PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 16 April 1932, Page 11

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

NOBLE CAUSE / (Contributed by the Department of Health). The practice of preventive medicine in its modern meaning rests upon the growth of medical science and the application of that knowledge to the problems of disease stales Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health England and Wales. During the last half century the increase of physiological and pathological knowledge, including that of infection, has been one of the outstanding features of the age in which we live. We now know two certain facts about disease; first, that it is not something arbitrary, capricious, occult or accidental, but an effect of definite causes and conditions; and secondly'that these causes and conditions are in largo and increasing measure controllable by man. Fifty years ago we did not know the cause of leprosy, typhoid, tuberculosis, diphtheria, ‘cholera or plague, and the process of their control had no basis in etiological fact. To-day we know the fundamental truths of causation, and therefore, for the first time public and personal health has become purchasable —but the purchase involves desire to purchase, understanding of what is to be bought, and adequate resources of knowledge and of money. There are two things we desire to purchase, a healthy life and a long one. In other words, we seek to reduce, and if possible abolish, invalidism and physical disability, and to postpone the event of death. J-his, in a word, is the business of preventive medicine. It is to make human life better, larger, more capable and useful, happier—and it is to prolong our days. Its purpose is to make the time in which we live, and the future, a bcttci time for all men. Thucydides believed that the Golden Age in the world’s history was in Greece in the fifth century 8.0. So great had been the achievements of the Athenian city-state that ho could say “truth will put to shame imaginings of our deeds. ’ Gibbon claimed the age of the Antoninos in the second century A.D. as “The period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous'. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom,” and lie adds “the happiness of a great people was the sole object, oi government.” In spite of these two historic testimonies we can, using the plumb-line of a single criterion, say, with truth and without boastfulness, that human life is more valuable to-day than then. It is ours to increase that value. Amony many factors in that behalf apart from tlie influence of heredity and environment —a sound mind m a sound body stands first. The. spirit.and cl aiacter of her public opinion is one of the enduring glories of England, and of hei dominions beyond the seas. Can it bo devoted to a nobler cause than the health of her people in body and mind.