FUTURE OF MEDICINE

Evening Star, Issue 22442, 12 September 1936, Page 1

FUTURE OF MEDICINE

FAMOUS DOCTOR'S FORECAST “ If the standard of health of the community is to be raised, it can only be by the earliest possible detection of slight • departures from normal health and by the prompt initiation of measures for their arrest,” said Sir E. Farquhar Buzzard, Bt., regius professor of medicine, University of Oxford, in his ‘ annual presidential address to the British Medical Association. “It is at this stage that recognition; of illness is most urgent and fruitful, and it' is then, far more than later, ■ that the doctor requires time in order ■to bring all his knowledge and all Ida technical resources into action,” he ■ continued. “ Perhaps I should indicate at this stage what I have in mind when alluding to the health centre ’of a district. It is not very easy to define, hut I envisage a central board, based, geographically as it were, on the chief hospital—representative of all interests and institutions concerned with the health of the district. The chief duty of such a board would be that of co-ordinating all the preservative, preventive, and curative services within the district, of avoiding overlap and wastage ; and of thus assuring the public that its financial contributions to the common cause of health, both voluntary and levied,are, used to the best economic advantage. “ It will be agreed, I think, that we have the materials ready at hand in most parts of the country for building up such health centres with their medical services, but much ingenuity and yet more goodwill are for the process of moulding and cementing their constituent portions. We may go further and agree that such an organisation is the natural de-elopment of past and present services capable of adaptation to modern conditions and requirements, while preserving all that is best of our old traditions and institutions.’!