UNFOUND CURES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16261, 30 October 1920, Page 16

UNFOUND CURES.

WHERE MEDICAL ART FAILS. CONSUMPTION, PNEUMONIA AND CANCER. Uj SPECIFIC REMEDIU, Discussing Mr Rockefeller’s gift of 30,000,000 dollars for medical education and research. Dr William H. Dorter, for many years professor in pathology and general medicine at the .New York Poat-Uradunte Medical School and Hospital, remarked the other day that no specific medical euro for consumption, pneumonia and cancer ever could bo discovered. Ho said that the foremost men of medical science who had been delving for years to the roots of these blights no longer looked for such a specific remedy in the realms of therapeutics and pharmacy (says a writer in the “ New York Times”). ' Dr Porter does not share the optimism of Dr Mayo, who recently asserted that since the civil war fifteen years had been added to the average life of man by innovations in medical and surgical advance. Tie holds that the chief source of decreased mortality, or increased longevity, is fine to the increased knowledge concerning the hygieno and diet of infants. Reciting the progress that has been made- in rural and urban sanitary regulations, he says: “ Onr sources of milk supply have been clearly scrutinised, until now enteric disorders in epidemic form are almost unknown,” and this, he thinks, is one of the most important of all reasons for longer life to-day. Dr Porter admits the failure of .his profession to triumph over the more destructive diseases. In response to ai query about his news of the Rockefeller gift. Dr Por> ler said; “Mach good has already re suited from the funds established by Mr Carnegie in his lifetime, and by Mr Rockefeller, for the advancement of medical science, and 1 am sure that these later donations on the part o! Mr Rockefeller of 2_G.COO.CCO dollars to the General Education Board, created by him, to he expended fop, medical education and research, and 10,000,000 dollars to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, will go a long way toward enabling the American school of medicine to take its rightful place among the enlightened nations of Iho world. “I am of opinion, however, that the chief benefits which have arisen from those endowments thus far consist ir I ho improvement of onr laws requiring better qualifications on tho part of applicants for a license to practise medicine. We still need mere logiylatiro safeguards, and there is room for reform in the matter of adjusting the curriculum and improving the clinical facilities ot tho average medical college. COMMON-SENSE IN RESEARCH. “ In tho matter of research there is greater need to-day than ever for ample funds to extend tho great work of experiment and investigation. Rut I believe it should be acknowledged at the outset that no research can ever possibly discover a specific remedy which wil leure such diseases as tuberculosis, pneumonia and cancer. I don’t believe that tho experts Mr Rockefeller lias connnendnbly brought together on Ins stair of medical investigators will waste muck of their time, or much of his money, trying to find a cure for tuberculosis and pneumonia, for the reason that it is now a known fact that anything powerful enough to kill the’germ may be equally destructive to tho patient. _ "With diseases which we call 'selfHmitod ’ it is now accepted ns true that wc can shorten their duration and cfecfiriasu tlieitr jhlielxsity. I Pawime. therefore, that Mr Rockefeller’s scientists will direct their research in this direction. "This is not ,pe«simisra. It is com-mon-senso. _We all remember what a thrill of elation took hold of the medical _ profession, and what a fcclino- of seized the civilised world, "hen Dr Koch, famed for his mastery of bacteriology, announced that he had nscoverod a cure for consumption. Many doctors and scientists took him at his word. His brilliant achievements ’f 1 tho past made it imperative that he should' be taken seriously. In my praoand my work at the Post-Graduate Medical School I mad© it clear then that we were not justified m believing that any specific ‘cure’ could bo elaborated for any pathological condition although nature does not develop anti-bodies and defensive proteins, as ■well as encysting processes and other moans of self-limiting oertaiin conditions which remove or overcome toxins and. in this way. facilitate' a restoration to normal conditions. “In connection with my work at the Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital I insisted that I did not approve Vf iu ™l™sr human life with Dr Koch’s so-called cure rears have passed, and tho Koch ‘ rcmedy has passed with the years, and DOUBTFUL PROSPECTS. ‘ l3 | ut why despair?” the interviewer . Lsn’t there a remote possibility that some day a germ culture may be found which will spare the life of the patient? Had not the medical profession given up all hope in the case of diphtheria and in the case of tetanus, and did not research bring at last tho anti-toxin which effects a profound amelioration of these diseases ” • “.It required long years of medical rcseaicb to find the germ of consumption, and longer to discover th© germ of pneumonia,” Dr Porter replied, " and many long years have been spent in the arduous search for some soecific for these germs. In th© case of diphtheria, anti-toxin does mitigate the seventy of the disease. But, even here, the- patient must undergo the strain of a woll-nigh lethal dose. It j 8 well to add in this connection that anti toxin is chiefly effective in the prevention and romoyal_ of the membranous exudation, winch is the principal cause ot death from uncomplicated dinh. then a. 1 “It is just the opposite-in the case or a new serum now used ao-ninst the typhoid germ After a patient has bccome infected witlj the typhoid germ it is of httio avail to inoculate that patient with the anti-typhoid serum. I acts well, however, as a vaccine, and produces immunity from the ,dmease quite, as effectually as the smallpox virus. 1 “Tho pneumococcus, or germ of pneumonia, was discovered bv Dr Fried ander in 1883. Since that time countless experiments have been made k the hope of finding a specific cure Dr Sternberger, our noted armv surgeon, has played a conspicuous part in this research work for a pneumonia cure. Me have all heard th o claims of enthusiasts to the effect that thev can cure pneumonia by abortive means --by eliminating the disease through the liver and so forth. This claim is confused cither with preventing nr with decreasing tho intensity !m d shortening the duration of tho disease for wo do not Imvo an actual mien’inoma until tho are sacs are ‘filled with an inflammatory exudation, and the only way to remove this is bv nature s process of fattv degeneration and liquefaction the liquid product being removed from tho lung only bv being coughed up or bv being absorbed though the lymphatic channels. (We absorbed into the lymphatic channels these products ore eliminated throndi tho liver and kidneys. ° STIMULUS TO EDUCATION. “Where Mr Rockefeller’s donation will work its greatest good will ho in medical educational lines, as well as along the lines of research. The medi-

cal; ,pi\£ effsioji in America, must be made to study general medicine more. Specialism must bo earned, not adopted. Tho specialist of the past studied general medicine, and was graduated an a general practitioner. In time' ho found his talent, his skill, and his propensity or inclinations all led him into one particular branch, not bv premeditated selection, but by natural bent. It doesn’t matter what i young doctor wants to be. If ho is over to bo successful in any branch of the profession of medicine ho must follow that trail of Ins talents, ana, no matter what he undertakes, ho will never he a successful doctor until ho has laid the foundation bv mastering chemistry, physics and biology, “Our medical colleges are not teaching enough chemistry and physiology. In this respect they are falling behind the older institutions of medical training. When I went to a medical college Romo fortv-five years ago, we had four or five lectures a week, on physiology, so that in live months we had as uhu, lectures on this very important branch of tho science as they give nowadays in two years. Wo were compelled to continue to study physiology and diem» istrv long after wo had taken the regular course, sometimes going over a textbook two ami three times. Life, from start to finish,, from maturity to decay, is one long chain of chemical processes, and our research work must oo speeded up until wo get onf American schools of medicine up to the very highest possible standards of efficiency. “1 note that Mr Rockefeller's donation will bo expended directly for education and research work, and .not for propaganda. I don’t know whether he classes as propaganda such work as eradicating hookworm, putting down pellagra, and so forth, which-ho has been, accomplishing to such great benefit for tho South, and to such great advantage to tho medical profession everywhere, but 1 do know that it would be regrettable should he discontinue such activities. I don’t know whether he intends to cease his endeavours before Legislatures to bring about higher standards of proficiency in our medical schools, but I do finow that this work ought not to be stopped until all institutions have a uniform standard of excellence. “ Indeed, I am of the opinion that pur profession of medicine would gain more past at this time in the way of uplift by having Mr Rockefeller’s hind directed toward education and laws requiring education as well as by spending it for practical - research. Wo need more groundwork Let us get back to teaching chemistry, and keep on teaching chemistry with physiology, and then teach .chemistry with, pathology. and keep on teaching chemistry to the last lesson in therapeutics, ami we may hops to put onr medical college on the proper basis and hold if. up to its essential standards. THE BLIND ALLEY OF CANCER. ■'Much research has been expended by these endowed institutions in seeking a cause, for cancer as well as a remedy for this condition. Only within tho last few years a woman ot Boston left at her death nearly half a million dollars for a commission of American, British and French doctors to spend trying to find the origin ot cancer and its_ cure. Those dcctoia studied cancer in every land and every clime, and the upshot of it all was that we stand to-aay about where wo have always stood—no positive medical or surgical remedy has been found. “There is no cute (or cancer in tho realms of our present knowledge of medicine, because cancer, so far as wo know, docs not originate in a microorganism.. Cancer is not one of tho ‘ self-limited ’ diseases, because it has its origin in an embryonic cell, or in n group _which, subsequently, because of irritation, or through some twist oi defect in the nutrition of tho area-, becomes ,ii fertile soil for the development of the growth of the cancer cell. fTcnce, wo can see that research work in tho investigation of cancer ought to bo confined to those chemical processes involved in defective metabolism, and in the .development of a nutritive pabulum v\*hicli tends to fxcito superactivity in these embryonic cells If rosearch work could ‘develop somo method by winch these embryonic cells co"ld bo discovered, and if . a safe wav could be devised for their complete removal, then the cure for coin cor mijght be established, assuming that Lns is the true cause and method of development of tho cancerous process.”