NATIONAL PHYSIQUE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1919, Page 6

NATIONAL PHYSIQUE

NEED FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH.

Important progress in medical research is recorded, in the report for last year of the British National Health Insurance Medical Research Committee. The -work, in -which many eminent investigators were engaged, covered a wide field, but the manifold problems brought into existence 'by war conditions naturally absorbed the major part of their efforts. Commenting on on© important branch of . this special work, the Committee states;— “It has been some developments of bacteriological science, new almost within a single generation, that have defended the armies now engaged from a quite unimaginable loss of life. In all previous European wars fodght elsewhere 'by our troops in the past, the deaths from the infecting organisms of disease have greatly exceeded those caused by weapons of war in battle. If this relation, this previously normal experience in war, had' not been reversed hy bacteriological science and its application, we can find some measure to estimate, but hardly the imagination to grasp, the volume of added suffering that would have overwhelmed Europe during these years. But happily some of the largest -preventive problems had been solved in time, and analogy, where knowledge is still wanting, has allowed further success to administrative and sanitary organisations.” While war conditions have 'both justified and compelled the choice of the lines of inquiry during the past year, the Committee points out that the volume of avoidable suffering and economic loss from disease in civilian life during peace is measurable in terras of at least, the same order of magnitude as that of the casualties and diseases of war. Long familiarity tends to deaden the senses of the community to the immense toll of life and health levied by removable causes in peace time upon our population. Therefore, the committee looks forward eagerly to a time when it may be free to use all its efforts from bringing the State resources put in its charge to the assistance of the workers who will then again be engaged throughout the coun try in advancing medical science in general, and says: “We wait, as all nations, for better knowledge and control of such wide spread diseases as tuberculosis, pneu - monia, measles, and influenza with its sequels—to name only some of the most obvious and damaging—and for further studies of the healthy body, of the early beginnings of organic disorders, and of the best means for maintaining individual, industrial, and social health. The recent revelations of our own national standard of physique made by the telling figures now emerging from the examination and grading of recruits by) the National Service Ministry—figures which the Prime (Minister has himself} described as' ‘staggering’give fresh force to the demand for the knowledge by which along right action can be guided.”. .