The Dominion SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1918. THE WINDING WAR AGAINST DISEASE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 50, 23 November 1918, Page 6

The Dominion SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1918. THE WINDING WAR AGAINST DISEASE

A statesman of a'recent age used to say, "Eternal vigilance was the price we must pay fox ,,, peace." Wo may adapt such words and say that "Eternal vigilance is the price we must pay for public health." Wo have 110 sooner won ono war than we are plunged into another, While we were celebrating, not so many days ago our thanksgiving, for victory over Germany, the pestilence was laying its silent deadly handon victims all over the land. This influenza epidemic has dislocated and disturbed life everywhere .in this Dominion. Churches and schools have been closed; Parliament, in the face of clamant urgency, has been adjourned; banks are closed for a time, and our postal and_ tram services reduced to a minimum. This dislocation of business does not mean that wo are surrendering to the epidemic, but that we are awake and battling against it. At one time, _in a bad, stupid past, men otherwise intelligent accepted the plague and the pestilence as part of the- fixed order of Nature, like the tempest, the earthquake, the lightning, the volcano. James Sands Elliott, M.D., in his scholarly and informing book, Outlines c{/ Greek and' Modern Medicine, accuses the Church of hindering tho progress of medical science by teaching that epidemics were tho direct dispensations of Providence. There is truth, but not the whole truth, in this reproach. The pseudo-science of past ages was foolishly accepted by the Church, and the real foe of

true scienco was that psoudcfmcdicaL and other science. A master in mathematical science condemned the

lightning rod as an interference with the order of Nature and an attempt to frustrate the purpose of Heaven. It is true that when Jenner discovered his remedy for smallpox a divine denounced vaccination as an attempt to defy Heaven, but .Tenner's most bitter foes were in

the world of science. This wrongheadedness is ended. We live in a different world to-day, and every intelligent man says an cpidemio of disease is one of the things that ought not to bo. It is an evidence not of .order in Nature, but of disorder.

For ages-the crude medical scienceof the past put up a poor fight against epidemics of disease that have swept over the earth; Two

thousand three hundred years ago Greece gave to the world HjppociUTES, and six hundred years later Asia Minor produced Galen, both great teachers in the world of medicine. These men had a message that, practically applied, would have, done much to combat disease, but those who practised medicine in the ages that followed ignored and flouted that message. Humanity for centuries suffered many things at the hands of many physicians, and superstition in religion tortured many victims of disease by_ treating them as being possessed with "demons." For centuries plagues and pestilence stalked over the earth, slaying millions. The bubonic plague, which should have been banished from the world of our time, for long ages played the part of an irresistible conqueror. History tells us of a million slain in Africa in the third century B.C. Gibbon tells us that the plague which began in A.v. 542 ''depopulated the 'earth."

In some cities the deaths were 10,000 a_ day, and the "harvest and the vintage withered on the ground." This same disease, called the Black Death, attacked Europe in the fourteenth century and slew a fourth of

tho population, estimated at 25,000,000. The London plague of 1664, which sent. one-seventh of the population to the grave, is a, matter of common knowledge. ' .This enemy was driven from Europe, and had its' home for a long period in the East In 1899, after 200 years' immunity, Europe was once more attacked, and the trouble spread throughout tho world, but medical science was able to.grapple with it and subdue it. The influenza we are fighting to-day never won the awful triumphs of tho bubonic plague, and it is not so old an enemy. We read of it in the early part "of the fifteenth century, at work in France, and "the law courts had to be suspended and sermons had to be abandoned through the coughing and sneezing." In 1782 the squadron of Admiral Kempenfelt was driven back to England horn the coast of France by this epidemic attacking the crews. Three or four times in a century for the last UOO years this disease lias shown.itself in a violent form. Medical science has laid bare the nature of these deadly enemies of the human race, and'has done something in tracing them to their breeding home. There are places where climatic conditions and the low physical and moral condition of the people make the bubonic plague endemic. The Encyclopaedia Britunnka specifies five of those centres in Asia and Africa. The same explanation may be given with regard to the outbreaks of influonza. Tho present attack originated in (Spain, and it probably had its origin in climatic conditions and the physical state of the people in the region in which it started. In 1889 the epidemic started in' Russia, and it was called Russian influenza. In 1888 in Bokhara the summer was exceptionally hot and dry, the winter bitterly cold, and the people were enfeebled through lack pf nourishment. The rain and tho heat came in the spring, the marshy land gave out poisonous exhalations, influenza broke out, and the sickly people died in large numbers, and from this centre the disease spread throughout the world. Medical science lias unmasked the enemy and his modes of attack, and that knowledge is half the battle.

If modern science ' speaks tho truth when it says that the'breeding homo of the pestilence is among a. people physically run clown and where the soil may be charged with "living poison," the way to win tho war against disease is open and clear. Theso regions that are a menace to the human race must bo transformed. An opidomic that had its origin in a savago tribe :ind that strikes down the civilised and cultured proves in n terrible way the fact of the solidarity of the human race. The disease that stalks forth .from a Blum home, from an insanitary district, from a physically and morally degraded nation, is a call to us for help. The law of Christianity is tho law of medical science in its crusade against disease. "We are our brothers' keepers." Death is propagated in regions where phy-

sical and moral curses abound, and we may share that kind of death if we remove not those curses. True science and true religion unite in saying, "We save ourselves from disease by saving others."