The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1904-08-25
DEBT DUE MEDICAL MEN.
OUR OBLIGATION TO SCIENTISTS
WHO MAKE CURATIVE
DISCOVERIES.

sicians-Lister's Antiseptic Surgery
Said to Save $4,000 Lives a Year.
Every patient feels debt of graft
tude to the physician who heals him.
Much greater is the obligation of the
community to the practitioner who
contributes a remedy or method OF
treatment to the worlds common
stock of curative resources. Again
and again." says the London Hospital,
this has meant a large pecuniary
sacrifice by the individual practi-
toner, while carrying an incalculable
boon to suffering humanity"
Thus, some thirty years ago, the
late DR.. T. ]. Maclagan made a care
full investigation into the causes and
pathology of fevers, and was led by
a series of steps to the discovery or
the salicyl compounds as remedies
in the treatment of rheumatism.
What has this meant for the human
race? 1t has meant that the hun
dreds of thousands Of men, women
and children who since the discovery
have suffered from rheumatism, es-
pecially ia its more acute forms,
have been promptly relieved of their
pain, have been more rapidly restored
to health, and have been saved from
the risk Of severe and dangerous COM
plications. Think Of rne enormous
money value this signifies in the
family and national life. 1t is not
only the individual sufferer who re-
ceives benefit, it is, in addition, the
community at large, whose total work
ing capacity is multiplied and en-
larged. Now, this discovery and all
that it means were given to the ma.
ton as a free gift by the medical
profession in the person Of DR.. Mac
lagan. Suppose he had chosen to pur-
sue the opposite course and had kept
his discovery secret, retaining the
use of the salicyl compounds for
those who placed themselves under
his treatment. Unquestionably he
would in the course of a very few
years have accumulated an enormous
fortune. Patients and fees would
have poured in upon him. But the
great proportion Of sufferers from
rheumatic fever would have remained
without relief.
Every one knows and hOnOrS the
name of Lord Lister and the work he
has accomplished. His system of an
tiseptic surgery is practised all over
the civilized world, and On a moder-
ate estimate saves $4,000 lives and
$4,000 limbs every year. Can any one
calculate or express how much man
kind is the debtor to this distinguish
ed member Of the medical profession?
And yet it should be remembered
that this great work could hardly
have been accomplished but for the
existence of hospitals. Only with
considerable number of patients col
lected in circumstances which per-
mitted exact and continuous observa-
tions could it have been possible to
have traced the cause of SuppuratiOn
in wounds, and to have devised
method which has made the art Of
surgery SO safe and so successful.
The debt to hospitals therefore falls
not only on those who are treated
there as patients. 1t covers all who
gain restored health by the help of
modern medicine and surgery, for it
is in these institutions to very
large extent that there has been OBJ
tanned that more complete knowledge
of disease which makes successful
treatment possible.
Another development is the treat
men Of certain diseases by antitox-
ms. This is perhaps best known in
connection with diphtheria The
value of this method is seen in COM
pairing the statistics Of the hospitals
of the Metropolitan Asylums Board
in 1890 with the figures for 1909. In
the former year the deaths among
cases of diphtheria were 1875 per
cent, while in 1900 the percentage
Of mortality had fallen to 1901, and
parallel figures could be quoted from
AL parts of the world where this
treatment has been adopted.
What is true of dipatheria will al
most certainly ere long be shown to
U6 true OIL Il uulU6T Cl OCuST diseases,
such as te,anus, plague and typhoid
fever. Expert psychologists are in
vestigating the minute organisms
which cause these and similar dis
eases, and it may be taken as certain
that when the cause Of any disease
is fully understood it will not be long
before means are devised for it's pre-
vention or cure. This is we'll seen in
the case of malaria. So long as fg-
norance prevailed in reference to the
causes of this disease little or no
progress was made in treatment. But
when few years ago malaria was
shown to be due to the presence Of
a parasite in the blood which is con-
veyed to man by the bite of a mos
quito, the position was completely
changed. And now there is every rea-
son to expect that many tropical dis
tricts, which are now so dangerous
to the white man, will be freed from
the disease which constitutes their