WHAT SCIENCE IS SAYING.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3184, 1 April 1911, Page 9

WHAT SCIENCE IS SAYING.

NATIONALISATION OF HEALTH LONG LIFE.

In his new beek, Dr Benjamin Moore, declares that the medical profession, the voluntary hospitlas, and the Poor I Law infirmary and i;dispensary system / have completely broken- down in dealing with- disease. His proposal is a National Medical Service on the lines of the Army andl Navy "Medical Services. He maintains that medical knowledge of infectious diseases and of their modes of prevention are now so complete that if a medical service were organised by a statesman 300,000 good lives would be saved annually. There is the case of tuberculosis, from which at any given 'time there are 150,000 sufferers, 75,000 of whom die every year. Dr Moore puts in an unusually striking way, says the “States Review,” “what other writers have said, that for eight or ten millions per annum in ten years phthisis might be almost totally suppressed. Poverty and pauperism are largely due to disease, and' calculations broadly show that thirty millions a year are 1 lost in wages from phthisis alone.” “Dr Moore demonstrates —we believe soundly,” adds the “Saturday Review”—“that the Charitable .hospital system is the greatest hindrance to dealing effectively with the prevention of disease, that it is unjust to the, poor, and is paralysing andi ruining the medical profession. , .“The. average duration of life is much longer than it was so lately as a century ago, and three reasons may be assignedl for this change: The 'advance of medical and sanitary science, the relative infrequency of wars, and the more comfortable and saner modes of

living,” says the “New York Times.” “There are men to-day—the majority of them physicians—who firmly believe that with reasonable care a. great many persons who arrive at manhood and 1

womanhood in a state of health can

learn to live to be a hundred years old ; and in the past few years a little group of thoughtful workers have attacked this absorbing problem from a scientific point of view. One of the foremost of these is Dr Arnold Lorand of Carlsbad, Austria. The results of his labors have taken concrete form in the shape of a book entitled ‘Old Age Deferred., The autho rdeals with the causes of old age and its postponement by hygenic and therapeutic measures. Dr Lorand describes old age as a chronic disease due to degeneration of the glands with internal secretions, which he refers to as the ductless glands. His book is intended to show that this degeneration is amenable to treatment, just as are chronic diseases in general. As lie says in his introduction, he has had to enter very fully into the question of ductless glands, ‘in to point out the marvellous vital functions.”