July 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



11 



death by tuberculosis aecomplislied in that 

 decennium averaged 20,000 per year. A 

 battle in which 20,000 are slain stirs the 

 world at the time and fills pages of history 

 later. Preventive medicine measures its 

 successes by the number of lives saved, and 

 20,000 a year preserved from death from 

 one disease is no small triumph. In the 

 last century the average of human life has 

 been increased fifteen years and this in- 

 crease could be duplicated in the next 

 twenty years if the facts we now possess 

 were effectively employed. 



Hoffman further states that the addi- 

 tion to the material wealth of this country 

 secured by the reduction of deaths from 

 tuberculosis within ten years amounts ap- 

 proximately to 6,200,000 years of human 

 life, covering its most productive period. 

 Medicine discovered the facts which have 

 made this great work possible and has 

 directed their application. With evidence 

 of this kind before them, will our law- 

 makers listen to those who demand recog- 

 nition as practitioners of medicine without 

 proper qualification ? 



The further developments of medicine, 

 both curative and preventive, depend on 

 scientific investigations. The public is the 

 beneficiary and should in every way en- 

 courage medical research. By the appli- 

 cation of discoveries already made, the 

 burden of disease has been lightened, sick- 

 ness has become less frequent and less pro- 

 longed, a greater degree of health has been 

 secured, the efficiency of the individual 

 and of the nation has been increased and 

 life has been prolonged and made more 

 enjoyable. The federal government and 

 the states should sustain and promote scien- 

 tific research. That government is the best 

 which secures for its citizens the greatest 

 freedom from disease, the highest degree 

 of health and the longest life, and that 

 people which most fvilly secures the enjoy- 



ment of these blessings will dominate the 

 world. 



Medicine consists of the application of 

 scientific discovery to the prevention and 

 cure of disease. All else which may go 

 under the name of medicine is sham and 

 fraud. Without advancement in the phys- 

 ical, chemical and biologic sciences there 

 «an be no progressive movement in medi- 

 cine. Scientific knowledge is gained only 

 by observation and experiment. Before 

 the time of Jenner, we are told by the his- 

 torian, it was unusual to meet in London 

 one whose face was not marked by small- 

 pox. There was a popular belief that one 

 who had cowpox was immune to smallpox. 

 Jenner put this belief to a scientific test 

 and the result was the discovery of vaccina- 

 tion, and this secured the abolition of this 

 disfigurement and a marked reduction in 

 mortality. 



In 1849, a village doctor, with a crude 

 microscope, studied the blood of animals 

 sick with anthrax and compared it with 

 that of healthy ones. He discovered the 

 anthrax bacillus. This work was extended 

 by Davaine, Pasteur, Koch and others, and 

 from this the science of bacteriology has 

 been developed. The particulate causes of 

 many infectious diseases have been recog- 

 nized, isolated and their effects on animals 

 demonstrated. Many of the mysteries of 

 contagion have been revealed and the con- 

 ditions of the transmission of disease made 

 known. The fundamental principles of 

 preventive medicine have been developed 

 into a science which is to-day the most 

 potent factor in the progress of civilization. 



Finlay suspected a certain mosquito to 

 be the carrier of the virus of yellow fever. 

 Reed and his co-workers demonstrated the 

 truth of this theory and the work of Gorgas 

 has freed Havana from the pestilence and 

 the construction of the Panama Canal is an 

 accomplished fact. 



