HEALTH COMES FIRST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 965, 7 May 1930, Page 9

HEALTH COMES FIRST

PROBLEM OF NATIONAL SURVIVAL ' ENGLISH DOCTOR’S VIEWS ‘ The public healtli service iu England includes the sphere of the whole physical life of man, and everything which affects it,” states Sir George Newman, chief medical officer. Ministry of Health, England, in a recent report. “We must also visualise this conception as safeguarded or directed by a comprehensive system of law, by-law and regulation, exercised by central and local authority working together, administered partly by elected voluntary representatives, and partly by medical advisers and trained sanitary and health officers. Human knowledge and experience will, iu this way, be brought to bear upon the great primary problem of personal and national survival.

“How is an imperial race to )>e reared? How are children to be so nurtured as to grow up into healthy and productive adults? How are healthy men and women to retain their physical and mental health and grow in grace, knowledge and capacity? How are the sick and diseased to be treated in such a way as may return them, healed, as soon as possible, to the ranks of the worke rs and breadwinners? How, in the last resort, is disease to be prevented? How are dysgenic forces (.which are undermining racial health) to be defeated and human existence controlled?

“These are the questions to which every State and every local authority must address itself. That State which knows best in practice the most economic and effective answer will excel and will get most out of life for its citizens. Science and humanism mast combine in this, which depends on a wise assemblage and coordination of all parts of the national service. The physical advancement and health of mankind is dependent not upon a ‘doctor's stunt’ here or a ‘sanitary institution’ there, but upon the whole social environment and evolution of the people. “These desired ends can be only partly reached in each generation, and none of them can be reached at all without foresight, organisation and expenditure of money and energy. Four particular basic principles must be fulfilled before we can lay sound foundations for a national system of preventive medicine. "First, there must be accurate registration of the data obtainable. We require to know the census return, the population at risk, the birth rate, the mortality rates and the sickness rates.

“Secondly, we must start our race from a base-line. There must be a standard in our minds, and that standard should not be one of disease or pestilence, but of health and physiology. It is true there is no fixed line of health for a nation any more than for an individual. But we must formulate an average, as best we may, establishing It primarily on physiological facts. We must build up a normal conception of body size, weight and height, body temperature, the pulse rate, blood pressure, the respiration rate, lung capacity and chest expansion, muscle output, nerve efficiency, sense faculty, mental tests, etc. We must aim to bring the race, by means of the individual, steadily toward this standard.

“Thirdly, having the physiological capacity of man as our foundation, we must supplement it by an evergrowing knowledge of pathology, the nature of disease, its character and incidence, its causes and predisposing conditions, its mode of spread, the social factors which increase or reduce it, and the means of its treatment and prevention. Year by year we are slowly gaining ground in this vast and complex study of disease, here a little and there a little, byebb as well as by flow, by art as well as science, by technique as well as philosophy. Moreover, it is the function of the public health service to invent, adapt and adjust the external organisation by which we may carry out the principles and methods of control. A case of smallpox uncontrolled may disturb and impair the industrial well-being of a city. It may travel by sea and result in much inconvenience, disease and moitality in various parts of the world. Cancer may unduly shorten life at its most productive period, and rheumatism may cripple capacity. “Lastly, this progressive tide in the scientific applications of medicine to the health and well-being of the community has invaded the body politic. It calls for national organisation In every civilised nation the m-dlcal man is being brought into the service nf tho State, as one of its servants of science. The art of medicine cannot control the State, but its truths are now available In statecraft, and that State is wise which accepts and uses them wisely. For the survived and capacity of a people are dependent on its health."