SCIENCE AND DISEASE

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1928, Page 3

SCIENCE AND DISEASE

A WINNING BATTLE. Recent events have illustrated anew the truth that the progress of medicine is compounded of surprises and disappointments (writes the Medical Correspondent of “The Times’.). “Each disease,” in the words of a dis tinguished bacteriologist, “seems to choose its own method of being cured. And nobofly can say in advance what that method is likely to be.” From disappointment we have come again, in the years since the Great War, to surprise, until to-day the medical world finds itself face to face with a' whole mass of new ideas and new facts many of which it is at a ioss still to explain. Of the latter-day surprises one of the most remarkable is, surely, the discovery of the influence of a. feverish condition, such malaria, on the course of the disease known as general paralysis of the insane. It is, as yet, too early to use any postive language about its influence, but it can be said, with due regard to caution, that the treatment of general paralysis by means of artificially induced malaria fever has passed beyond the realm of mere hypothesis. It is a fact, attested by competent observers in all parts of the world. In other words, the introduction of one disease into the body seems to exercise a more or less profound, and in this case beneficial, influence on the progress of another disease which formerly was regarded, with good reason, as incurable. Far removed from this surprise is the surprise which, the recent discoveries about the nature of sunlight and its influence on human health have ocI casioned. In the year 1918 sunlight was just sunlight. To-day sunlight is known to be a food exerting on the body an .influence similar to that exerted by animal fat. It is further known that rickets is a disease of darkness which can be cured either by exposure of its victim to sunlight or by addition of animal fat to its victim’s diet. Surgical tuberculosis, too, has been found to yield in many cases to the aplication of light. There is justification in this last discovery for the well-established use of fats such as cod-liver oil in the treatment of surgical tuberculosis. Here again the means of healing have outstripped human knowledge of its “mechanism.” Most of our knowledge about light as a therapeutic agent is probably still to seek. We have the, fact before we began to look for it, long before we have begun to understand it. FROM INSULIN ONWARDS. The case of insulin is on a somewhat different footing. Science was looking, for insulin, had indeed been looking for it for half i} century. Nevertheless ‘ the discovery when it came, proved surprising enough. And the surprisp has not yet passed away. For the fact that insulin cures diabetes “ajs l|:ood cures hung’er,” is by no means the only fact of interest or importance about this remarkable natural drug. A now study of the disposal of sugar in the animal body has been rendered possible by, the fact of the discovery of insulin, and this new study is already extending its influence throughout the whole field of physiology and bio-chemistry. The same extension of influence is likely to occur when the new study of the liver, which now about to begin, has had time to develop. Within the last year medicine has acquired what at present seems to be a really substantial hope of being able to cure that fatal disease known as “pernicious anaemia.” The new treatment of pernicious anaemia consists in giving the patient relatively large quantities of cooked liver daily, so as to supply something which his own liver is not producing. The latest reports about this treatment bear out the claims which were made for it by its discoverers two years ago. Naturally the whole conception of the function of the liver in the body’s economy will now be retested,, and it is possible that from this retesting further surprises may emerge. On the other hand, what has so often happened before may happen again in this case; we may,' perforce, have to content ourselves with the one new fact, the value of liver as a treatment of pernicious anaemia. All the hopes which have been aroused by that discovery may be disappointed. A BRILLIANT DECADE. It was so in earlier days when the hopes aroused by the anti-diphtheria serum and by the first researches in curative vaccination were not fulfilled Nevertheless there is substantial cause for thankfulness in the fact that, during less than a decade, diseases of so menacing a character as general paralysis, rickets, surgical tuberculosis, diabetes, and pernicious anaemia should have been brought within the ambit of treatment. That achievement, however incomplete it may ultimately prove to have been—and there is at present no reason for pessimism—ls signal and is worthy to rank beside the greatest achievements of the pre-war period. Moreover, surprises have not been confined in these last years to the realm of treatment. Cancer research itself has furnished examples of the unexpected which are . worthy of notice. Not the least interesting of these examples is the discovery of the existence of cancer-producing substances in a wide variety of mineral oils and other chemical compounds. This discovery had, to some extent perhaps, been anticipated. But the discovery which arose out of it, that the application of very high degrees of temperature is capable of transforming a non-cancer producing substance into a. cancer-proclucing substance, certainly came as a surprise. Is that surprise destined to lead to further surprises or merely to disappointment? The moral would seem to be that no work can be dismissed as valueless which is being honestly and zealously carried on. In medical research the race is seldom to the swift; not once, 1 but many times, truth has been revealed to mon and women whose very names were unknown to the world of science. A CONTRAST IN CENTURIES.

About this time in 1827 attention was drawn by “The Timos” to the neglect of medical education. The, statement it makes, though fully borne out by the evidence, will seem almost in-' credible to those who realise that groat physicians were then alive, and who also know something of the keenness- shown by the modern medical student.

It is a dismal thing [says one article] to hear the very men to whom our lives and those of our families are committed, state before the whole world, that they are themselves« hy far more ignorant, and therefore by

far less capable of curing disease or instructing the medical generation which is to succeed them, than the physicians, &c., of Italy, France and Germany—regions which, in the fullness of contented arrogance, Englishmen generally are accustomed to 100 k down upon as in all points less enlightened than, themselves. It. is admitted. . . . that the chiefs of great public establishments here are wanting iu punctuality and diligence where the business of instructing pupils is concerned; that the pupils themselves are ,so utterly and stupidly c tireless where the object of passing an official examination is not concerned, that a. man so eminent and able as Dr. Cholmondeley, Physician at Guy’s Hospital, has rarely more than one or two students to attend his clinical lectures at the patient’s bedside. r- . . . .