problems of health in the educated 

 and the un-educated classes alike. Many 

 people who may be perfectly scientific when 

 it comes to matters of building bridges or 

 repairing engines, may rush when ill to some 

 quack of whose qualifications they know 

 nothing, or adopt procedures as stupid as 

 wearing a charm or repeating some mum- 

 mery to ward off the evil eye. 



We are losing our old-time naive confidence 

 in medicines and to a certain extent the medi- 

 cal profession. We know that doctors often 

 disagree, that they continually make wrong 

 diagnoses, that they have their fads in 

 methods of treatment that spread like epidem- 

 ics over the profession only to be abandoned 

 after a short period of trial; people are dis- 



