MEDICAL RESEARCH AND ITS METHOD.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 August 1920, Page 4

MEDICAL RESEARCH AND ITS METHOD.

TIIE STUDY OK DEAD MEN

(By Dr Thomas Lewis, F.it.S., Physician oi the Staff of tho Medical liesearch Council and ’oi University College Hospital).

Dr Lewis has been engaged successfully in the prosecution of research upon disease, notably heart disease, during tho whole of his medical career, and is the author of many well-known works hearing on research in medicine.

In •lden limes, not so many centuries ago, medicine was a pro!fusion of exorcisms, incantations, mysterious ceremony, and the use ol crude and often violent, dangerous remedies—purgings, vomitings, burnings, blcedings. The human body was hut little understood; the position and arrangement of the organs wore little known; many organs were even without names; the liner structure of the tissues was wholly unknown. Those wiio practised the art of healing were content with a few rofigli and grossly inaccurate drawings of the organs ;lhe great gaps of knowledge were filled in from fcheii imaginations —filled in wrongly, as was inevitable.

Knowing little of the body’s architecture, knowing stll less of the oigans’ functions, they thought they knew much, and on this basis they treated the sick. To read the beliefs of those times as they are recorded in aged hooks is to read the doings of peoples both barbarous and superstitious. ******

It was from the study of dead bodies that the superstitions which arose in olden times and which held gradually diminishing sway throughout the .■ ..d----dle Ages received their rudest sir , ks. .Men looked and saw, and what they saw was, to their amazement, not what they had been taughlAo bcliei e. Mary saw and would not Believe; the old faith was so strong in them. But truth claimed her own and gradually the new science, Anatomy, sprung up; and as the now knowledge grew, as old and iscorrect beliefs passed away and new and more correct beliefs stepped into their places, so liana in Gland with this advance the healing . r.s progressed. The organs of the human body, healfcHy anff diseased, were searched and the facts so gathered began To form the basis on which practice was founded. Like a clock repairer, the physician began at last to examine the motionless wheels saw their connections and judged their meaning. He looked for detects to explain why the wheels had ceased to turn and he began to find them. Evei since lie has been Ending them and understanding more and more with his discoveries his power over disease has grown. The benefits to confer on the human race are beyond estimate.

i'et, as with other methods on which the modern sciences of medicine and survery arc founded this method has not proceeded unopposed. Many of tho early anatomists suffered persecution; their dissections, were regarded as viola, tions of tho sacred human body. For many years dissections were carried out secretly. - Slowly but surely the narrow belief in the sanctity of the body has given place to more enlightened views, to less sefiisli conceptions,, before the pressure of vital needs. To-day we fully realise that no doctor is fit to practise who lias not, intimately studied every part of the human body and who has not seen with his own eyes each organ and the finer structure of each organ. It is the machine he is called upon to repair, and he must seo it not orijy in health, but also in disease in .all’ its parts. It is at the examination of the head that the medical man lias mos! tfjecply impressed upon his mind the lessons which disease teaches. It is at the post-mortem that he learns ever to revise his judgments. No medical man can for long -remain competent to do liis daily work wild neglects these tests of his work. The method is vital to sound practice and to research. What stands in the way P There fe the natural aversion from tampering with the dead. No right minded man cares to look upon death; all shun contact with the dead. Their natural feelings stand across the path of knowledge. The wish that our dead should rest untouched is natural to all of us; but there is a stronger 'force which drives; the dying call to us more loudly than the dead.

The dead belong to their nearest relatives; it is for them to choose. As the people have grown more enlightened more altruistic in their motives, so have they come to see flint this individual sacrifice of feeling is the more unselfish course: the sacrifice is made for the welfare of the race.