IMMUNITY FROM DISEASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23895, 24 August 1939, Page 3

IMMUNITY FROM DISEASE

MEDICAL PROGRESS Any retrospect of medical practice must necessarily include the blessing of insulin, says The Times in reviewing progress in the present century. The same quality is of the work which discovered the Influence of liver ;upon the disease of the blood known as pernicious anaemia. Younger practitioners are apt to underestimate the signal character of these triumphs of therapy, because they have not found themselves, as their fathers so often found themselves, unable to give any substantial help. To-day immunity from smallpox, from the typhoid fevers, from dihptheria is taken for granted; and even the most dangerous infections of the blood are losing something of their fear. It is difficult now to recapture the feelings of doctors who worked when there "was no artificial immunity and who •were compelled every day to witness the failure of their efforts. ; Nor is the change of outlook; confined to the medical profession. It may be that the greatest revolution of all which these, latter days have seen is the thrusting out of the fear of disease. The stealthy feet of the great ;epidemics -,■' have' been., stayed''This generation has;no of the 'agony of mind which evolved such ideas, for instance, as that diphtheria in its march missed every second house. So far as disease is concerned,, <rrien expect to\see their children come to manhood of womanhood.- They; feel no quickening of anxiety, at siiph' sayings as: "A mother's son lis never'.''her own until he has had the smallpox.'' It is upon this sense .of security:' that ■the 'whole structurefof health is based. ' ~« • "•- • i -^p