July 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



13 



imply that the uplift of mankind devolves 

 wholly on the medical man. The burdens 

 are too many and too diversified, the ascent 

 too steep and the pathways too rough for 

 one profession to hope to reach unaided 

 the high plateau we seek. Moreover, other 

 callings have no right, and should have no 

 desire, to shirk the moral responsibilities, 

 which rest alike on all. But in past ages, 

 medical men have been the chief torch- 

 bearers of science, the only light in which 

 man can safely walk, and we must keep 

 and transmit to our successors this trust 

 and honor. I know of no scientific discov- 

 ery, from the ignition of wood by friction 

 to the demonstration of the causes of in- 

 fection and the restriction of disease, which 

 has not sooner or later assisted in the bet- 

 terment of the race. It may be added that 

 nothing else has so aided man in his slow 

 and halting progress from the pestilential 

 marshes of ignorance to the open uplands 

 of intelligence. 



In so great a work as the eradication of 

 preventable disease, all intelligent people 

 must cooperate. The law must support by 

 proper enactments, and these must be en- 

 forced with justice and intelligence; it 

 must recognize that the right to enjoy 

 health is quite as sacred as that to possess 

 property; that to poison men in factories 

 and mines, to pollute drinking-water sup- 

 plies, to adulterate foods and to drug with 

 nostrums is manslaughter. Religion must 

 teach the sanctity of the body as well as 

 that of the soul, that ignorance is sin and 

 knowledge virtue, that parenthood is the 

 holiest function performed by man and 

 that to transmit disease is an unpardonable 

 sin. The teacher must know hygiene as 

 well as mathematics. The capitalist must 

 recognize that improvement in health and 

 growth in intelligence increase the effi- 

 ciency of labor. There never has been a 

 time when scientific medicine has had so 



many and such efficient and appreciative 

 helpers as it has to-day. Our sanitary laws 

 are for the most part good, but their ad- 

 ministration is weak, on account of igno- 

 rance. The pulpits of the land are open, 

 for the most part, to the sanitarian. The 

 respectable newspapers are most effective 

 in the crusade against quackery and disease. 

 The philanthropist has learned that the 

 advancement of science confers the great- 

 est and most lasting benefits on man. 



There is a moral obligation to be intelli- 

 gent. Ignorance is a vice and when it re- 

 sults in injury to any one it becomes a 

 crime, a moral, if not a statutory one. To 

 infect another with disease, either directly 

 or indirectly, as a result of ignorance, is an 

 immoral act. The purpose of government 

 is to protect its citizens, and a government 

 which fails to shelter its citizens against 

 infection is neither intelligent nor moral. 

 To transmit disease of body or mind to 

 offspring is an unpardonable sin. In a 

 reasonable sense it is worse than murder, 

 because it projects suffering into the future 

 indefinitely. 



That medicine has become a fundamen- 

 tal social service must be evident. To re- 

 turn one incapacitated by illness or injury 

 to the condition of self-support benefits not 

 only the individual, but the community, 

 inasmuch as it increases its productive 

 capacity. Infirmity is a direct burden on 

 the individual and scarcely less direct on 

 the community. Weakness in any part 

 diminishes the strength of the whole. It is 

 a fully established principle in social econ- 

 omy that wide-spread intelligence and 

 growth in knowledge are beneficial to the 

 state. 



' It was in full recognition of this that the 

 framers of the Ordinance of 1787 wrote 

 into that immortal document: 



Keligion, morality and knowledge being neces- 

 sary to good government and the happiness of 



