Heroes of Medicine

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18803, 26 November 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

Heroes of Medicine

Investigators Risk Lives for Humanity

. to Johannesburg Star.) should not catch it, he forbade anyone to nurse him. There are many other instances of medical martyrs to the plague. Similar to this is the case of Dr. Adrian Stokes. He went to West Africa to study yellow fever on the spot. He wrote: “We have our fish hooked. It is Just a matter of landing him, only a matter of time, unless our tackle breaks." Alas I the tackle did break, or rather the fisher himself was Submerged In the River of Death. There are even cases on record not only of research-doctors, but also their students, having * subjected their own bodies to the biles of the yellow fever and malaria mosquitoes, or disease-bearing insects, in order that doubtful points may be cleared up. ißut to me there is no greater hero in the history of medicine than ttic French physician of last century, Laonnec, who is better known as the originator of the stethoscope. He himself had consumption of the lungs, which lie knew woujd bring him to an untimely death. He was poor, often in very sore straits. Yet lie deliberately devoted what years of life might remain to him to the study of consumption, and struggled on in poverty and ill-health, seeking not to win fame or gold, but simply that he might leave to mankind Hie secret of Hie cure. It was left to Robert Koch to crown his work, but 1 think that in our hearts no ono has a warmer place than poor, heroic Laennec. Many a man could not have brought himself to peer into the ravages of other folk’s bodies caused by the disease he carried in his own. Laennec was its daily companion, till in the forties It claimed him for its own. Turn now to the dread disease of diphtheria, We have heard of many cases where not only the dootor but also the gallant nurse has sucked out the membrane which has choked up the tracheotomy-tube. Perhaps this is not exactly Flirting With Death, but It comes perilously near to it, as paralysis may seem to its victims a living death. There have been many medical martyrs through X-ray injuries. So terribly penetrative arc those rays that between the tube and the operator must he placed a screen of sheet lead three-quarters of an inch thick with an aperture of leaded glass. Should this lie accidentally displaced, the- results may be tragic, for such burns have been known to turn to cancer. A few years ago a London X-ray specialist died. His left forearm and the fingers of his right hand had been amputated from tills cause; hut for 20 years, maimed as he was, lie had devoted his life to the effort to devise apparatus so that other workers should not be harmed.

(Medical 'Contribution THERE ARE TIMES -when a doctor has to step deliberately almost within the very portals of death. Every doctor worth 'his salt has time and again in Ills practice flirted with death. They do not do it consciously or directly for humanity’s sake, for few are philanthropists or altruists. ‘Mo one will say that among 'their number there, are not choice spirits who love their profession chiefly because It places within their hands the power to relievo the suffering and restore the crippled or maimed. Nor oan It be denied that in their ranks there are some who have chosen the healing profession solely because it can lever them Into a higher social position or may prove the most lucrative of callings. Of sucli stuff the Heroes of Medicine or Surgery are not made. That is natural, for noble deeds can scarcely emerge where the motive is ignoble. Let us turn to the others, happily the great majority. What, then, is it that makes medical men risk death? Jt is that they have sworn life-long allegiance to the art of healing, whether in the practice or their profession or in the science of their laboratories. “Ars tonga, vita brevis,” is their motto. The art of medicine is eternal, and they are willing slaves to it, so that they may ever make it more glorious in its achievements for the human race. Personal lucre or advancement is nothing compared with that. The spirit has noble expression in the Physioian’s Prayer attributed to the ancient Greek Physician, Malmonides-“Give me frugality beyond all, except in the great Art of Medicine, Never awaken in me the notion that I know enough. Oh, give me strength and zeal to enlarge my knowledge and to attain ever to more. Our art is great; the mind of man presses forward ever." So We Go Blithely Into Danger, and the reward is that most of us lead a charmed life. Rut alas! Some do not. All of us have heard of Hie devoted medical men who .shut themselves up in leper sclllomcnls and contracted |lhe idisjeasc.

Sir Henry Head, the great nerve specialist, the " greatest living authority on paralysis, deliberately bad the nerves of one forearm severed at Hie elbow, so that lie might record first-hand the symptoms ami so advance our knowledge on the subjeel of deep sensibility. Now lie himself is a helpless victim of creeping paralysis.

Now lake the infee,lions fevers. There was the medical missionary. Dr. Jackson, who when .tlie bubonic plague was ut Mukden, China, worked night and day until, al last utterly worn mil, lie himself succumbed to it." And in order that his nurses