The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1916-11-27
A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE

1t is evident not only to physicians,
but to all who are able to take even a
partial view of the subject, that the
profession of healing is progressive
science. Even in the ages of the
past, medicine men were a little in
advance of their contemporaries, and
in this exacting age they are COM
PEELED to be even more so.
The old family physician is passing,
and when those of today who have
brought up the present generation
from it's birth, entered into the joys
and sorrows of their patients as none
other except their parents could, have
been gathered to their reward, their
places will be taken by specialists.
Instead of the one doctor relied upon
for everything from the cradle to
the grave, each family will have to
have different physician or surgeon
for each dangerous complaint. The
profession has become a tremendously
exacting one. It's true that the vet
eran physician, who to the natural
talent for his calling has added long
years of experience which enables him
to tell by second nature and almost by
second sight, what is the trouble and
what is needed, is yet able to hold his
own; but to the younger men it is
constant work, study between cases,
fees from one set of patients spent in
obtaining the knowledge to treat the
next, and even vacations passed not in
recuperation but at schools and hos
pitfalls acquiring more skill to be APP
piled on return to practice.
Another development of the profess
sion of healing is the hospital. Not so
long ago, hospitals were places to
which were taken people who had no
homes, or whose homes were inacces-
sible. Any home that was home at
all was better than the hospital. And
the physician went from home to
home like the milkman goes from
house to house, and sometimes in an
epidemic he couldn't give any patient
all the care needed, and to some of
them he could give no care at all; also
medicine other than what he carried
with him was often difficult to obtain,
and trained nursing out of the ques-
ton.
With the evolution of the hospital
to the point where even the most or
binary is better place for the dan
gerously sick or wounded than the
best home can be, the physician is
able to concentrate. He can have two
or three or even half dozen patients
at one point, give them more attention
with less strain on himself, with ev-
erything needed in reach, and leave
them in competent hands between his
visits. Lives are saved, suffering
lessened and terms of illness made far
shorter by the modern hospital, which
is one of the best instances of scien-
tifc cooperation for the benefit of
humanity that has yet been devised.
Hospitals, however, are compare
lively scarce. 1t is only the big cities
and the lucky little ones that have
them.
Ocala is one of the lucky little
cities. It's hospital is doing noble
work which spreads wider as it lives
longer, and causes the people of all
the country round about to turn their
eyes toward our town whenever the
shadow of illness or accident is cast
across their homes.
There probably isn't a hospital in
the world that is money-making. The
famous institutions in the big cities
were nearly all established by philan-
thropists and endowed by numerous
persons of wealth. All the larger and
some of the smaller cities of America
maintain public hospitals, supporting
them outright, or give the private in
situations substantial aid in return for
the assistance they are always ready
to extend to the sick or wounded
Our hospital is no exception. No