SCIENCE AND DISEASE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1798, 22 August 1906, Page 25

SCIENCE AND DISEASE.

Another sign of tlie growing strength of science is the advice of Professor Ray Lankester, addressing the British Association, advocating the expenditure of *£10,000,000 in the investigation of and attempts to destroy disease. It is most remarkable, in the light of the magnificent results achieved during the last twenty years, that we should still allow preventable disease to take its heavy annual toll of humanity. It is most remarkable (says the "Sydney Morning Herald”) that very science to which all look for succour in moments of peril receives little or no assistant}© from the State in extending its victories. And yet the price of a few battleships, doomed perhaps to be out of date before they have been in action, if devoted to research would be certain to secure results compared to which the "glories” of war are tinsel indeed. Already the campaign against disease haa gone far enough to show that most of it is preventable. Nothing could be more striking, for instance, than the stamping out of malaria in tropical countries. Before the research began the real cau6© of this pestilence was absolutely unsuspected, nor would it ever have been intelligible but for an immense amount of patient work by biologists which, perhaps, seemed to have no practical end. And if it is no longer beyond the power of science to trace the most obscure disease to its source, 00, when found, it is almost sure to have the means to destroy the danger. Cancer, perhaps* stands almost alone in baffling the investigator. But it is not enough to know the cause and to have devised -a method of attack on a specific disease. The resources of civilisation should be unremittingly brought to bear on the pest, and this means heavy expenditure. Moreov&ij we &r© very li&lf-lie&rteu. in. our efforts to insfcil the principles of health into the young. Cleanliness in the person and the home is the worst enemy of the whole tribe of germ .diseases, and a body in good condition perhaps the best defence against them. The sanctity of health is the first article in the creed of science, and in its eyes the blackest sin is that which mars the strength or leaves a legacy of weakness to a generation to come.