WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20229, 13 April 1929, Page 16 (Supplement)

WAR AGAINST DISEASE.

ADVANCE OF. SURGERY,; BELIEF OF MANKIND. WHAT LISTER IT.AD TO FIGHT. [most orn own coruksi'ondent, "| LONDON, Feb. 23. Sir Berkeley Moynihan, president of the Royal College uf Surgeons, mado a war disclosure at the .Authors' L'lub dinner on February 26. " AYe heard, in 1916," lie said, " (liat tlie Germans were going to uso plague as a lethal weapon, and we actually recovered plague bacilli from bombs dropped over the Fifth -Army." The medical profession, said Sir Berkeley, had the very highest of ideals. They were chasing certain ideals, which woe not only for the relief or tho rescue of individual sufferers, hut for tho rescue of mankind from the diseases which afflicted it in such overwhelming numbers. In Britain's earlier wars it had always been said that bacilli were more deadly than bullets. In all earlier wars the ratio of killed to those who died of disease was as one to five; in the last war nine were killed or died of wounds for one who died of disease. When the last war broke out the doctors realised at onco what Lister had to fight when they saw the infection of wounds by tetanus and gangrene. In order to understand how to deal with the jirobleins that infection produced they went back to Lister, and learned of the intellectual approach which ho made for conquering that ' heavy infection of wounds. Thus they realised to some ox- I tent what Lister had meant to humanity. The abolition of infection in wounds was tho greatest material benefaction to humanity that (he world had ever known. A Service to Human Race. Sir Berkeley ouce said of Lister that he had saved inoro lives than all the wars of all the ages had thrown away. Later he was told that this had greatly pleased Lister. He asked why, and the answer was, "Heis a Quaker." Ho showed that the medical profession could be an antidote to war. During the war between the North and South in -America a curious disease was noticed. .\n injury to the hand would be followed by the . most intense agony. A finger, a forearm, and even an arm, was amputated, but still tho agony went on. In the last war our surgeons discovered that by dissecting tho sympathetic nerves from the Avails of the vessel the agony was relieved. From that discovery had como a whole new branch of surgery dealing with the sympathetic nervous system. Speaking of the value put upon the benefit of blood transfusion by the profession, Sir Berkeley said that when they began blood transfusion in the war they offered a fortnight's leave to every man who volunteered a pint of blood for a sufferer, and the whole British Army was willing. (Laughter.) Now, in operating upon a multitude of diseases, they often transfused tho patient three, four and five times before he was fit to be operated upon, and if he began to flag, they transfused " again, again and again." > Almost unheard-of before the 'war, blood transfusion was now in daily practice in the hospitals of the.country. Plague and Malaria. Plague, Sir Berkeley proceeded, hadbeen in existence since the. birth of time. It was spread by tho Ilea parasite on rats. In France they encouraged cats and dogs to destroy the plague-carrying rats. It was possible that it was for this reason the cat was deified in Egypt, because where it existed plague did not. Typhus and trench fever were spread by the body louse. Tho discovery of the propagation of malaria by the mosquito was one of tho most entrancing stories in medicine. Sir .Ronald Ross' great work was done, in overtime, for which ho received nothing but the gratitude of nations, and f<>r which ho probably wanted nothing. He had made it possible for man to say that no district and no country need have malaria unless it desired it. " All these problems connected with typhus, plague, yellow fever, malaria and so on show what tho dominion of the insect world is at this moment," declared Sir Berkeley. "I am not sure that if it were not for the wit of man insects would not bo the possessors of the world. We have the ' White' Man's Grave/ made so by malaria, and competent opinion holds very firmly to the belief Ihat the great Greek civilisation was destroyed bv the mosquito." Whole tracts of the world were debarred from the presence of man by insects. Tho great wars were not the wars of the Germans and French and other nations, but those of insects anion" themselves, and of mankind against the insects. The distinguishing feature of tho intellectual life of tho past half-century had been the progress of science. The advance had been revolutionary. "In science." ho declared, " more has happened in the last 50 years than in the fifty million that preceded thorn. In the great advance of applied science nothing has been such a benefaction to the human race as that accomplished by the members of my profession."