Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1915. 
M odern  Medicine. 
285 
limited  field,  is  utterly  inconceivable.  Still  less  would  it  be  possible 
for  the  70,000  members  of  our  medical  organizations  to  control 
100,000,000  people  against  their  will.  Since  the  relation  of  physicians 
to  the  public  cannot  be  that  of  dictators  or  rulers,  and  since  the 
power  for  restriction  and  regulation  must  always  lie  in  the  will  of 
the  majority,  there  remains  only  a  single  relation  which  physicians 
as  a  class  can  maintain  toward  the  general  public;  namely,  that  of 
teachers.  It  is  our  function  as  a  profession  to  take  the  finding  of 
scientific  men  the  world  over,  in  so  far  as  they  are  confirmed  by 
wide  experience  and  observation  and  in  so  far  as  they  apply  to 
public  health  conditions,  to  generalize  them  and  put  them  in  popular 
language,  so  that  they  will  be  intelligible  to  the  average  citizen,  and 
to  place  these  facts  before  him  with  a  clear  statement  of  what  can 
be  done  through  public  cooperation  to  protect  him  and  his  from 
unnecessary  disease.  Insistence  on  the  passage  of  laws  for  which 
the  public  is  not  yet  prepared,  or  which  they  do  not  understand,  the 
use  of  conventional  political  methods  or  personal  influence  to  secure 
the  enactment  of  laws  for  which  public  sentiment  is  not  ready,  cannot 
fail  and  has  not  failed  in  the  past  to  react  and  to  produce,  in  the  long 
run,  more  harm  than  good. 
Before  discussing  the  methods  by  which  the  education  of  the 
public  should  be  carried  on,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  develop- 
ment of  our  knowledge  regarding  preventable  diseases  has  unavoid- 
ably produced  a  marked  change  in  the  ethical  attitude  of  the  physician 
toward  publicity  methods.  In  former  generations,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  sole  duty  of  the  physician  was  to  his  patient.  As  the  knowledge 
which  he  acquired  regarding  his  patients  and  their  affairs  related 
entirely  to  the  personal  interests  of  the  patient,  physicians  have 
recognized  for  centuries  the  moral  obligation  to  remain  silent  re- 
garding all  professional  matters.  But  to-day,  as  we  have  seen,  cer- 
tain diseases  are  matters  not  only  of  personal,  but  also,  to  a  very, 
large  degree,  of  public  concern.  On  all  subjects  therefore  on  which 
the  public  may  properly  look  to  the  medical  profession  for  guidance 
and  advice,  it  is  to-day  just  as  much  our  duty  to  speak  as  it  was  in 
former  years  the  duty  of  our  professional  forefathers  to  remain 
silent. 
The  proper  function  of  a  scientific  organization  being  education, 
the  next  question  is  "  Through  what  channels  and  by  what  mediums 
is  such  a  process  of  education  to  be  carried  on?"  All  existing 
agencies  and  organizations  through  which  public  opinion  can  be 
