UNFOUND CURES

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 14538, 9 December 1920, Page 8

UNFOUND CURES

WHERE MEDICAL ART FAILS. CONSUMPTION, PNEUMONIA, AND GANGER. Discussing Mr Rockfeller’s gift ° r 30.000. dollars for medical educalion and research, Dr. William H. Porter, for many years professor m pathology and general medicine at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, remarked the oilier day that no specific medical cuu; for consumption, pneumonia, and cancer ever could be discovered. He said that the foremost men of niedical science who had been delving lot years to Hie roots of these blights no longer looked for such a specific remedy in the realms of therapeutics and pharmacy (says a writer in Hi New York Times). Dr Porter does not have me optimism of Dr. Mayo, who recently asserted that since the civil war fifteen years had been added to Hie average life of man by innovations m medical and surgical advance. He holds that the chief source of decreased mortality, or increased longevity, is due. to the increased knowledge concerning the hygiene arid diet of infants. Reciting the progress that lias been made in rural and urban sanitary regulations, he says "our sources of milk supply have been clearly scrutinised, until now enteric disorders in epidemic form arc 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 a query about his view of Hie Rockfeller gift, Dr. Porter soid: “Much good lias already resulted from "the funds established by Mr Carnegie in Ids lifetime, and by Ah Rockfeller, for the advancement ol medical science, and I am sure that these later donations on the part of Mr Rockfeller of 20,000,000 dollars to the General Education Board, created by him, to be expended for medical education and research, and ot 10.000. dollars to the Rockfeller Institute for Medical Research, will go a long way toward enabling the American school of medicine to lake its rightful place among the enlightened nations of the world. “I am of opinion, however, that the chief benefits which have arisen from these endowments thus far consist in the improvement of our laws requiring better qualifications on the part ol applicants for a license to practise medicine. We still need more legislative safeguards, and there is room for reform in the matter of adjusting the curriculum and improving the clinical facilities of the average medical college. Common Sense In Research. "in the matter of research there is greater need to-day than ever for ample funds to extend the great work ol experiment and investigation. But I believe it should be acknowledged at the outset that no research can ever possibly discover a specific remedy which will cure such diseases as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cancer. I don’t believe that the experts Mr Rockfeller has commendably brought together on his stage of medical investigators will waste much of their time, so much of iris money, trying to find a cure for tuberculosis and pneumonia, for tile reason that it is now a known fact that anything powerful enough to kill the germ may be equally destructive to the patient. “With diseases which we call ‘selflimited’ it is now accepted as true that we can shorten their duration and decrease their intensity. .1 assume, therefore, that Mr Kockfcllcr’s scientists will direct their research in this direction.

“This is not pessimism. It is common sense. We nil .remember what a thrill of elation took hold of the medical profession, and with a feeling ot satisfaction seized the civilised, when Dr. Koch, famed for his mastery ot bacteriology, announced that he had discovered a cure for consumption. Many doctors and scientists took him at his word. His brilliant achievements in the past made it imperative that he should be taken seriously. In my practice and my work at the PostGraduate Medical School ,1 made it clear then that we were not justified in believing that any specific ‘cure’ could be elaborated for any pathological condition, although nature docs not develop anti-bodies and defensive proteins, ns well as encysting processes and other means of self-limit-ing certain 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 of any experiments involving human life with Dr. Koch’s so-called cure. Years have passed, and the Koch ‘remedy’ has passed with the years, and so have all the ‘remedies’ offered by lesser lights.” Doubtful Prospects.

“But why despair?" the interviewer added. “Isn't there a remote possibility that some day a germ culture may be found which will spare tile life of the patient? Had not the medical profession given up all hope in the case of tetanus, and did not research bring at last the antitoxin which effects a profound amelioration of these diseases?” “It required long years of medical research to llnd the germ of consumption, and longer to discover Hie germ of pneumonia,” Ur. Porter replied, “and many long years have been spent in the arduous search for some specific for these germs. In the case of diphtheria, antitoxin does mitigate Hie severity of the disease. But even here, the patient must undergo Hie strain of a well-nigh lethal dose. It is well to add in this connection that anti-toxin is chiefly effective in Hie prevention and removal of the membranous exudation, which is Hie principal cause of death from uncomplicated diphlehria. “It is just the opposite in the case of a new scrum now used against Hie typhoid germ. After a patient lias become infected with Hie typhoid germ it is of little avail to inoculate that patient with the anli-lyphoid serum. It acts well, however, as a vaccine, and produces immunity from the disease quite as effectively as the smallpox virus.

“The pneumococcus, or germ ot pneumonia, was discovered by Dr. l-Tiedlander in 1883. Since that time countless experiments have been made in the hope of finding a specific cure. Dr. Slernbcrger, our noted army surgeon, lias played a conspicuous part in this research work for a pneumonia cure. We have nil heard the claims of enthusiasts to the effect that they can cure pneumonia by abortive means —■ hy eliminating Hie disease through the liver and so forth. This claim is confused either with preventing or with decreasing the intensity and shortening the duration of Hie disease, for we do not have an actual pneumonia until the air sacs arc filled with an inflammatory, exudation, and the only way to remove this is by nature’s process of fatty degeneration and liquefaction, the liquid product being removed from Hie lung only by being coughed up, or by being absorbed

through the lymphatic channels. Once absorbed into the lymphatic channels these products are eliminated through the liver and kidneys. Stimulus to Education.

"Where Mr Rockfeller’s donation will work its greatest good will bo in medical educational lines, as well as along the lines of research. The medical profession in America must be made to study general medicine more. Specialism must be earned, not adopted. The specialist of the past studied general medicine, and was graduated as a general practitioner. In lime he found his talent, Ids skill, and ids proprnsil> of inclinations all led him into one particular branch, not by premeditated selection, but by natural bent. It doesn’t matter what a young doctor wants to be. If lie is ever to be successful in any branch of the profession of medicine lie must follow the trail of his talents, and no matter what he undertakes, he will never be a successful doctor until he has laid the foundation by mastering chemistry, physics, and biology. "Our medical colleges are not teaching enough chemistry and physiology. In this respect they are falling behind tlie older institutions of medical training. When I went to a medical college some forty-live years ago, we had four or live lectures a week on physiology, so that in five months we had i-j* many lectures on this very important branch of the science as they give nowadays in two years. We were compelled to continue to study physiology and chemistry long after we had taken the regular course, sometimes going over a textbook two and three times. Life, from start to finish, from maturity to decay, is one long chain of chemical processes, and our research work must be speeded up until we get our American schools of medicine up to the very highest possible standards of efficiency. "I note that Mr Hockfeller’s donation will be 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 he has been accomplishing to such great benefit for the South, and to such great advantage to the medical profession everywhere, but I don’t know whether he intends to cease ids endeavours before Legislatures to bring about higher standards of proficiency in our medical schools, but I do know that this work ought to be stopped until all institutions have a uniform standard of excellence.

"Indeed, I am of the opinion that our profession of medicine would gain more just at this time in the way ot uplift by having Mr Rockfeller’s fund directed toward education and laws requiring education as well as by spending it for practical research. We need more groundwork. Let us get back to teaching chemistry, and keep on teaching chemistry with physiology, and tiicn teach chemistry with pathology, and keep on leaching chemistry to the last lesson in therapeutics, and we may hope to put our medical college on the proper basis and hold it up to its essential standards. The Blind Alley of Cancer.

“Much research lias been expended by these endowed institutions in seeking a cause for cancer us well as a remedy fur this condition. Only within the last few years a woman of Boston left at her death nearly half a million dollars for a commission of American, British, and French doctors to spend trying to llnd the origin of cancer and its cure. Those doctors studied cancer in every land and every clime, and the upshot of it all was that we stand today about where we have always stood —no positive medical or surgical remedy has been found. “There is no cure for cancer in the realms of our present knowledge of medicine, because cancer, so far as we know, does not originate in a microorganism. Cancer is not one of the self-limited diseases, because it has its origin in an embryonic cell, or in a group of embryonic cells, caught in some tissue which, subsequently, because of irritation, or through some twist of defect in the nutrition of the area, becomes a fertile soil for the development of the growth of the cancer cell. Hence, we can sec that research work in the investigation ot cancer ought to be confined to those chemical processes involved in defective metabolism, and in the development of. a nutritive pabulum which tends to excite super-activity in these embryonic cells. If research work could develop some method by which these embryonic cells could be discovered, and if a safe way could be devised for their complete removal, then the cure for cancer might be established, assuming that this is the true cause and method of development of the cancerous process."