THE MATTER OF HEALTH

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4757, 29 September 1924, Page 3

THE MATTER OF HEALTH

IGNORANCE OF THE PUBLIC. KNOWLEDGE FROM DOCTO'RS. “The British Medical Association has approved the suggestion that doctors be allowed to give their views in newspapers on subjects of public interest under their own names. “Throughout his long history man has had only one enemy, Ignorance, ami from the earliest days of his civilisation he has realised that knowledge is power, (writes Harold Begbie in the “Daily* Express”). Yet we find him a sick and sorry creature in the twentieth century of the Christian era, surrounded by advertisements of salts, pills, and tonics. He is able .to fly through the air, to send his voice through the ether to the other eide of the world, to measure the stars to advance with confidence the theory that 'the universe is finite but boundless’; he is able to travel in a manner which would have astonished GeorgL’. the Fourth, and to make an everyday use, for his amusement, of invisible forces which were unsuspected by Nfewton; but his teeth are rotting in his mouth, his digestion i>s for ever in rebellion, and he knows nothing, definitely and beyond question, of what hq should eat ,what he should drink, and wherewithal he should be clothed.

“This astonishing ignorance of the human race concerning a matter of the first and most personal importance to its welfare is mainly due to an absurd survival from the dark ages of privilege and superstition. Once upon a time humanity had to break the power of clericalism; the prieist s vested interest in darkness seemed to man the one great obstacle to the millennium. He had broken the power of kings, let him break the power of sacerdotalism, and the road to happiness would lie straight before his feet. Great and noble blessings came from these revolts of, man’s soul against privilege and superstition; he was free to discuss in the open a number of subjects on which he had always stood in sore need of light - , the bounds of the empire of human knowledge were enlarged ; men talked themselves into power over the force* of their physical environment; truth became the sole and sovran consecration of the human mind. "But one branch of knowledge keot its place on the ancient ground from which king and priest had been driven. Medicine remained a mystery.’ Einstein may talk to mankind in a popular newispapfer about the speed of light and the nature of spaced Lord Kelvin wais'free to share his knowledge with any man; Marconi may help the amateurs of wireless m any magazine on the bookstall; and no one ever thought of preventing Hudson from discussing a theory of natural history in the popular Press. But let a doctor write an article, on. health in a newspaper, and immediately the high priests of medicine of the Vatican, and poor M.D. is made arm themselves with the thunderbolts to feel that he is a charlatan, a scoundrel, and a traitor.

. "If qualified physicians had discussed health in the uawspapers fi’tv years ago it is inconceivable that democracy would only now be beginning to discover that certain preservatives in food are fatal to wellbeing, and that white bread and polished rice are in the nature of poisons. The appalling ignorance concerning health which exists at the, present time is due chiefly, if not solely, to the silence of the medicall profession.. We read in the newspapers- about poUtics, about religion, about art and literature, but if health is mentioned at all the medical council would t'y not to let us know whether the man addressing us is a crank or a rogue. All other men of science have been able to utter their ideas in the Press, but the men of medical science were muzzled by etiquette and bound hand and foot by a convention of the Middle Ages. A brass plate on their door is good .manners, An article in the newspaper up to now has been a scandalous advertisement.

“Far better would it have been for this generation to know what is in the mind of Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane.or Sir Berkeley Moynihan than to know what Mr H G. Wells thinks about Goil or what Mr Bernard Shaw thinks about himself. I have asked scorss of educated men, for example, if they know where their food fe converted into nourishment for their blood, and I have never yet discovered one who knew the truth.

“ ‘.The preservation of health,’ said Herbert Spencer, ‘is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical, morality.’ ”