DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 132, 25 August 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE TRIUMPH OF MEDICINE ( Copyright, 1927) W. A. EVANS, a noted health expert, in an address the other day declared that “Public health work pays and pays well. In no other field has there been the same advance as in public health work.” This calls attention to the greatest stride forward made in the medical profession. The advance of the science of medicine has not been so marked in the treatment of disease, although that is considerable, as it has in the preventioD of disease. The best way to conserve public health is not to perfect the business of saving sick people, as it is to keep the people from getting sick. The safety of travel upon the railroad does not depend so much upon the excellent facilities for taking care of wrecks as it does upon the ability of the railroad to prevent wrecks. Doctors heretofore have spent most of their energies in picking up and mending the human wrecks. They have stood about waiting for the human machine to break down and then come to the rescue. A different spirit has pervaded our age. Enormous sums devoted to research have resulted in investigating the causes of disease and by the knowledge of these causes smallpox, malaria and other plagues have been obliterated. It is much better for a community to be rendered immune to smallpox, for instance, by vaccination and by sanitary arrangements, than it is to have a force ot men ready to take care of the patients suffering from smallpox. It. is better to have the milk supply examined and kept pure than It is to be equipped to handle the diseases resulting from impure milk. 3® better to see that the water supply of a community is pure and unpol- . ted than it is to be equipped to take care of the patients of typhoid fever and similar ills. The future of the medicine lies largely in the direction of the prevention of disease. Every man probably carries about in his mouth and nose the germ 3 of many a fatal disease, but if his health is strong enough these diseases are if it is weakened these diseases are encouraged. e with diabetes, for instance, is not so much the fatalities resultmg from that disease as it is the fact that it renders a person easily susceptible to other diseases. Tlle patient, as one writer expressed it, is like a man whose house is TiL n r\ the sand * The first precaution is to put a good rock foundation crumbles! h ° USe ancl not to P re Pare for saving the inhabitants when the hous«