THE MEDICAL FACULTY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18459, 24 July 1923, Page 6

THE MEDICAL FACULTY

The address of Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie on the ancient origin of: the healing art serves to increase respect for the medical faculty. , It is true . that many things are yet beyond the ken of even the most up-to-date physicians. It is true also that there were many crudities in ancient medical practice, and that some of these may not yet have been wholly outgrown. But the profession in whose hands the welfare of the community so largely lies has a noble ancestry. It was associated in ancient days with the most advanced learning of which those days were capable, and so proved the spear-head of humanity's campaign for a better life. It aimed persistently at physical well-being. -Socrates, remembering in the hour of death his obligations to others, averred that he owed a sacrificial gift to iEsculapius. There all humanity spoke: to those of whom the great Grecian healer ; is a very early example the whole world owes a debt of gratitude. Nor ' is the debt created merely by arduous intellectual research and patient experiment. It arises in no small measure from the splendid moral' qualities of medical men. They have shown high courage in times of appalling danger from contagious disease. Again and again they have literally taken their lives in their hands in their eagerness to save their fellows. Marseilles was once rescued from the ravages of a virulent plague by the self-sacrifice of a doctor, ' who solved its baffling problem by brave post-mortem examination of the plague's victims: the task meant certain death for him, but his city was saved by his deed. V Such an. act is a , commonplace of medical practice. • Yet this

sort of service to humanity is often ungratefully Interest in mental therapeutics is apt to-day to make men oblivious of the large part still inevitably to.;, be. played by physical means. ; Charlatanry gets popular approval all too easily, to the despising of curative ' methods brought to efficiency through painstaking centuries. Without disparaging modern investigation in the slightest degree, the' folk of to-day should not fail to give ;to the medical faculty the exalted honour that is its due. Its task in our day of venturesome experiment in novel curative means and great demands for preventive medicine in the interests of public health, is no less difficult than of yore, and should attract most , respectful regard.