THE MEDICINE BILL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 5

THE MEDICINE BILL

Sir,-Ulric Williams’s attack on "orthodox medical men" will be sure to raise a storm in your columns unless the medical men are content to let their results be their mute justification, In reply to the scurrilous allegation that "orthodox medical men" (and I suppose Ulric Williams means the gracuates from recognised medical schools)

"do not know what disease is’ and know "next to nothing of the natural," I would point out that all medical education is the seeking of this knowledge. It is not humanly possible for any man to know everything about the structure and function of the human body and its derangement in disease. Our knowledge in this sphere is constantly increasing, and even the most learned medical specialist would admit he has never stopped learning about his speciality. But our medical education keeps us at the point where we can competently cure very many diseases and where our service to mankind is as great as knowledge can make it. At the moment in Otago we spend two years of concentrated work on the structure and function of the normal human body, and following this three years on the modification of this structure and function in disease. At this stage we graduate and are judged competent to practise what we have learnt (and what has been discovered in years of research forms the basis of our knowledge) on the public, And yet, in Ulric Williams’s words, "we do not know what disease is." I have no desire to enter the philosophical, and as far as the suffering patient is concerned, the useless discussion of the meaning of disease. Our duty as medical men is to heal, to alleviate suffering, and where possible to save life. : Ulric Williams’s attack on the "violence of surgery in the practice of medicine" is nonsensical. If he also desires to save life, he cannot deny the good that modern surgery has brought. The surgical removal of a primary carcinonoma in its early stages will prevent a spread of the carcinonoma to second"ary centres, to be widely disseminated in the body and to cause death, Yet is this saving of life by "violence" wrong? It is not to be denied that nature’s response to disease is remarkable, and it is from the study of this response that medical science has been able to produce "cures" for diseases. Infection producing tetanus leads to a response on the part of the body, but the response of the body. often is not effective enough. By modifying this response, medical men can prevent tetanus or, by assisting the body. in its response after infection, preyent the death which would be sure to follow in the majority of cases, "Deadly poisonous drugs" are only poisonous in the hands of unskilled and medically uneducated people-in the hands of the trained medical man they ate a valuable, and’ to those who wish to save life or alleviate suffering, an indispensable weapon against disease and its sequelae.

MEDICAL

STUDENT

(Dunedin).