ORGANISING FOR HEALTH

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 36, 11 August 1921, Page 6

ORGANISING FOR HEALTH

Dr; W. E. Herbert, of Wellington, som.e years ago visited the famous clinic of the Mayo Brothers at Rochester, New York. He was evidently profoundly impressed by all he saw there, and has kept those impressions sharp and dear. He freely quoted from Dr. W. Mayo last evening, in an address to the Wellington Red Cross. He took the dictum of Dr. W. v Mayo as bis text—viz., that human life, having been prolonged by fifteen years in the last century, is capable of being lengthened still more within the next twenty years if the bestj use is made of facts in possession of the medical profession. The • best use of these facts can only be obtained, as Dr. Herbert sees the matter, by co-ordination of the efforts of the Public Health Department, the medical profession (including, it ie to be presumed, veterinarians and dentists), the universities, the teaching profession, the press, and the general public. These agencies for the time being appear to Dr. Herbert to be working each in its own groove—earnestly eno.agh, but losing much efficiency thrbugh waging what . he calls "a guerrilla warfare" against the ills that afflict the human body. They should act as one great army division in dealing with the common enemy of mankind. The most formidable problem confronting the Health Department and doctors to-day is public ignorance in regard to health. But much of that might be dispelled if medical men, speaking generally, were -more tactfully communicative. It is generally understood that the patient's friends give more trouble than the patient; but if co-opera-tion in the way Dr. Herbert ■ laudably desires to see is to be attained, then 'the patient—and the patient's friends —must be made to know that they each have their parts to play. Here the medical man, coming into direct contact at some time or other with everyone in the community, can 'do an enormous amount of good in a quiet way in enlightening the people as a whole upon the health problems of our time, and enlisting their co-opera-tion in solving them. Dr. Herbert's conclusions on the powerful influences exerted by a high standard of public health on the peace and well-being of the community "will commend themselves to evei'y thinking man and woman. After all, he but seeks to prove what, it I seems, is still to be learned, that I " prevention » better than cure,"

learned, too, by many long and bitter lessons. But great progress has been made, as he showed in his address. What he is most anxious to see is that progress "speeded up," and all shoulders put to the one big wheel, instead of to half-a-dozen little ones.