THE NEW MEDICINE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 November 1919, Page 9

THE NEW MEDICINE.

WJffi .AGAINST DISEASE, j DEVOLUTION IN ENGLAND In England a great revolution 5s i n progress with regard to medicine and health. The. establishment of the Ministry rf Health has cleared the way for an extensive campaign for improving the health of the community. The campaign :is to be carried on in two main directions. First, by educating the people in elementary matters concerning cleanliness and sanitation, so that they may do their share in preventing the spread of disease. To enable the people to do their share it is necessary that slum areas should be wiped out, and the housing accommodation provided for the working elasses should be generally improved. This is a matter which the Ministry < Health will undertake with the assistance of local authorities, whose building and rebuilding schemes will be partly financed by the State. The second direction in which the public health campaign will be directed by the Ministry of Health is that of scientific research into the root causes of disease and the establishment of a modified form of national medical service which will enab!" patients in every cl&ss of the community to obtain hospital treatment of the kind most suited to the disease to be treated. The latest authority to deal publicly with the subject is the medical correspondent of the London Telegraph. In the course of an interesting article on the new teaching in medicine, he states:— "We have been so lon gaccustomed to thinking of ill-health in terms of definite 'diseases' that many must find it difficult to embrace at once the plea that this is far too local a view of health problems, that, indeed, the so-called disease which is usually 'treated' is commonly of secondary importance to some deep-seated disturbance, not infrequently overlooked in the past. Yet modern research, and particularly the investigations forced upon us by war maladies, are pointing more and more clearly to this much wider conception of disordered health; in a word, the great awakening of medicine is to the fact that the body must always be considered »s a whole, a ltd not as a loosely knit colony of 'orgam,' which . fare' well or ill quits' independently of i :.neh other.

"in the years before IK'i war, great progress was made in the diagnosis of localised conditions, and the estimation by one means or another of degrees of organ it; failure had become a line art, but in the successful exorcise of these technical methods the medical profession had .atlimes overlooked the delicate balance between one part and another. Appendicitis, for example..was habitually discussal as a local inflammation requiring local treatment—removal, of course, if ft certain stage of severity was reached—without particular reference to possible general conditions favoring its occurrence, or to widespread consequences 'to the body as a whole likely to result therefrom. Heart disease, again, was only too often treated as a local problem, without any adequate attempt being made to settle the questions why this vital organ should have become disordered in tiie first place, why the heart tissues had been unable lo recover subsequently, and»what common factors of | potential ill-health, could be at Work I threatening other structures as well as J the heart. It was, indeed, a case of losling sight of the wood through undue attention (o individual trees. Hospital I teaching erred on the side of laying too much stress on local symptoms* to tile neglect of general bodily states, and it was mainly owing to this that the bud ding practitioner commonly found himself at fruit. Leaving the'.shelter of his hospital, with little knowledge of general ill-health no'l associated with striking local manifestations, he found himself frequently consulted by persons suffering from indefinite ailments without special designs.' "In the presence of the indefinite ailments so common in general practice the young doctor of pre-war days was often at a loss; his carefully learnt tables of diagnostic signs and symptoms gave little help, and the stethoscope so brilliantly wielded at his degree examination failed him completely. Y*t it is a fact that now, as then, with the majority of people who feel unwell it is not a question of heart disease, lung disease, of bronchitis, appendicitis, of any other 'itis,' biit. of a general lowering of health. Moreover, it can scarcely be doubted today thai indefinite maladies are more common than at any previous time. For debilitated, for years of war and harsh conditions, thousands of people feel below par without being actually diseased in the sense of local failure. Thus, there was never a time when bettor understanding of fundamental causes of illhealth was more needed. As it happens, circumstances have contrived to help in solving the problems of persistent illhealth, thousands of medical men having, through war service, been brought to a knowledge of things undermining health without necessarily occasioning local diseases in a way that could scarcely have Happened otherwise. Work in the great military hospitals has altered medical thought marvellously, and led to more progress being made within five years than might have been accomplished in 50 years of endeavor on the old lines. Thus, malaria, trench fever, dysentery, and influenza, for example, by their farreaching consequences, have shown that debility is far mwe commonly than not due to the presence of germs that have \ gamed entrance to the system and there kept up a steady production of small doses of poison that undermine health, weaken the heart, shake the nervous system, and diminish strength in a dozen different ways. Gradually the conception has been arrived at of health representing an inherent power to resist infections from without, chronic ill-health as a long-drawn-out struggle against the same infections, in which sometimes the germs gain the upper hand and sometimes iheir host, but the latter is never able to emerge complete victor; whilst acute appendicitis, rheuma ic fever, for exampleare recognised as a result of an onslaught By virulent, germs which take the body unawares, in consequence of which it becomes a battleground for a struggle of great intensity, absorbing all its available energies for the time'being. "Investigations pursued in the endeavor to restore strength and health to thousands of men debilitated in war service have made it clear that in lurking infections—not necessarily over manifesting ia acute general or local illness—

Rre to lie found the seeds of indefinite disease Mich as hampers many. The new teaching is that these local troubles which have hitherto occupied our attention as diseases in chief are really special manifestations of a general lowering of health brought about by some particular set of conditions which favors germ activity in familiar localities; tiat is to say, in disorder of the heart, for example, one has to look far beyond that organ for the origins of the trouble, which may be found in the activities of poison-produc-ing germs insidiously multiplying in some overlookc,-, focus of infection. "The new medicine, then .undoubtedly supports the original contention of Sir Arbuthnot Lane and his followers."