NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1926. PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Northern Advocate, 23 February 1926, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1926. PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Registered for transmission through - the post as a newspaper.

The subject of health has been brought forcibly under the notice of the public by the striking presidential address delivered by Dr. Gibbs to the Medical Conference at Nelson on Wednesday last. Dr. Gibbs struck out upon a track so long neglected as to have become almost forgotten. He spoke of health rather than disease. In other words, he preached the doctrine of prevention being better than cure, and crystallised it in a proposal for the establishment of a medical institute of research in New Zealand. After dealing at considerable length on various phases of the question, including the struggle for existence, Dr. Gibbs said: “We need not further elaborate the many subjects crying out for research. We suggest that an institute for Research is imperative and that it can be established only when we as a profession arc sufficiently seized of its importance. Again, we repeat that the health of any community can advance only just as far as the medical profession is capable of carrying it. Such an institution must come, and let us both individually and corporately hasten the day. Its form! and constitution could be decided later, but it might well take a form somewhat similar to that of the local Cawthrou Institute. It must be adequately endowed, say with a sum of £500,000, and what better use could we make of our war reparations? This may sound a large sum, but it is only about a quarter of the amount we annually pay for the upkeep of our hospitals and about' oneseventh of the amount of the annual grant for education.” Dr. Gibbs’ arguments are sound. Unquestionablj ‘ ‘ the world needs an awakening to the necessity of systematically and comprehensively; studying the laws of health.” It is not only the medical profession, but people in general, who who require to be made to see what the world would be like if freed from preventable disease and its consequences. Apart altogether from the suffering and loss which lack of health means to the individual, the economic loss to the community is tremendous. * No very close estimate of this . loss appears to have been made in New Zealand, but interesting light was thrown on the general question in addresses delivered in London recently at the foundation of the New Health Society. The Earl of Oxford said it had been. estimated that something like £12,000,000 was spent annually in England and Wales on sickness and disablement benefits for illness which might be prevented, and 23,000',000 weeks of work were lost' annually by reason of the ill-health of workers, involving a loss in wages of • not less than £50,000,000 for registered work-! ers alone. Mr P. Snowden, M.P., like | the Earl of Oxford a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, said it was' modest to say that due to physical weakness the United Kingdom was losing not less than £400,000,000 a year. This means that in Great Britain sickness and ill-health, in great part preventable, are costing the country more’than interest on it? war debt and the charge for war pensions combined. In New Zealand over two i millions a year are being spent on the . upkeep of hospitals, and the total ‘ annual charge for the care and treat-1 ment of the sick, many of them suffer- j ing from preventable disease, is, of j course, much greater. That there is

need for research tending to lesson

this loss and suffering is self-evident.

New Zealand has led the world in the matter of the protection of child life, as exemplified by the Plunket Society, and it would surely be to our credit if tho wastage of adult life and vigour could be arrested. Dr. Gibbs’ proposal is worthy of practical sympathy.