Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/406

374 the tilings which are most deeply significant in these closing years of the century are not the newly gained skill in diagnosis, not the marvelous strides which surgery has made, beneficent as these may be, not the more exact and purposeful and moderate use of drugs, not the insight which has been gained regarding the complex nature of the nervous system, nor even in the high achievements, too numerous and varied to be even mentioned here, which the new science of bacteriology has made possible.

Beyond all these accomplishments, notable enough though they be for any age, the things which more than all else, it seems to me, will signalize this time, are that we have now definitely freed medicine, in all its borders, from the thralldom of mystery and superstition, have finally and clearly recognized that its problems are the problems of biology, and are to be solved only by such patient research and guarded inference as all science has learned to trust; that the doctor is in command of no mysterious forces, and that the only chance for the full and speedy fruition of our hope in the prevention of disease lies in general education, and in the enlistment of the interests of the people, of whom the medical profession should be the teacher and the guide.

Of course, the shadows here and there will linger on; of course, one and another for some time to come will still invest his calling with the puerile mysteries which were fostered in ignorance, and which should have been put aside with the scarlet cloak and the wig and the ponderous walking stick. Of course, so long as the people are largely ignorant of elementary facts regarding the human frame, quacks will flourish and more or less well-meaning advocates will be found of water, of electricity, of faith, of exorcism, of infinitesimal dosage, and of every sort of named and unnamed folly, as panaceas and as substitutes for science. But, after all, when medicine is once placed where it belongs, close to its sister disciplines, from which it gathers light and in its turn inspires, the shadows are certain soon to fade and the truth to prevail.

You will observe, ladies and gentlemen, that the current of my thought has led again and again to the outlooks which command the field of preventive medicine. This is not only because here the new light shines brightest, and gives clearest glimpses of definite achievement, but also because upon this field success is possible only if we can secure general and earnest co-operation in the spread of the new ideals of cleanliness.

In truth, the exactions of our modern sanitary codes, so far as they affect the performances of the individual and the routine of the household, are neither complex nor burdensome; and a very moderate amount of care, if happily joined to informed intelligence, will suffice, under almost all conditions, for the maintenance of a safe régime.