Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/394

 328 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY a legitimate practice. The mission of the society is to elevate the profession to a higher standard for increased public usefulness. My friends and brothers in art! A few short years and a new generation shall search these pages for the meager record of our lives. God grant that it may be said of us that the world was better for our having lived. Let us always bear in mind that tht* thing that shall comfort us when we step down into the Valley of the Shadow will not be the size of the estate we shall leave behind, nor the places of honor we have held among men; but, rather, the reflection that we have been able to relieve some poor sufferer in his mortal pain, that we have been useful men in our generation, and thai we may look forward with confidence to the reward which awaits a life of honest labor. Grant us an honest fame, or grant us none. With the opening of the twentieth century the boundaries of medical science have been broadened. A radical change between the physician and the public is at hand. "Recent events," says Presidenl Charles W. Kliot. ''have brought into strong light a new function of the medical profession, which is sure to be extended and made more effective in the near future. We mean the function of leaching the whole population how diseases are caused and communicated, and whal are the corresponding means of prevention." The great public does not realize that in the medical profession the whole line of discovery and effort is toward hygienic living as Ihe prevenlive of disease, and that in this the doctors are laboring to make the human race immune from disease, and willing to teach the people their part in the struggle. We are all naturally interested in the' preservation of health by the prevention of disease. Most people have a fairly distinct idea 1hat proper attention to sanitation is essential to good health, but the great majority are not informed of the possi- bilities out of which disease may come. When a family stands at the grave of a relative who has succumbed to a condition which could have been prevented, as has been proven by different action in the selfsame condition in other people, a new idea takes pos- session of them. This new idea, where the value of prevention is more appreciated than the importance of cure, is the ideal situation. The tendency of modern research is to give especial promi- nence to preventive medicine. To relieve suffering is a godlike office, but to prevent suffering is a higher office still. In the past the field of medicine was restricted to the relief of disease already present, without taking note of its broader and higher mission. On the practical assumption that the function of medical skill is to cure disease, not to discover and ward off its approach, the physician is seldom afforded an opportunity to apply his art