LIFE WITHOUT DISEASE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 2

LIFE WITHOUT DISEASE.

"Medical science may one day stamp out disease m surely at* gangrene has been stamped l out 'in surgery by the work of Lister and Pasteur."

These woids, winch carry the promise of a life without disease, terminated only by senile decay or violence, formed part of the presidential address of Dr .John Mathesoii at the anmiaJ meeting of the Caledonian Medical Society in London lately. Though treatment by vaccine and serum has been the fashion for some time, he said, success basy so far, been attained in very few cases. Hut experimental research may find! a remedy for all germ diseases no less effective than those remedies now available for smallpox and diphtheria.

Dr Mathesoii has no faith in the monkey gland fantasy or in any of the other modern specifies for making the old young again. Medical science, ho thinks, can never abolish, or even largely modify, the cycle of existencegrowth, maturity,' and decay. But ho has a profound belief that the process of decay may be, to a very large extent, postponed—hut not by drugs. Longevity, he thinks, may be attained by raising the power of resistance of cur tissues to the attacks of germs and their poisons. If two people are exposed to the same infection, one may catch tb.' complaint and the other escape. Exactlv how this greater susceptibility arises we arc not yet able to determine. Immunity is a relative term, and our aim must be to make it more complete. Germs cannot be extirpated, but we may make it more difficult for them to grow and multiply." The greatest success in preventive medicine is to be found on simpler lines. Healthy dwellings, personal hygiene, fresh air and sunshine (weather permitting) in large doses and a sufficient supply of wholesome food, in which those elusive compounds called vitamines must be well represented, are the finest preventatives.