GUIDING MAN’S GROWTH

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1930, Page 5

GUIDING MAN’S GROWTH

CAN SCIENTISTS CONTROL IT? ■ • i MEDICO-iBIOLOGICAL RESEARCH. Since medicine is indeed an ancient art, which at its best has always sought to apply knowledge to the prevention or cure of disease, we cannot claim the idea of “science for life,” as altogether modern. Yet modern it is, as a principle of life and as a method of dealing with difficulties of all sorts: Face the facts, bring the best available knowledge to bear on them, and act resolutely in the light of science. As Comte said: “Savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour pourvoir.” Knowledge is foresight, and foresight is power, writes Professor Arthur Thomas, in John o’ London. Bacon had '■’ery clearly in mind the ideal of applying knowledge to “the relief of man’s estate,” but he was a pioneer before the time was ripe, and the knowledge available in his age was sparse and uncertain. The new attitude dates from Pasteur, who was to Darwin as works are to faith, for he was clear that we live not merely in an evolved but in an evolving world, and that man can do something to control the evolution that is going on and includes himself in its grip. With much success Pasteur attacked many practical problems, so divers as silkworm disease and anthrax and hydrophobia. It was not merely what he technically achieved that made history; it was his demonstration of Science for Life. ’Last year, in his brilliant Norman Lockyer lecture on “Medical Research: The Tree and the Fruit,” Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, secretary of the Medical Research Council, raised some interesting historical problems. When we think of the strength of the impulse “given by the desire of a man whether for himself or for others, _to evade pain, to attain fullness of life, and to hold death at bay,” we cannot biit wonder that the advance of the art of medicine was so slight during the 2300 years between Hippocrates and Harvey.

But beyond these explanations we must take account of the facts: (I) That the slow “protoplasmic movement,” as Sir Michael Foster called it, had not yet led to the eventful commonplace that man is amenable to biochemical methods; (2) that most diseases were still regarded as the public now think of cancer, as mysterious powers that stretch unpredictably out of th» Aaa-kness and clutch poor man

by the throat; and (3) that the practical lesson of evolutionism was still unlearnt —that man is master of his fate and can often play a controlling part in his own destiny. Wc return to Pasteur as the preeminently convincing demonstrator of the fact that Science is for life, and for life more abundantly.

The tree that Sir Walter Morley Fletcher speaks of is medico-biological research, and as a discoverer himself as well as an organiser of investigation he has naturally wise things to say in regard to the production of more fruit. Thus, the tree must be fed wisely and well; it is vital to human progress, for “it is probable that the statecraft of the future will depend more intimately upon the young science of nutrition just being born than any politician now dreams.” The words of the wise are as goads, as was said long ag<x

Man’s health of body and mind depends on the harmonious working of the ductless or endocrinal glands, such as the thyroids and the suprarenal bodies. The hormones produced by these apparently insignificant glands are distributed throughout the body by. the blood, and they bring about what may be called orchestration of function. The discovery of their role by Bayliss and Starling, and by their successors, has made several obscure maladies and collapses intelligible, and hag led to their alleviation by introducing from some other organism the hormones in which the sufferer was intrinsically deficient, the use of insulin to counter diabetes being a familiar instance. So the trde bears fruit.

There are scores of different kinds of fruits being borne by the tree, and we might add some understanding of the indispensability of the accessory

food constituents known as vitamins, which are present in small quantities in most naturally mixed diets, and turn out to be more necessary than the necessaries. The Medical Research Council, supported by the Privy Council, backed by a representative body of experts, and guided by Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, is an organisation designed to increase the fruition of the bio-medi-cal tree. The council has a laboratory of its own, with a large staff; and it is also part of its office to assist and correlate independent investigators throughout the country, the outcome already being a team work unsurpassed' in the annals of science.