Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/93

Rh and our public service as a whole is far below that of European countries. Both public opinion and university authorities are responsible for this condition."

The hygiene of childhood, in which line great advances are made, is still not adequately represented in most of our medical colleges, and the study of psychiatry and nervous disturbances in general is not sufficiently lifted from the realm of quackery. "Not only," says a correspondent, "should psychiatry be taught in every medical school, but it should be taught from a clinical standpoint. Every city in which there are medical schools should have a psychopathic hospital for the reception of all cases of alleged insanity and for their study, treatment and cure. Such a hospital should contain, also, a laboratory for the study of normal and of pathological psychology. I am convinced that progress in normal psychology will be made chiefly through the study of abnormal conditions, just as physiology has profited so enormously through the work of the pathologist."

A word should be said for veterinary medicine and its achievements of enormous economic value in the control of the contagious diseases of animals. The recent achievements of vaccination against the southern cattle fever and against tuberculosis, the eradication of the foot and mouth disease among other matters, have demanded the highest scientific knowledge and the greatest skill in its practical application.

Unfortunately, veterinary science lacks in this country adequate facilities for research and instruction. "Practically," says a correspondent, "the veterinary sciences in the United States are leading a parasitic existence. We are dependent almost wholly upon the results of investigation and teaching of European countries, notably Germany and Denmark. The value of the live-stock industry here is so tremendous that almost every state in the Union should have a well-equipped veterinary school supported by public funds. There is but one veterinary school in the United States that has anything like adequate support." That this is true shows that our farmers and stock-raisers are very far from having an adequate idea of one of the most important of their economic needs.

We may justify the inclusion of economics among the utilitarian sciences on grounds which would equally include the sciences of ethics and hygiene. It is extremely wise as well as financially profitable to take care of one's health, and still more so to take thought of one's conduct. The science of economics in some degree touches the ethics of nations and the 'wealth of nations,' a large factor in the happiness of the individuals contained within them, depends on the nation's attitude towards economic truths. Another justification of this inclusion is found in the growing tendency in our country to call on professional