MEDICAL SCIENCE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21945, 13 February 1946, Page 7

MEDICAL SCIENCE

NEW KNOWLEDGE LESSONS FROM WAR ADDRESS TO THE B.M.A. (P.A.) AUCKLAND. Feb. 12. The greater knowledge that the war had given medical science was the subject of an address given by Mr. A. Eisclell Moore, after he had been inducted as president of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, at a civic reception in the Town Hall last night to the delegates to the Dominion medical conference. When demobilisation was complete, the community would benefit by the individual experiences of returning doctors, he said. Unlike the combatants, these men had had their professional knowledge extended in many directions and that increased poo! of knowledge was available to the public of this country. “I am struck by the amount of work that has been more of a preventive nature than of a curative nature,” remarked Mr. Moore. "In wounds there is the prevention of shock, infection and complications, in the air the prevention of danger from lowered pressures and from lack of oxygen, and in the navy the prevention of tuberculosis contagion. Prevention should be the focus of our outlook in the new world. When we, as surgeons, thoroughly consider our work we must recognise that many established surgical procedures are really very crude ways of tackling disease. Cancer Research “It is, possible that in a generation from now the cause or causes of cancer will be known and that, perhaps by the correction of some circulating poison, or some dietetic error, cancer will be preventable,” added the speaker. "We will rejoice when the knife can be laid aside in the treatment of this disease.”

Penicillin and the sulpha drugs come into practical use during the war. One had only to consider what would have been reasonable prognoses in Mr. Churchill’s illnesses to recognise the value of these drugs. Penicillin was now available for civilian use and every day in this country lives were being saved by that substance. It was perhaps in gunshot wounds, of the bone and joint that penicillin had done most for the wounded soldier. In civilian surgery its use in osteo myelitis had revolutionised treatment. Treatment of Burns As well as knowledge of the effects of high altitudes, the Air Force had contributed much to the knowledge of burns. To this knowledge many a child who pulled on the cord of an electric jug would owe its life. . Apologising for introducing the senior service last, Mr. Moore said that the greatest advance in the work done by his profession attached to the Navy had been the introduction of mass radiological examination of the chest. Tuberculosis had always been a serious cause of invalidism in the Navy, possibly partly due to lowered resistance associated with lack of fresh food, but probably more dependent upon unavoidable crowding of housing quarters. From mass radiography reports it was found that roughly three in any 1000 of the population had undetected tuberculosis of the lungs. That risk of infection to others was avoidable and could be avoided. Sea sickness had also been studied and drugs of the belladonna group had a significant effect.