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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 877 



terests as an inducement to social effort. 

 Much that is weak and inefficient in the 

 treatment of disease by physicians is due 

 to a too narrow preliminary training, to a 

 too restricted attitude, to a selfish, compet- 

 itive, unprogressive individualism, archaic 

 and out of place in modern highly organ- 

 ized society. Many of the worst evils of 

 our present-day civilization, dirt, ill 

 health, despondency, pauperism and 

 crime, are in large part due to the failure 

 on the part of the majority of those trained 

 in medicine to act as leaders and public 

 educators. Health of body and of mind 

 should be recognized as of first importance 

 to the community. ' ' They have been so rec- 

 ognized, so far as they have been under- 

 stood," says Haveloek Ellis, "in every 

 great period of civilization of which we 

 have much knowledge, as Roman and 

 Moorish ruins alone suffice to testify. 

 That they are not so recognized to-day is 

 the chief element of rottenness in our 

 civilization. "We postpone laying the 

 foundations of our social structure in 

 order to elaborate its pinnacles. "We have 

 not yet learned that a great civilization is 

 ill built up on the bodies of men and 

 women enfeebled and distorted by over- 

 work, filth and disease " ("The Naturali- 

 zation of Health," 1892). 



The marvelous advance in industrial pro- 

 ductivity characteristic of the past cen- 

 tury is due, on the one hand, to the ideal 

 of learning all that is possible about na- 

 ture by observation and experiment, in a 

 word to scientific research, and, on the 

 other hand, to the organized application of 

 this knowledge to human needs. It seems 

 not improbable that during the coming cen- 

 tury an equally earnest effort will be made 

 to learn the truth about mankind, by ob- 

 servation and experiment, in order that the 

 application of knowledge to human needs 

 may be made more efficient. Medicine as 



a science occupies a unique position in 

 that, on the one hand, it is closely bound up 

 with the physical sciences on which indus- 

 trial productivity depends, with physics, 

 chemistry and biology, while, on the other 

 hand, it deals directly with people in their 

 social relations and is therefore intimately 

 related to sociology. This latter relation 

 has not been sufficiently recognized hith- 

 erto by either medical men or sociologists. 

 With the application of a scientific sociol- 

 ogy to the needs of mankind the impor- 

 tance of medical science will come more 

 and more to the fore. 



About fifty years ago a witty English- 

 man said that the ancients had tried to 

 make of medicine a science and had failed, 

 the moderns had made of it a trade and 

 had succeeded. There is truth in the 

 statement. The medicine of the ancients 

 was rather an art than a science. Empir- 

 ical practise was ahead of the theories used 

 to explain the nature of disease and its 

 treatment. Medicine is still too frequently 

 looked at from the standpoint of a trade, 

 but since the Englishman gave his cynical 

 opinion medicine has progressed as a sci- 

 ence more than in all the centuries before. 



In the development of medicine four 

 stages may be recognized, a demonic, a 

 hygienic, a physiologic and an etiologic. 



In demonic medicine disease is looked 

 upon as an evil spirit which has taken pos- 

 session of the body and which may be 

 scared out by elaborate ceremonies usually 

 accompanied by noise and supposedly fear- 

 ful looking objects. This type of medicine 

 is found in practically all savage tribes 

 and wide-spread even in semi-civilized 

 countries like China and India and is not 

 unknown in a less crude form in modern 

 America. 



In hygienic medicine disease is looked 

 upon as an abnormal functioning of the 

 body which can in large part be over- 



