232 
Modem  Medicine. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
May,  1915. 
usually  the  purely  scientific  type,  engrossed  in  the  problems  of  his 
particular  field,  positive  as  to  his  specific  knowledge,  but  not  neces- 
sarily broad  in  his  conceptions  or  tolerant  of  the  attitude  of  the 
average  individual.  He  sees  many  wrongs  which  should  be  corrected, 
waste  and  loss  of  power  which  should  be  avoided  and  evils  which 
should  be  eliminated,  and,  with  his  special  knowledge  and  technical 
training,  the  way  to  secure  these  reforms  seems  clear  and  straight 
if  only  he  could  be  allowed  to  enact  and  enforce  the  regulations 
which  he  knows  would  be  effective.  He  is  often  impatient  with  the 
layman,  who,  lacking  his  training  and  expert  knowledge,  is  unable 
to  follow  his  reasoning  or  to  understand  his  conclusions.  The  task 
of  convincing  a  majority  of  average  citizens  by  translating  scientific 
facts  into  popular  terms  and  placing  the  results  of  scientific  research 
before  the  public  in  easily-understood  form  seems  to  the  expert  to  be 
a  hopeless  task.  How  much  easier  it  would  be,  he  thinks,  if  only  by 
the  exercise  of  benevolent  despotism  a  law  could  be  passed  decreeing 
that  certain  things  should  or  should  not  be.  So  long  as  the  object  of 
such  laws  is  the  public  good,  the  enthusiast  concludes  that  any 
means  are  justifiable  by  which  such  legislation  can  be  secured.  This 
has  been  the  line  of  reasoning  which  has  too  often  been  followed 
in  planning  public  health  legislation.  When  it  is  recalled  that  the 
forty  years  which  cover  the  development  of  our  present-day  knowl- 
edge of  preventive  diseases  coincide  almost  exactly  with  the  period 
of  special  influences  and  class  legislation  in  most  of  our  legislative 
bodies,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  medical  and  sanitary  expert  has 
too  often  fallen  into  the  ways  of  the  professional  politician.  The 
further  and  graver  errors  of  mistaking  legislative  enactment  for 
constructive  progress,  of  thinking  that  the  passage  of  a  law  marked  a 
real  achievement,  whether  the  law  was  supported  by  public  opinion 
or  drafted  so  as  to  be  enforcible  or  not,  and  that  the  end  to  be  gained 
in  a  campaign  for  sanitary  legislation  was  to  "  put  over  "  the  in- 
tended bill,  and  that  something  was  accomplished  when  this  was 
done,  have  also  been  far  too  prevalent.  When  to  this  situation  is 
added  the  fact  that  the  rapid  growth  of  any  special  line  of  knowl- 
edge favors  the  development  of  those  who  mistake  a  working  hypoth- 
esis for  a  proven  fact,  or  who  allow  their  interest  in  a  special  but 
comparatively  unimportant  topic  to  lead  them  to  regard  it  as  one  of 
paramount  importance,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  extremist  and  the 
hobby-rider  have  too  often  exercised  an  undue  influence  in  public 
health  legislation. 
