GUIDING MAN’S GROWTH

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 13 September 1930, Page 16

GUIDING MAN’S GROWTH

QJIN’CE medicine is indeed an> ancient j art, which at its best has always | sought to tip pH' knowledge to the pro- i volition or ciit'e of disease, wo cannot I claim the idea of “science for lit-C' i n R altogether modern. ot livDCl'crn it | is. as a principle of life and as a method i of detailing: with difficulties of all sorts: j Face to facts; bring the best available knowledge to bear on them; and act resolutely La the light of science. As Comte said: ‘ ‘ Savedr prevoir pour . pourvoir. Knowledge! is foresight, and foresight is power, writes' Professor Arthur Thomson in “John o’ 'London.’’ Bacon, had very clearly in mind t,he ideal of applying knowledge, to the relief o.f in.ni’s estate.’’ but lie was a pioneer before the time was ripe, and the knowledge available in Ins age was sparse and uncertain. • The new attitude dates from Pasteur, uvho was to Darwin vis works are to faith, for he was clear that we live not merely in an evolved but in an evolving world, and that man can do something to control the evolution that is going on- and includes himself ‘in 'its grip. With much success'Pasteur attacked many practical problems, so divers as silkworm disease and anthrax and. hydrophobia. It was not merefly what he technically achieved that, made history; it was -his demonstration of Science for Life. ■Last, year, in his brilliant CVorman Lockyer lecture on ‘Modical Bcs'careh: The Tree and the Fruit,’’ Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, secretary of the Medical Research Council, raised some interesting historical problems. When we think of 'the strength of the impulse “given by the desire af a man, whether for himself or for others, to evade pain, to attain fullness of life, and to hold death at. bay.’’ we cannot but wonder that the advance of the art of medicine was so slight during the 2300 years between- Hippocrates and Harvey.

But beyond these explanations we must take account of the facts (1) that the slow “protoplasmic movement,’ ’ as Sir Michael Foster called 1 it, had not yet led to the. eventful commonplace that, man" is amenable to bio-chemical methods; (2) .that- most diseases •were still regarded as the public now think of cancer, as mysterious powers that stretch unpredietably -out of the darkness and clutch poor man by the throat; •and (3) that the practical lesson of

Can Scientists Control Progress ?

evolutionism was still unlearnt that man is master of his fate and can often play a controlling part in his own destiny.

\Ve return- to Pasteur a s the pre-emin-entlly convincing demonstrator of the fact that Science is for life, and for life more abundantly. The tree that- -Sir Walter Morley Fletcher speaks of is medico-biological research, and as a discoverer himself as well as an organiser of investigation he has naturally wise things to say in regard to the- production of more fruit. Thus the tree must be fed wisely -and welll; it is vital to human progress, for “it is probable that the statecraft of the future will depend more intimately upon the- young science of nutrition just being Wn tban any politician now dreams. ” The- words of the wise are as goads, as. ivra-s sa-icl,long ago. Man’s health of 'body and mind depends on the harmonious working of the ductless- or endoerinal glands, such as the thyroids and the suprarenal bo-dies. The hormones produced by these, apparently- insignificant glands are distributed throughout tKe body <?'£ the blood, and they' bring ab'out what may be called orchestration- of function. The discovery of their role by Bayliss and •Starling' and by their successors, has made several obscure maladies, and collapses intelligible, and has led to their alleviation by introducing from some other organism the hormones in which the sufferer was intrinsically deficient, the use of insulin to counter diabetes being a familiar instance. So the tree bears fruit. i There are- seoresr of different kinds of fruits being borne by the tree, and we might, add some understanding of t-hei indispensability- of the accessory food constituents known as vitamins, which are present in small quantities in most- naturally mixed diets, and turn out to be more necessary than mo necessaries.

The Medical Research Council, supported by the 'Privy -Council, backed by a representative bo.dy of experts, and guided by -Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, is an organisation designed to increase the fruition of the bio-medical tree. The council has a laboratory of its own, with -a large staff; and it is also part •of its office to assist and correlate independent- investigators throughout the country, the outcome, already being a team work unsurpassed in the annals of science.