VICTORIES WON

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 41, 20 February 1929, Page 6

VICTORIES WON

EPIDEMICS CONTROLLED

MEDICAL MARTYRS

FIGHTING THE GERMS

In his presidential address at the meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association last evening, Dr. J. S. Elliott outlined the wonderful advanco, of ■, medical science during the last half-century.

"For eerituries the germs of disease," said Dr. Elliott, "attacked mankind, and man knew not how to set.up a defence against an unknown and invisible foe,: but during the last halfcentury medical scientists have unmasked the germ armies, and shown how to defeat them.' This victory is the greatest for humanity, above all the victories of war since the world began. Epidemic disease has been . controlled, and the control of putrefaction has led to the great triumphs of modern surgery. '■ ■. . •.■••■ '

"The discovery by Hanson and Boss of the malarial; parasites in mosquitoes has done much to make tropical countries habitable for the, white races. This and.the researches! on yellow fever insured, the success of the Panama Canal. Mosquitoes also carry.yel- ' Jew fever. To prwe this Dr. Carroll at Hjjvana Jiearly lost his life, and to.remove any doubt in the investigation, Carroll's companion, Dr. Lazeay, allowed himself to be fatally bitten,by a mosquito that, hadflown from v stricken patient in hospital. His epitaph ia this: 'With more courage than the devotion of a soldier, L he risked and lost bis life to show how a fearful pestilence is communicated, and how its ravages may, bo prevented.' The Government of tho United States showed its recognition ,of his heroic services and sacrifice by granting his wife and two children an allowance of £1 a week. Sir Ronald Ross, already referred to as the discoverer of tho malarial parasito in the mosquito, ia now past work, and recently offered for sale in London his journals and manuscript ;so that he may have the wherewithal to spend his latter days in comfort. YELLOW FEVER AND TYPHUS. "Noguchi, the brilliant Japanese bacteriologist and martyr, travelled to Guayaquil in Ecuador on a hunting expedition, not for big game, as has been said, but the' smallest of small game, and disebverod the tiny organism that is Responsible for yellow fever., He grew cultures ', of 'this organism and, daring the wrath of tho anti-vivisectionists, by injecting tho virus into guinea-pigs, communicated yellow foyer to these animals, and by injecting horses produced a. serum. -

"Three hundred and sixty years before the- Christian era it was the custom to 'drive a nail into the Temple of Jupiter to ward off 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness' and''destruction that wasteth at noonday.' In 1894 the plaguo bacillus was discovered, and this disease is carried by fleas lurking in the coats of rats. Haff kine injected himself .with tho virus from plague bacilli, which ho knew, would slay as surely as a bullet from a gun, so that ho might test: on himself the efficacy of his curative vaccine. It is a matter of history that in the fourteenth century the plague destroyed nearly half the population in Great Britain, but that country is now protected by modern science and sanitation and its system of' quarantine.

"In Uganda, Dr. Castellani.discovered the parasite which causes the deadly African scourge of sleeping sickness, tut did not discover how it was carried, 'but Sanibon, sitting in his etudy in London, reviewing all .the available facts, was able accurately to incriminate the deadly tsetse fly. With equal brilliance, Sambon showed that the body louse is tho carrier of typhus fever. DISEASES CONQUXRED. Sir Lebnard Rogers has brought, hopo oven to .the leper and all oxcopt advanced eases are cured with a solution of cbaulmoogra oil. Contaminated water infected with the comma bacillus causes cholera of which disease half a million pooplo throughout the world perished in the year 189*2. Inoculation against cholera and. also against typhoid has saved many thousands of lives. Malta fever was banished from- Gibraltar, and other places by the simple expedient of removing all the goats, who aro carriers of this disease. . ■

Tim© will not permit to do more than mention,-; the- wonders of ' X-rays and radium and light treatment, and to point to the long roll of medical martyrs in these investigations. When the mystery of cancer is more clearly revealed wo shall be on tho way to a fuller knowledge of the origin of life itself. The nature of goitre is being discovered, diphtheria antitoxin is triumphant, syphilis is being radically cured, and owing to Banting's discovery of insulin, patients in diabetic coma are raised almost from the dead. In ancient times more soldiers by far diod of disease and wounds' than were killed ina ction.. In the last Great War miracles 'wero wrought in surgery and modern investigation and treatment prevented to a groat extent, such scourges as malaria, dysentery, typhoid, tetanus, and trench fevor. The way of progress in medical science is marked by the whitened . bones of her martyrs, but is it any exaggeration to say that it is a romanco of heroism and of high endeavour? ■ ' , OUR RESPONSIBILITIES. "It is for the relief of tho human raco that our profession exists, and not only to fight discaso but with .sympathy to understand the men, women, aud children who seok our knowledge and experience. „ "Talk of-your Science!: After. -all -is' | said, .'••■.•. , '■'; ...'' ,

There is .nothing liko a bald and shiny head. '• ' ■ • ' Age lends the graces that are sure to please—. Folks liko their doctors mouldy liko their cheese.

How far we succeed is not for us to cay, and we dare not look for approval to those gifted amateurs who by intuition know,more than.by years.of toil and study,' or to featherbrains' solf;con- . sciously <ijcep in all tlie 1 pseudo-sciences. Kipling says, 'that tho average patient looks upon the average doctor -very much as the non-combatant looks upou tho troops fighting on his behalf. T;he more trained men there aro between his body and tlte, enemy the. bettor,' and ho says; that our days aro filled 1 with tho piteous procession of men and women begging us daily for .leave to be allowed to live a 1 little longer, upon whatever termsMn all the'timc of flood, .fire, famine, plague, pestilence, battle, murder, and sudden death, says Kipling, that master of tho magic of the necessary word, it will bo required of us that we report for duty at once, and go on duty at once, and-that wo stay on duty until our strength fails us or our conscience relieves us; whichever may be tho longerpcriod. . There is no legislation to .limit out' output or shorten our working hours, for", you see, we are a privileged class. Wo have to make tho best' terms we can with death on our patients' behalf.

"These being our responsibilities and

this the. work wo have in hand, we are all materialists in tho sense that wo work of necessity in the finest ■material,- the texture- manj •infinitely, complex, infinitely precious. It may be that wo are subdued like the dyer's: hands to what it works in, but as Pagct says, 'thero is no art so fiuo as medicino which works in lives, and cannot correct its proofs, or begin with a sketch or. waste its fabrics.' Huxloy showed that the horror of materialism which weighs ■ upon the minds of so many excellent people appears to depend, in part, upon the purely accidental connection of some forms 'of materialistic philosophy with ethical and religious tenets by which they arc repelled; and partly, on tho survival of a very ancient superstition concerning the ..nature of matter. This superstition assumes that matter is something not merely inert and perishablo but essentially base and evil-'natured, if not actively antagonistic to, at least a dead weight upon the good. Wo know that there isa constant order of succession between matter and motion; and brain and thought, and,tho materialist and the idealist need, hot-quarrel if they exclude the propositions about which neither of them knows any"lt is not for pious hands to hide the uglier featuresvof truth,, and indeed when the vision of the knowledge of truth widens, these,features. go to the make-up of a complete and perfect beauty and harmony."