November 25, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



507 



bottle of something to allay their more dis- 

 tressing symptoms. All along the line the 

 immigrant gets service which is scamped if 

 he is not actually swindled by charlatans 

 and quacks. The barrier of language pre- 

 vents him from receiving that enlightenment 

 on the subject of quackery which has done 

 so much toward guarding the English read- 

 ing public from being defrauded. The same 

 barrier keeps him from securing needed aid 

 from his English-speaking neighbors and in 

 consequence of his ignorance and isolation 

 death exacts a heavy toll. 



Nothing can demonstrate more forcibly the 

 importance of widespread education in relation 

 to public health and medical practise than the 

 unfortunate situation of many of our foreign- 

 born population. And we should pay much 

 more attention than heretofore to the problem 

 of protecting these people against the results 

 of their own ignorance and the ravages of 

 unscrupulous charlatans. 



But we need a much wider campaign of edu- 

 cation. Naturally one thinks of the schools 

 which should at least give more generally than 

 they do, the elementary instruction in physi- 

 ology and hygiene which would prepare the stu- 

 dents, in a measure, for understanding many 

 problems with which they will later have to 

 cope. The Federal Government is making a 

 small beginning in the way of instructing peo- 

 ple through various publications on matters of 

 public health and especially in the care of in- 

 fants. Boards of Health in many cities are 

 carrying on the work of education and this 

 work could be easily extended. Papers and 

 magazines may do much for the cause as is 

 evinced by the articles of Dr. Wiley and the 

 attacks of Collier's Weeldy on various medical 

 frauds. Life insurance companies are finding 

 it to their interest to disseminate information 

 on the preservation of health among their 

 policyholders and even supply nurses to attend 

 them during illness. The various societies 

 affording sickness and accident benefits to their 

 members would probably find it advantageous 

 to give instruction about keeping well and thus 

 save themselves from paying money to mem- 

 bers after they are sick. So also with the large 



industrial firms which employ physicians and 

 maintain hospitals for their employees. And 

 the doctors themselves might consistently with 

 their calling — for we should bear in mind that 

 doctor means teacher — the doctors might do 

 much more than they do in the way of educa- 

 ting the public on matters of health. 



All of these agencies I have mentioned and 

 more besides have to do with instructing the 

 public and all of them could well do more. 

 This task which as we have seen is of such 

 vital importance for human welfare would be 

 greatly facilitated if the medical profession 

 stood in more helpful relations to its patrons. 

 As it is, a large part of the time of well-trained 

 medical men is simply wasted in a kind of 

 desultory practise from which their patients 

 secure no permanent benefit. Eor this the 

 patients may be quite as much at fault as the 

 doctor. Thorough diagnosis with its tests for 

 blood, urine and sputum, its bacteriological ex- 

 aminations and perhaps its X-ray pictures and 

 other procedures is coming to be beyond the 

 resources of any one physician however well 

 qualified. And all these things are expensive. 

 Adequate medical aid is simply out of the 

 reach of people in ordinary financial circum- 

 stances, and the experiences with doctors which 

 they can afford are so frequently unsatisfactory 

 that they lead to discouragement and cause 

 many to put up with ills that are the source of 

 much unhappiness. Humanity comes very far 

 short of getting out of the medical profession 

 the aid which it is capable of furnishing and 

 which it could probably furnish without any 

 greater expenditure of time and effort than now 

 goes into the hurried examination of multi- 

 tudes of patients and the scribbling of prescrip- 

 tions for the relief of their symptoms. Just 

 how the business of relieving the ills of the 

 body should be organized I do not presume to 

 state, but until it is done more effectively than 

 it is at the present time the relations of the 

 medical profession to the public will be sub- 

 jected to more or less strain. This strain is in- 

 creasing, and it may be productive of much 

 harm in a number of ways. It will not be re- 

 moved, I fancy, until some system is evolved 

 whereby the rank and file of suffering human- 



