THE BEST DOCTORS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 89, 9 January 1926, Page 5

THE BEST DOCTORS

TRIBUTE TO OLD-TIME PRACTITIONERS.

Are modern doctors as good as tho physicians of old? This was one of the points brought forward by Dr. Andrew Balfour, Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in his presidential address delivered to ihe Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the Medical Society of London. "In certain directions,” Dr. Balfour declared, “I very much doubt if tho modern doctor with the laboratory at his back and with his brain crammed full of scientific and schii-scicutific knowledge, is as good at the bedsido or can uso his remedies so effectively as those who had to trust their powers of observation, their reasoning faculties, and their intimate acquaintance with the materia mediea. which they bad usually gained in tho pursuit of their studies and during their careers as apprentices in practice.” “Wo modern doctors when practising,” continued Dr. Balfour, “have ole tained the greater part of our knowledge from tiiese pioneers, and we cannot but wonder at some of these, clinicians who in former days, relying on ‘the seeing eye and the understanding heart,’ were able to grapple set successfully with intricate problems and to handle diseases in a way that even to-day commands the utmost respect.”