DISEASE AND ITS PREVENTION

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 112, 2 August 1927, Page 8

DISEASE AND ITS PREVENTION

HOW conditions change with the times! But a few years ago, so harsh were the laws of “etiquette” fixed by the hierarchy of the medical profession, that a doctor who dared to give a public lecture or contribute health articles to the lay Press under his own name ran the risk of being accused by his colleagues of “infamous conduct in a professional respect,” and of being struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council. The rules have not been entirely abrogated: but public opinion has forced the British Medical Association to abandon some of its lofty arrogance and come down among the people on whom its members depend. The defiant campaign in England of Sir William Arbuthnot Lane rapidly enlisted the whole weight of public opinion against a professional attitude that was not in the public interest. The result is that the BAI.A. in England has inaugurated a policy under which responsible lecturers disseminate valuable advice on the preservation of health and the treatment of disease. This policy has been taken up by the Auckland Division of the 8.M.A., and last night, for the first time in local history, an accredited member of the association addressed a public meeting on a medical subject. The honour of delivery in this inaugural lecture was entrusted to Dr. E. B. Gunson, President of the Auckland Division, 8.M.A., whose subject was “Twenty Years’ Progress in Medicine.” It was a comprehensive review of the strides made by the medical profession in the prevention and conquest of disease, fascinating in its matter, and ably presented by a. man who is distinguished among his fellows. The work of the doctors in dealing with disease is not of such public interest as are their efforts to prevent it; and it was with the preventive aspect of medicine that Dr. Gunson was mainly concerned in his lecture. In dealing with this branch of medical activity, Dr. Gunson quoted figures showing the amazing results of immunisation against smallpox, typhoid, diphtheria and like diseases. Smallpox had almost been wiped out by vaccination; malaria had been exterminated in its very hot-beds by the isolation of the germ and the discovery of the part played in its propagation by the mosquito ; typhoid had been almost utterly conquered in armies where formerly it slew more men than did the weapons of war; the death-rate from diphtheria had been reduced from nearly 50 per cent, to nothing when anti-toxin was promptly used—and the lecturer promised complete freedom for this disease in New Zealand (where it eauses 1400 deaths annually) by the immunisation of all children between the ages of three months and six years. It is thus clearly made plain that preventive medicine has in t lie last few years saved millions of lives throughout the world. Its continued study and application cannot too earnestly be encouraged, for it has vast possibilities in ills other than those already specified. Such lectures as those initiated by the R.M.A. " ill do much to educate the public in the importance of health preservation and so provide strong backing for those whose work it is to fight disease.