WAR ON DISEASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5437, 19 June 1929, Page 3

WAR ON DISEASE.

NEW ROLE FOR DOCTORS. ADVISERS ON HEALTH. Millions of people die every year from various diseases. Science and surgery are unable to save them, writes Sir Arbuthnot Lane in the “New York Times.” Millions more die because they have reached the end Of the what is called “the allotted span.” Nothing has yet been discovered that can ensure them the certitude of 10, 15, or 20 years more of life. Fortunes are being spent every year to discover a cure for cancer. It is a problem which some of the cleverest and keenest brains in the world are devoting all their energy. Yet the fact remains that one person in every eight living to-day is foredoomed to die of cancer. In the short space of 15 years, between 1911 and 1926, the annual death rate, from cancer in this country has been relatively doubled. Worse still, the increase is at a far greater rate in recent years, than in the last century. Every year with almost unfailing regularity there is a severe influenza epidemic which causes thousands of deaths. Medical science, which knows more about influenza to-day than ever it has done., still does not know how to prevent this seasonal scourge. People still get scarlet fever, mumps, measles, pneumonia, sciatica, and all the other diseases to which the human body is heir. Modern science cures them a little more, quickly and . with a little more certainty than they would have been cured had they lived 100 years ago. But it has not yet learned how to eliminate such dissease. Has medical science failed them them, despite its brilliant record. It is a question that I often hear asked not only by laymen, but by great stirgeons and physicians. To a certain extent, I think, it has failed. We are a terribly ignorant lot, we doctors. We know a great knowledge still go untapped; what deal, it is true, but what vast fields of uncharted continents remain to be discovered ! We are only grouping dimly over the horizon. When a man falls sick he goes to his doctor. If he has got influenza or indigestion, he gets a bottle of medicine and instructions how to take it. If it is something serious, requiring an operation, he is sent to hospital or to a nursing home. Perhaps it is cancer of the stomach. He is Xrayed and the seat of the trouble is located. The growth is well-estab-lished. What is to be done ? The surgeons shake their heads. You cannot cut a man’s vital organs away and let him go on living. There is nothing to be done except for 1 the man to go home and await the inevitable. Yet, if that man had been told years before some simple mechanical facts of existence he might never have had cancer, It is the - same with a good many other diseases which exact their toll of human life. Thousands of lives might be saved every year if doctors concentrated on preventing diseases instead of curing it. That is why I say that to a certain extent medical science is a failure. We treat "end” results ; that is to say, we wait until a man is sick before treating him instead of taking him in hand while he well and teaching him how to keep in good health. So long as medical science follows along these lines it will never win the battle against disease. The odds are too heavily weighted against it. The great development of the fu- . ture in medicine, as I see it, will lie in the scrapping of present ideas and the concentrating upon keeping people fit and enabling them to build up physical power and energy to resist disease. There is evidence that the change >is already imminent. The New Health Society, in teaching people what to eat and what to avoid, has accomplished a great deal in this direction since its inception. More and more doctors are beginning to realise that it is archaic folly to treat only the sick. The human body is like an engine. Nobody ever thinks of letting an engine run without seeing that it is properly oiled and fueled. They know that very soon any machinery will refuse to function. Yet there are millions of people, in every country who from year to year go without giving machinery any special attention and without giving it an overhaul. In the future I foresee that these people will visit their doctors three or four times a year.. They will be “vetted”; they will be asked tions about their food and their habits. If they have been eating food that is deficient in certain valuable vitamins, they will be told what to eat to make up for it. They will be advised about their heart, their lungs, their digestion. In short, they will go away with enough knowledge to enable them to preserve their physical fitness until their next medical board. In time there will be no need for * doctors and surgeons as we know them. They will be health advisors. Diseases will have been conquered and eliminated. I, believe that the only cure for cancer lies in its prevention. Cancer is a disease of civilisation ; it never attacks a healthy organ, and the only certain way of insuring immunity is by keeping the body in a state of perfect health. Wrong food and unhygienic living lead to disaster. One of the oldest men I have ever met was a Bulgarian, who told me that he lived almost entirely upon a sort of sour cheese and bread. He had forgotten his exact age, but local gossips credit him with being 110. Indian and Chinese peasants are also generally long-lived. Their food is of the simplest. There may come a day when everybody will live to be 100. I don’t say they will enjoy it.