Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/396

 330 HISTOEY OF GOODHUE COUNTY decline of the death rate by one half, and of the increase of the expectation of life by ten or twelve years during the past cen- tury?' 1 He pays the lawyer for services involving property ten times the fee that the physician receives for services involving life. Many well-informed people recognize the standing of med- ical men, simply because of their knowledge of the immense amount and high character of the work which is being done by the profession, but millions of men and women of reasonable intelligence and education, practically ignorant of this, intrust their most valuable possessions — life and health — to charlatans and chance, though they would not enter court without a lawyer nor build a house without an architect. All of this is due to ignorance of modern medicine. The instruction of the laity by the medical profession is the rational cure for popular ignorance. If the public be properly informed it will become interested, and if interested, it will assist. The knowledge of the human body and the betterment of physical conditions is too personal not to excite interest, if properly presented. The more the public is informed on medical matters the greater is its ability to protect itself, and the closer it will come to the regular physician, and the- higher the standard it will demand. 'We, the medical profes- sion, are now in the possession of truths that can help our fellow man. Is it not our duty to tell our fellow man?" The answers to this question are: the national campaign against tuberculo- sis, the bulletins of the boards of health, the medical instruction' of the public by county medical societies, by virtue of a resolution of the American Medical Association. The medical profession has accepted facts that bear on the welfare of the. people, and it is its duty to make them known. The time is now at hand for a radical change in the relation of the physician to the public at large. Medicine can he a power in the world only as it is repre- sented by the practitioner. He must no longer be concerned only with existing disease, but must take cognizance of the broader field which it is the province of medicine to occupy. His new duty will be to enter into a copartnership with the people for the prevention of disease ; to inform them, according to the measure of their needs, concerning a science which so deeply concerns the life work, comfort, happiness and mental achievements of every individual. He will take up the medical education of the people and instruct them how to avoid and abort disease, how to make hygiene effective, how to develop physical perfection, and to promote mental and moral improvement. With the diffusion of this information the voice of the profes- sion will be heard in the halls of legislation ; its influence will be felt in a virile grasp of the great principles that underlie the physical well-being of society. Neglect of public sanitation will