October 20, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



501 



work of a "Walter Reed, who is primarily 

 responsible for the proof of the conveyance 

 of yellow fever by mosquitoes, or of a 

 Ricketts, whose work on spotted fever and 

 on typhus fever will, in spite of his un- 

 timely death, cause his name to be lastingly 

 remembered. On the other hand, in order 

 to have an affective application of medical 

 science to human needs there must be a 

 sufficient number of men well versed in the 

 science to make it possible to educate the 

 whole people to its practical value in the 

 broadest sense. This, owing partly to the 

 backwardness of so many of our medical 

 schools, we have not had. In the Wiscon- 

 sin legislature, a "progressive" legislature 

 at that, bills relating to instruction in hy- 

 giene and to medical inspection in the 

 public schools have failed to pass because 

 a handful of christian scientists exerted 

 more influence than a medical profession of 

 three thousand. On the other hand, this 

 same legislature has been quite liberal in 

 providing for state and county institutions 

 for the care of tuberculous patients, but 

 here there has been public education 

 largely led by laymen. 



Demonic medicine to a large extent still 

 holds sway. Among the christian scien- 

 tists the evil spirit is known as "error," 

 among the chiropractics and similar cults 

 as "dislocated vertebree," among the 

 people, at large as something vaguely for- 

 mulated but none the less something to be 

 driven out by various kinds of patent 

 medicines for which each year many mil- 

 lions of dollars are spent. The cures which 

 these various forms of demonic medicine 

 sometimes effect are ascribed by the scien- 

 tific to the action of the stimulated imag- 

 ination on the body. This has given rise 

 to a new "psychotherapy" in which the 

 effect of mind on body can be utilized 

 scientifically. Psychotherapy, however, is 

 to be looked upon as a branch of physio- 



logic medicine. Demonic medicine has no 

 longer a place in a truly civilized com- 

 munity. 



Hygienic medicine, on the other hand, is 

 a lasting gift from the Greeks to civilized 

 mankind. Its basis is personal hygiene, 

 the right use of exercise and rest of mind 

 and body, diet, bathing, fresh air, sunshine, 

 proper clothing and the like. It is pri- 

 marily the medicine for the home and must 

 depend largely on the intelligence and edu- 

 cation of home-making women. In its 

 more specialized aspects for the cure rather 

 than the prevention of disease it is highly 

 developed in our better sanitariums where 

 regulated exercise, selected diet, hydro- 

 therapy, electrotherapy and the like are 

 carefully designed to restore a weakened 

 individual to healthful strength of body, 

 and in hospitals for the insane where the 

 aim is to restore the mind. During the 

 past fifty years in the hands of trained 

 nurses it has transformed general hospitals 

 throughout the world from places of ex- 

 cessive mortality into the safest places in 

 the world in which to be sick. For years 

 to come it appears that trained nurses are 

 likely to be able best to carry its lessons 

 into the schoolroom and the home as they 

 already have into our hospitals, thanks 

 largely to the genius of Florence Night- 

 ingale. Modern surgery owes its triumphs 

 fully as much to the trained nurses in our 

 hospitals as it does to anesthetics or asepsis. 

 School nurses to look after the health of 

 school children under the supervision of 

 medical inspectors, and district nurses to 

 carry the lessons of hygienic medicine into 

 the homes where at present babies are so 

 badly cared for that a fifth of them die in 

 the first year and a third die before the 

 age of five, are essential for the advance of 

 health under the guidance of medical sci- 

 ence. To the physician engaged in private 



