FEVER AND WARFARE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16295, 30 January 1915, Page 8

FEVER AND WARFARE.

When Jenner discovered the efficacy of vaccination as a practical preventive or smallpox he was the butt of ridicule by members of the medical profession in jnst the same way as the prediction that the streets of our cities would one day be lighted by means of coal-gas wa's first laughed to scorn by scientists. Perhaps it can scarcely be wondered at, then, that there are, even in these days of enlightenment, men and women who, in the name of humanity, oppose the progress of science in the alleviation of pain and in the perpetual fight against disease. To them the Pasteur Institute in France is a mere name, and the application of calf lymph, anti-toxin, salvarsan, or anti-typhoid virus are the empirical resorts of misguided people. Here and there also may be found an eccentric member of the medical profession who refuses to accept the proved results of scientific research, and whose unbalanced judgment is set up against the combined knowledge and experience of thousands of men of eminence and renown in their profession. It must be remembered that in all cases where a curative or preventive virus is accepted by leading doctors it has been previously subjected to exhaustive tests. These tests —as in the case of comparatively recent claims of the discovery of remedies for consumption end cancer—are so severe as almost to suggest prejudice on the part of those who conduct them. As much has in fact been openly charged against the profession by claimants for the discovery of specifics. It is notorious that many claims to have discovered remedies for serious disease have absolutely broken down under the rigid tests which have been applied, and it is fortunate that they have, since otherwise their use would have added to, not have lessened, the sum of human suffering. But, when a cure or a preventive has successfully run the gauntlet of medical tests it may be safely accepted as a beneficent agent in the treatment of disease. It is so with the specific against typhoid fever —which is one of the most dread scourges of the modern battlefield, second only, perhaps, to Asiatic cholera. In view of this, we cannot sympathise with the members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who have been sent back from Egypt because they refused to be inoculated with the antityphoid virus. If they had not been sent back the}- would have been not only a danger to themselves, but a menace to others. Disease, as we know, plays terrible havoc with soldiers, even under the best of conditions, and the man who objects to take reasonable precautions for the maintenance of health—who, rather than suffer temporary inconvenience, would endanger the lives of comrades and risk weakening a line of defence probably at a critical time—is an active danger to an army. Sir Frederick Treves, one of the most eminent surgeons of the present time, has just given some very convincing statistics regarding the value of the antityphoid virus. In the British Expeditionary Force in Europe there have been 212 cases of typhoid fever, and of these only 11 were the cases of patients who had been inoculated. Out of the 212 cases there were 22 deaths, and not one of the victims had been inoculated. In face of figures like this, opposition should be completely disarmed. Complete immunity from the disease in circumstances that are singularly favourable to its contraction, is impossible, but it is a matter for rejoicing that such a powerful preventive agent has been discovered as is now available to medical science.