616 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
The gravity of the venereal problem was for the first time clearly 
revealed by the reports of draft boards and camp surgeons. But the 
war showed America not only the prevalence and seriousness of vene¬ 
real diseases: it also showed how and where to attack and conquer 
them. As emphasized in a pamphlet issued by the United States Treas¬ 
ury Department, Public Health Service, venereal disease is not to be 
attacked as a war epidemic, but as a civilian problem and a peace 
problem. The education of people proved to be a very important part 
of the venereal disease preventive programme in army camps, and the 
same principle applies in large measure also to conditions obtaining in 
civilian communities. 
The Bight Honorable Sir Horace Plunkett, late minister of agri¬ 
culture for Ireland, writing on some tendencies of modern medicine 
from a lay point of view, emphasized the preventive trend in the med¬ 
ical profession and suggested that practitioners should be rewarded 
for keeping the people in good health, rather than for healing them in 
sickness. It is desirable that the public be educated to appreciate the 
national importance of hygiene, and with this object there is a decided 
tendency to collect and distribute medical information, for example on 
the nature and prevention of tuberculosis or cancer, without loss of 
time, to the greatest number of people in the greatest number of ways. 
Vast sums of money have been contributed and expended for medical 
research and for the eradication of endemic disease. The Rockefeller 
Institute is at present endeavoring to stamp out yellow fever through¬ 
out the habitable globe. Large commercial houses have also done their 
share, as shown for example by the establishment of a research lab¬ 
oratory by the drug firm of Burroughs and Welcome, in Khartoum, 
Africa. The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research 
was established in 1915 at Rochester, in connection with the Univer¬ 
sity of Minnesota, by the famous Mayo brothers, surgeons to St. 
Mary’s Hospital, where about nine thousand operations are performed 
in the course of the year. Up to 1919 this hospital had received and 
cared for over 104,660 patients. In 1920 a surgical building at the 
cost of one and a half million dollars and having a capacity of about 
three hundred beds was begun. Distinguished members of the profes¬ 
sion come from all parts of the civilized world to see the Mayos operate. 
Modern medicine, as a gauge of civilization, is distinctly social, and 
as pointed out by Braisted it is the medicine not of the sick considered 
merely as individuals, but of the sick en masse; of individuals in their 
relation to each other, of diseases affecting public morals, of diseases 
modifying the attitude of capital and labor and the duties of citizens 
to the State and of the State to citizens. Occupational diseases and the 
hygiene of occirpations, including the prevention of accidents in indus¬ 
trial concerns, are among the leading topics of the day. Special atten- 
