SCIENCE AND DISEASE.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17466, 28 July 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND DISEASE.

A WINNING BATTLE. (London Times). Recent events have illustrated anew the truth that the progress of medicine is compounded of surprises and <hsappointments. Surprise was the keynote of the latter part of the 19thcentury, when it seemed for a short time as if the battle against disease had been Anally determined in favour of mankind. Disappointments soon followed. The generous enthusiasms which had been awakened by such discoveries as the anti-diphtheria serum grew cold, and the unwelcome truth emerged that one single method or remedy will not cure every disease. ‘‘Each disease,” in the words of a distinquished bacteriologist, “seems to choose its own method of being cured. And nobody can say in advance what that method is likely to be.” Malaria as a Remedy.

From disappointment, however, we have come again, to surprise, until today the medical world finds itself face to face with a whole mass of new ideas and new facts many of which it is at a loss still to explain. Of the latter-day surprises one of the most remarkable is, surely, the discovery of the influence of a feverish condition, such as malaria, on the course of the disease known as general paralysis of the insane.

It is, as yet, 100 early to use any positive language about this influence, but it can be said, that the treatment of general paralysis by means of artificially induced malaria fever has passed beyond the realm of mere hypothesis. It is a fact, attested by competent observers in all parts of the world. In other words the introduction of one disease into the body seems to exercise a more or less profound, and in this case beneficial, influence on the progress of another disease which fo merly was regarded, with good feason, as incurable. Far removed from this surprise is the surprise which the recent discoveries about the nature of sunlight and its influence on human health have occasioned. In 1918 sunlight was just sunlight. Today sunlight is known to be a food exerting on the body an influence similar to that exerted by animal fat. It is further known that rickets is a disease of darkness which pan be cured either by exposure of its victim to sunlight or by the addition of animal fat to its victim’s diet. Surgical tuberculosis, too, has been found to yield in many cases to the application of light. It may be said that the surprise of light-therapy has placed in the hands of doctors the means of curing rickets and greatly improving the state and hastening the cure of strumous children, the victims of such conditions as hip-joint disease, spinal disease, and so on. Here again the means of healing has outstripped human knowledge of its “mechanism.” From Insulin Onwards. The case of insulin is on a somewhat different footing. Science was looking for insulin, had indeed been looking for it for half a century. Nevertheless 'the when it came, proved surprising enough. And the surprise has not yet passed away. For the fact that insulin cures diabetes “as food cures hunger” is by no means the only fact of interest or importance about this remarkable natural drug. A new study of the disposal of sugar in the animal body has been rendered possible by the fact of the discovery of insulin, and this new study is already extending its influence throughout the whole field of physiology and biochemistry. The same extension of influence is likely to occur when the new study of the liver, which is now about to begin, has had time to develop. Within tlic last year medicine has acquired what at present seems to be a really substantial hope of being able lo cure that fatal disease known as “pernicious anaemia.” The new treatment of pernicious anaemia consists in giving the patient relatively large quantities of cooked liver daily, so as to supply something which his own liver is not producing. The latest reports about this treatment bear out the claims which were made for it by its discoverers two years ago. Naturally the whole conception of the function of the liver in the body’s economy will now he rested and it is possible from this retesting further surprises may emerge. A Brilliant Decade. There is substantial cause for thankfullness that, during less than a decade, diseases of so menacing a character as general paralysis, rickets, surgical tuberculosis, diabetes, and pernicious anaemia should have been brought within the ambit of treatment. That achievement, is signal and worthy lo rank beside the greatest achievements of the pre-War period. Moreover, surprises have not been confined, in these last years, to the realm of treatment. Cancer research itself lias furnished examples of the unexpected which are worthy of notice. Not the least interesting of these examples is the discovery of the existence of cancer-producing substances in a wide variety of mineral oils and other chemical compounds. This discovery had, to some extent perhaps, been anticipated. But the discovery which arose out of it—that the application of very high degrees of temperature is capable of transforming a non-cancer-produc-ing substance into a cancer-producing substance—certainly came as a surprise. Is that surprise destined to lead to further surprises or merely to disappointment?

The moral would seem to be that no work can be dismissed as*valueless which is being honestly and zealously carried on. In medical research the race is seldom to the swift; not once but many times truth has been revealed to men and women whose very names were unknown to the world of science. But in all these instances the love of truth and the determination to # seek it diligently have been conspicuous.