The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1911. MEDICAL PROGRESS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 35, 26 September 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1911. MEDICAL PROGRESS.

The Sydney “Daily Telegraph,” referring to the opening of that very important gathering—the Australasian Medical Congress—remarks thr.ft in the course of his lofty-minded, earnest, and comprehensive presidential address po the Congress, Dr. Antill Pockley observed that more universally and rapidly than at any other time in its history medicine is now passing from the empiric and traditional to the rational and scientific. How that fact affects and stimulates doctors is a matter of expert opinion and experience. What is means to he lay public is an assurance that the science of healing in which they are so vitally interested is becoming exactor, more penetrative, surer. The comparatively recent realisation that the “germ theory,” which had been vaguely apprehended for ages, was rooted in natural fact, and the beneficent uses unities of it by Pasteur and others, have in some measure given disease a new aspect for man. We say in some measure, because, as Dr. Pockley plainly inferred, it is still a case of so much to know so little learned, truly wonderful as is the progress that has been made. Bacteriology is a science by itself, a now profession, and the medical man who would he ■jhreast of the times and give his clients the benefit of the farthest, advances made in his profession must vigilantly follow those scientists; and yet wo must also rely on the clinician, “the sound practitioner of long experience and lips judgment.” In Tier words, we have not yet wrested all Nature’s secrets fr-m her. Apparently there is always an antidote somewhere in her arcana. Man has satisfied himself of that in some things through inoculation, serum, and so on, and may yet conqneringly extend his knowledge of this kind over the whole grim field of disease. But very much of that is in the future. For the present our advisers are only exploring to try and discover microbial interplay’ and relations, the processes whereby immunity is set up, and counteractions between disease nid remedy and prevention. A meVc hasty catalogue of outstanding triumphs of medicine i iif 1 surgery would doubtless (O consoling to human nature’s keen susceptibility in regard to its physical health, though it would come to a peremptory stop upon cancer and tuberculosis. It seems that at least those two diseases arc to lie accepted, for the present, at any rate, as giving pause to science. Dr. Pockley’s faith is in the knife for cancer; his opinion that early removal is the safest course and that radium should lie estimated circumspectly if not sceptically. For that matter, it is i question of prevention or cure in cost human ailments. The person vim is afflicted with what may lie callel evident tuberculosis—assuming it :o lie true that, a very largo proporioii of people have taken the infection

but that in many cases it does lie; show out virulently—and who seeks skilled treatment promptly, has mere than a fighting chance of shaking tlie poison off. And similarly the other unfortunate who has acquired or h threatened with cancer may escape the penalty hy taking the enemy in time. At this stage, however, it is well to recall Dr. Pockley’s warning against quacks’ “specifics” and treatment generally. The imitation doctor may sometimes succeed because his patient, has faith in him and there ensues the mysteriously restorative interplay of mind and body. But although faith may move mountains in one sense, it cannot move cancer or drive the seeds of tuberculosis out of the body once they have been planted there. If we recall the physician undergoing a daily training in his practice and reinforced hy the, ceaseless experiments and advances of the biologists, the chemists, and other investigators of the world, we realise how great are the profession’s resources arid how richly cquiojX ed it is. Ihe doctor’s responsibilities, his place in the social sphere, and his duty to society naturally came under review hy Dr. Pockley. History as made from day to day enlarges the medical man’s duties and “place in the sun.’ The falling birth-rate imposes upon him the task of counteracting race-suicide with moral as well as physical argument, and of warning the parentally disinclined of the serious consequences to themselves and the nation of artificial interference I with the laws of Nature—which never forgets and seldom forgives, as has been well said. The. habits and indulgences of a people otherwise invoke his sympathetic advice and correction. We may even come to a time when eugenics will be such an exact or confident science that doctors will matrimonially enfranchise and disfranchise potential husbands and wives. Without going so far, however, the medical man plays an increasingly big and important part in social life and development, .doubtless because the further the average citizen advances the more clearly he sees his dependence on the trained man of science. In that view, Dr. Pockley’s claim for his profession to he more generally consulted on social problems is well justified, though as he indicates one way of getting recognition of it is to perfect the profession’s organisation so that it may speak with authority.