Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1909-10-31

tended. It is then shown that in ten
years our national government has
expended s40,000,000, and now pro-
poses to appropriate $3.50, 000, 900
more, to prevent tick fever in cattle,
cholera in hogs and chickens, pests
to crops and trees, and to protect
other interests having money value,
while in all its history it has never
spent a dollar or lifted hand to
protect the people from these far
more important domestic pestilences.
There are experts and funds in
abundance at Washington to go any
where for Investigation, or to pre-
pare literature in regard to any ami
NAL Or plant disease, any agricultural
resource, water power, or other con-
dition affecting commercial interests,
but the citizen will inquire in vain
for information about protecting his
family from typhoid fever or other
sickness.
Most of these facts are well known
to medical men. They have long In
sisted that good health can and
should be made more contagious than
sickness, and, in direct conflict with
their own interests, have urged the
health reforms which would bring it
all about, but in most states, and in
the nation, have met almost con-
slant Indifference or antagonism
from both legislative bodies and the
people. This was in part, because to
the laity medicine has always been
an occult, mystic science, and still
more because, until recent years,
ours has been discordant profes.
sion. This discord was in small part
between the different systems. of
practice, but far more between physi-
clans competing for the same prac-
tice, and was often fostered by their
lay friends. The same thing existed
in the clergy until recent years, d.
viding the religious world into hos
tile camps. and in all the other iso-
lated vocations, lawyers alone living
in the aggregate and escaping this
curse.
A few years ago we were aroused
to the enormity Of this evil, to it's
baneful effects upon US and the peo-
pie. we banded ourselves together
for its determination, probably never
before did reform so sweep a pro-
fessfon, and now, regardless of
schools of pathies, ours is rapidly be-
coming one of the most harmonious
Of callings.. This discord had existed
so long, however, that it created a
sentiment, prejudice, If you will,
against doctors, which is habit of
thought with most people, except as
to their own physician, which did not
disappear with the removal of the
cause, and in spite of the rapid ad-
vances, Iof the professional, and the
heroism and individual worth of it's
members, this is almost as it was a
generation ago. I speak In the light
Of an experience which has come to
few men I have been a state health
official, and as such, represented my
profession before my legislature for
three years, and often before congress
at Washington. Once or twice almost
every day for six years have spoken
on this subject to popular audiences
In every section of the Union, laymen
discussing it freely at the close OF
my talks. In this way have been
able to make a study Of doctors and
what the people think OF them In a
very broad way, have found this SEN
timent almost universal, and it is on
this account mainly, that is has been
so difficult for, US to secure and en-
force our legislation. IT % .,>@ .
You will first be shown how this
feeling against doctors has affected
us as a nation. For lack OF author
ity for medical officers during our
war with Spain, we lost Is OF our
soldiers from preventable disease for
every one dying as q result OF bat.
tie, and S. Of each 100 we're inmates
Of the hospitals. During the longer
and more severe war In ;Manchuria,
with full authority and rank for their
doctors, Japan lost but one man
from disease for every. four killed
in battle, and but is of 100 were in
the hospitals. We had known Of this
danger to our armies, and had beg
ged for proper authority for our
army surgeons, for rs years, and
since these wars, with the object les
sons OF Cuba and Manchuria before
the congress and country we are still
begging, and practically the same
dangers vet face our armies In the
event of a foreign war. Facts Of the