COMING CHANGE IN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9538, 9 July 1909, Page 3

COMING CHANGE IN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

President Charles W. Eliofr, of Harvard, recently delivered an address on "The Coming Change in the Medical Profession," which is commented on in a striking way by the "British Medical Journal." "After speaking of the great ad vances in medical science during the past half-century, he went on to ask if it was possible to forsee in any measure tte changes in practice of medicine as a monev-earring and livelihood-yeildir.g profession which these advances would bring about. He said the great scientific powers which had been brought to bear on preventive medicine would strongly effect private medical practice as a means of livelihood and the prospects of the profession as a wnole. | "He proceeded to say that the practice of medicine would be seriously affected if preventive medi- | cine becomes successful on a broad scale. 'The very source of the livelihood,' he said, 'will be dried up if preventive medicine succeeds.' Not even the surgeon can rely on private practice fifty years henca as the of yielding the livelihood that it yields now, and as a means of livelihood surgery has already been somewhat impared. "Inspired, apparently, by the dismal outlook which he sees for surgery, the orator suddenly asks: 'Shall we not welcome the coming change? Is not the function of the medical profession regarded as preventive, higher, better, 1 appier than I the function of the medical and [su>

gical profession regarded as curative?" One great consolation he offers us in regard to the future of the profession: we have a great deal of truth sitll to learn and to acquire, and we may well be grateful for that prospect. "It ia doubtless true that the medicine of the future will be, to a large extent, preventive. President Eliot has evidently a high opinion of the self-sacrifice of the medical profession, but he does not put the case slrongly enough. "He does hot point out the remarkable fact that the progress in science which is to change the healing art into preventive science has been the work of the doctors themselves. The fact was surely remarkable enough to deserve mention, for it is the one example of a profession striving to abolish the reason for its own existence and to dry up the sources from which it draws its livelihood. And what is its reward? Hatred and uncharitableness on the part of fanatics who, it they could would fctop all progress; carefully measured encouragement f:om the State and from public bodies, and indifference from the at large, who, owing to the extinction of the scourges from which they have boen delivered, cannot appreciate what has been done for their welfare."