Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/521

Rh In the meantime the optimism of the world which unknowingly assumes that medical science can rise above natural law and correct any and all excesses of individuals and communities must be met by a better education in natural science rather than abandoned to the manipulations of the charlatans of physical and mental healing.

Passing now to the more obvious external conditions which have tended to stimulate medical research, we may single out a few which have been of special importance. Perhaps the most ancient and strongest of all is the desire in the human breast to maintain health and prolong life. From its very beginnings the healing art has been weighed down with the greatest of problems, to save life and to cure disease, often in those of lofty estate, and its status for the time being frequently depended on its success or failure in accomplishing apparently the impossible. In our own day the crumbling of the formal religious belief that this life is but a preparation for that beyond the grave and the centering of our efforts to make it as much of a success as possible, the growth of wealth and leisure and the pursuit of sensual pleasure, these various motives, high and low, combine to exert a pressure upon medicine which is scarcely equaled in other professions. To save life, and to cure disease are imperative demands which grow more urgent, more impatient each year, and which suffice to quicken the efforts of the scientist and the true physician as well as the charlatan, and shape almost every problem which is considered worthy of attack to-day.

As a most important and timely contributory force to the advancement of medical research in recent years are the princely gifts of benefactors, with whom we especially associate the names of Johns Hopkins, Garrett, Fabyan, Rockefeller, McCormack, Payne, Morgan, Huntingdon, Sears, Stillman, and many others without whose aid medical research could hardly have commanded a corporal's squad today.

A factor not to be neglected in the advancement of medical science is the feeling of national pride. Most of the medical science of the past and much of the current knowledge has on it the mark 'made in Europe.' To-day this mark is occasionally being replaced by the label 'made in America' and without doubt the home market will soon be well supplied. Fortunately, tariff barriers and trusts do not interrupt the currents of knowledge. Without hindrance we have filled cur storehouses from the old world and I trust that we may repay in due time some of our huge indebtedness. Our national pride once awakened will see to it that our country, the wealthiest in material things, shall continue to give as well as to receive the fruits of the intellect.

These are forces acting chiefly from without. Perhaps the most