The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1913-04-24


The following is brief synopsis
of the lecture on Public Health and
Municipalities" delivered by Clifford
H.. Sumner, Secretary of the State
Board of Health, in this city last
Wednesday evening, at the closing
session of the Decatur County Medi-
cal Associations annual meeting.
Mr.. Sumner deals with a question of
great Importance to every commun-
ity and the address is worthy of
careful perusal by our readers.
The address delivered by DR..
Sumner, Secretary Of the Iowa State
Board of Health, before the Decatur
County Medical Society and citizens
of Leon and vicinity, was upon the
subject, Public Health and Munich
pal Government" He called the at
tention to the fact that there was
a growing sentiment in favor of CIV
ing knowledge to the people rela
tive to the prevention of diseases,
and that such knowledge should be
disseminated among the inhabitants
of every well regulated municipality.
The characteristic feature of the
address was that preventative medi-
cine was fast becoming popular
among the people, and that while
formerly the physician was instruct
ed in curative processes, he was
now trying to avoid curative process
es by telling the people how to keep
well, and in very plain language said
that the causes of diphtheria, scarlet
fever, typhoid fever and all trans
Missile diseases had become so
thoroughly understood that all ply
sicians were uniting with the people
for the express purpose of removing
the causes, thereby preventing the
diseases.
1t was fully demonstrated in DR..
Summers lecture that curative pro-
cesses while very necessary were not
the most essential to the public in
general, for he impressed upon his
hearers that we are emerging from
the old lines of procedure into the
new and more progressive methods,
and that this was being accomplish
ed by not only studying the clinic
but the street, the alley, the back
yard, the insanitary privy, the pollu-
ton of streams and all kindred sub
jects which are disease producers.
He impressed upon his audience that
all these subjects were the doctors
domain, and that the medical pro-
fession was teaching the relationship
of medicine to society, thereby show
ing the economic basis of disease.
One important feature of the lee
ture was that it was clearly shown
that Rudolph Virchow, and Oliver
Wendell Holmes, the former one of
Europe's foremost medical experts,
and the latter Americas poet physi-,
clan, were the first to advance the
theories of transmission of disease.
The medical men all agree that DR..
Holmes was the first of American
physicians to call attention to the
CONSCIOUSNESS of puerperal fever,
and that the staid representatives of
the medical profession in the times
Of DR.. Holmes we're very skeptical in
regard to his theories, but all are
now convinced that the truth ad-
vanced by DR.. Holmes is now believ-
ed by all we'll informed physicians.
A comparison of the times when DR..
Holmes and DR.. VirchOw made their
declarations and the times at the
present shows that these men had
delved into the real causes of disease
and were trying to issue to the peo-
pie the proper warnings, for DR.. Vir-
chow said in report after he had
investigated into the conditions of
the people of Upper Silesia, where he
had been sent to investigate the
causes of typhus fever, then raging
in that locality, that the remedy lies
not in medicine but in education.
Dr.. Summers g. audience greatly ap-
preciated the fact when he said that
the most important era of preventa-
tive medicine which DR.. Virchow
helped to install had come to stay,
and followed up this statement by
making one sweeping statement that
the cure-all doctor, the exclusively
pill-and.potion doctor, the advertis-
ing quack, the so-called drugless
healer of human ills, the so-called
faith healer, the patent medicine
man, the medical liberty league man
or the teacher who claims that hui
man ills are only imaginary is not
the modern, scientific doctor Of the
medical profession He impressed
upon his hearers that the sphere of
the medical man has. been enlarged,
and that he had discovered that tu-
sberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria,
scarlet fever, smallpox and many of
flie diseases are economic maladies.1
ma that trade and occupAtiO nAl
dieeases would not disappear until
;soci6 condit Ions had been made bet