The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-02
The Public Health
E---Progress of Medical Science
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 The meeting of the Pan-Ameriean Medical Congress in Guatemala next l Wednesday is another proof of the great national and international inter- I est in the health of the worlds people. | another evidence of the progress of the worlds physicians in their chosen | work. United States and Latin rAneri- | can countries will be represented, and l leaders of the various branches of the medical profession will discuss new | methods, new cures, new discoveries. | Our own national interest In the mat l ter. of public health Is increasing mar veIously. Tn the Democratic platform l adopted at Denver there is plank ad- l vocating the organization of a Nation- al Bureau of Public Health. and the | Republican Convention advocated sirn- liar legislation. Public recognition. though tardy at first, has been accord ed the victory over yellow fever in New Orleans and Havana, and over the bu- bonic plague in San Francisco and Ma nila. Public sentiment has called for ! a sweeping pure food campaign. for diseminators of disease, and for a worldwide crusade against tubercu- losis.
 Where the beginning of the nine- teenth century saw helpless patients physicked, blistered and bled, and de- privsd of air and water in an effort to eradicate disease. the beginning of the twentieth sees rational awakening of the civilized world. Doors and win- dows are opened to all the winds of Heaven; there is a rush back to Mother Nature for her simplest remedies. and the slogan of today's health worker is aFrssh ,1 air. pugs food. pure ,s water tier. and century ago are said to have worked on the hypothesis that disease was nor mal. that health was only an abnormal and acquired thing. Today the oppos- ite and true conception is the basis on which physicians work.
 Nothing has been more remarkable | than the progress of medicine in re- cent years. The bacteriological labor atory has become part of the office Of the modern physician where he grounds himself in the principles of contagion and prevention, and establishes new theories The discovery of the germ and it's responsibility for most of the l ailments of humankind has revoiu- tionized medical practice and saved mil- T lions of lives. The world has grown more rapidly in population in the past 100 years than in any other time with s which statistics deal: Medical science | is largely responsible for this. In times past more than one-fourth of the worlds population died before reach ing the age of 6 years. Medical sci- ence Is robbing childhood of danger from certain disease, and millions are now saved every year. It is estimated that today at least SO per cent. of children born into the world live to be 1e, where a century or so ago only 50 per cent reached that age. There arc now approximately 9,o0o, 900 more births than deaths every year, and, l while in some localities race suicide may be lowering the annual birth rate II fn III at a A af QFxy HkNy the reductions in the death rate that medical men have. made possible.
 Of more importance than the direct application of medical science to suf- fering humanity is that great boon of preventive medicine. Since the discov- ieal men have been learning how to put in practice the time-honored pro- verb that an ouneee of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Sometimes they have. fiiguratively. had to fight fire with ire, as In preventing small disease with cleanliness But what ever the method. they have gone for | ward, forcing back disease inch by inch until this beginning of the twen- tieth century marks notable era In the public health.
 The Spanish American war brought the beginning of correct sanitary prin- ciples. This nation learned. then. a most humiliating lesson, but 1t was a lesson by which all the world has prof tied. Tn that war the American army l suffered fourteen deaths from disease to every one death from wounds. Dur ing the Russo-Japanese war Japan lost l one man from disease to four from | wounds--so far had the science of pre- ventfve measures already advanced Of $15l. .00e. 900 spent in pensions every year, the United States Government | could have saved half had prevention | of disease been practiced.
 Yellow fever has been robbed of it's terrors by the work of Major Reed and his associates. But for such work which has made a summer resort of the Canal Zone, once a pest hole-the Panama Canal could not have been built without the sacrifice of thous- ands of lives, or perhaps never have been built at all. Typhoid fever has been traced to it's source. Evidence shows that 1t Is spread by flies, water and milk. A prominent American phy- sician felt justified in saying not long ago that a man who takes typhoid in an American city nowadays, has as good case for damages against that city for criminal carelessness as the man who injures himself by falling Into an unguarded excavation. What is true of typhoid is true of scarlet fever of diphtheEia. of tuberculosis and other enemies of life.
 Until recent years the victim of con- sumption was regarded as a doomed man. and was usually shut in an air tight room to await the end. In that time medical science has been busy. It discovered the communicablness and preventability of the disease. persuaded mankind to call 1t tuberculosis" set about educating the iayman in the matter and instituted a sweeping cru sade. That crusade has borne fruit Last year alone there were thirteen congresses having courses of instruc- tion on tuberculosis with 50.000 people fn attendance. while a number of States and municipalities aroused pub lie sentiment and legislated against the disease. The death rate from the white plague has been perceptibly cut down, and the whole aspect of affairs promise a conquest of the disease in the near future.
 So 1t is with cancer. pr. Wallace E. Brown claims that the use of oscharotics in cancerous troubles Is radical cure if applied early enough He has conquered 1t also with potas- sium hydrate and zinc chloride. The latest discovery in the medical world