A DOCTOR’S TRIBUTE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 5 August 1925, Page 7

A DOCTOR’S TRIBUTE.

TO AIR. LLOYD GEORGE

SCIENTIFIC PR OGHESS

HOW HE ENCOURAGED IT. Only four statesmen or sovereigns have really left their marie on tlio progress and increase ol' knowledge, said Sir Waiter Fletcher, director oi the Medical Research Society, at the Congress of Canadian and American doctors in. London early in June. These four were :—Henry Ylll, Charles JJ, Rl'ince Albert, ana Mr. cJoyd George! lie xnoceeded to euiogise the contributions of Mr. Lloyd George to scientific development, both before and dur_ ing the war. In a paper on “The Speed of Lite and Disease,’’ Lord Dawson, physician to the King, dwelt on the stress ami .strain of modern Ji'fe, and pointed out that in the future doctors would be consulted as to th e employment most suitable to a man’s health and temperament. .Bluntly speaking, said Sir Walter Fletcher —speaking of Government encouragement of medical research as a new development in this country —it was, given men of ability, courage and vision, a matter of money.

This country had never been wanting in men of first-rate ability in research work, but we had allowed ourselves to be crippled by lack of money. That discredit, he thought, was most marked when we were most rich. CRADLE OF ELECTRIC INDUSTRY.

AYliat would Isaac Newton have done if he had not been given hoard and lodging all his working life, through the ancient monastic endowments of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he did all his work r

The Royal Institution, a purely private institution, supported Faraday, and few people realised that the whole electrical industry of the world had its true cradle in Albemarle Street. Very few English statesmen had seen the national and world value of helping on the birth of new knowledge. Looking back over history, lie could name only four conspicuous statesmen or sovereigns who had really left their mark on the progress and increase of knowledge. After stating that they were Henry VIII., Charles IT., Queen Victoria’s Consort (Prince Albert), and Mr. Lloyd George, and alluding to the ways in which tlie three first-named had assisted scientific development, Sir Walter continued : THREE REMARKABLE THINGS. Mr. Lloyd George, when h e became Chancellor of the Exchequer before the war, was given the vision that knowledge was power, and he was determin. ed to add to the increase of knowledge. He and liis helpers did three remarkable things which fitted together. H© founded an organisation called the Development Commission, which was still doing good work. Later, just before the war, he founded that Medical Research Council, and at the beginning of the war a department, largely modelled on the Medical Research Council, called the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

This country, therefore, now had three Government organisations, each with a free and flexible constitution, supervising and expending money provided by the State for the specilic purposes of research. The Medical Research Council at first had £40,000 a year to spend; but now, in spite ol the impoverishment of the country during and since the war, they had £IOO,OOO annually. Extremely generous benefaction had come from the other side of the Atlantic from the Rockefeller Foundation. which since the war had spent £2,000,000 in Great Britain, in addition to £1,500,000 in other parts of the British Empire. The value of that help could not be measured now.

HUSTLING TO DEATH

TUNED UP FOR WORK

MODERN MAN CANNOT RELAX EOR PLAY.

Lord Dawson of Penn, physician to the King, speaking on “The speed oi life and disease,” said a measure of struggle was good for health, but the difficulty of modern life is the overdose of struggle. Modern life was apt to produce, not strength but stress, and particularly in the eilicieni types of citizens. This was because progress in all that concerned movement had been so rapid that it had outstripped man’s rate of adaptation. This modern speed was due to the petrol engine on land and in the air, intensive intercourse by telephone, and the use of wireless in work and play. So tuned had the man of work become that his mind remained in the same key when he turned to liis socalled play. The leader of commerce directed a huge concern during the war, and on Friday he started what he called his leisure. * He began by driving 80 miles in a car, either driving it himself or driving it at the same time as his chauffeur. Tension resuited. Next morning important business on the telephone—tension. He apidied his day’s leisure to running a country house, and his anxiety was disguised as pleasure. A leader of commerce had said to him. ‘‘One of the greatest problems of my life is when I think 1 am buying pleasure I find J. am buying anxiety.”

That was one of the inevitable problems of the day. MEDICAL ADVICE ON CAREERS.

Much might be done by a more careful selection of the careers ol people. When society reached a larger vista, doctors would direct the health of the community rather than spend so much time in remedying bad effects. They would be more and more consulted as to the nature of employment suitable for peexile.

They would nob allow a tense, overanxious man to be a signalman, or a heavy girl with a tendency to varicose veins to become a waitress. -By a judicious guidance doctorswould- more and more enter into the direction of the life and health of the Xieople, but such a thing could never be done by a card index system. Any method of periodic examination would produce anxiety and do more harm than good. Such work could only be done by one’s private jdiysician, and not by sending people to stand in a queue for examination. (Hear, hear).

REAIEDIES FOR MODERN STRAIN. But while tli© strain of life was increasing, he believed that society was finding remedies and adapting itself to the new conditions. Tt was finding means of learning to switch off and relax quickly; for instance, the country retreat, Sunday rambles, quiet games, love of music, books, getting back to nature or to the cloister. It was well that this was so, because it was as true to-day as ever that man needed periodically “the desert place part” and all that it implied.