Omaha daily bee., 1919-05-10
The Future of Medicine
From the London Times.


Yesterday the British Medical association
concluded the most successful meeting in its
annals. About the atmosphere" of this unpre-
cedented gathering there can be no mistake.
II was one of serene and reasoned conf
dence in the future. The wisest leaders. who
are also the most assured prophets, of the pro-
fession well know that it will not be given to
them to enter the promised land which they see
from afar. But they have stood upon the
mountain tops and they have gazed upon It..
That is enough. They will draw nearer to it;
others who will follow will cross its borders
and continue the advance. None can set bounds
to it, for it is infinite as the progress OF human
learning. This sense of its vastness, of its
mystery, of its endless possibilities was the key
note OF the meeting. The doctors realize that the
war has opened 20 them new world, and that
it will be their high privilege to be able to
apply to their fellowmen for all time the great
store of new learning they have harvested on
the battlehelds of three continents We cannot
pretend to review in this place the great number
OF instructive papers and discussions which
have filled these busy days. Some idea of them
will have been gathered from the reports and
have published. But the general trend and
spirit of the proceedings are sufficiently illus
trated by the presidents opening address. Like
Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Clifford Allbutt had no
new principles to announce What he did was
to restate with striking force and cfearness
some old principles, which occasionally appear to
sink out of sight, and to show how they irradi-
ate and inform whole masses of new facts. He
does not hesitate to speak of the present as "the
greatest moment in the history of medicine"
or OF the revelation to US that medicine has
come to a new birth" But when all is said
and done, when all the magnificent examples of
discovery and of interrelation have been describ-
ed and afrayed, the widest and the most funda-
mental conclusion reached goes back from gener-
alton to generation to Coleridge, to Dante, and
to the school men, to the greatest OF Greek
thinkers. Coleridge insisted upon the interre-
lation of all knowledge. and invented the
term "esemplastic" to describe it. "All things"
wrote the great Florentne, ''have order be-
tween them," and he declares that in this order
lies the form" which makes the universe like to
God and which angels see the impress of His
power. The thought runs through the Di-
vine Comedy, and guides him through the
gran mar DELI essere," as it does his master,
Thomas Aquinas. How does it differ from the
law laid down by Sir Clifford Albutt, when he
tells US that "as the individual is but a link in
the web of all living things" Our work. he
says, must be upon Aristotelian double track
of the one into the many, and of the many into
the one.
The principl. is old, but the facts which have
Ibe brought under it are overwhelming in their
to them enormously, and has suggested complex
systems of INTERPOLATION unsupported before, be-
sides atfording incontrovertbe proofs of truths
seen but dimy until now. 1t is this seemingly
endless progress upon lines known and establish
ed which makes medicine so fascinating to the
derful than some of the facts mentioned in this
address; what more stimulating than some of
the unsoved problems on which it TOUGHEST? Sir
Clifford .dwels upon the light which modern
physics throw upon medicine. He instances the
electric methods of taking cumulative measure
ments of mechanical pressures in the circula-
ton OF the fluids of the body and in the heart,
and he comes to the conclusion that all biologi-
cal reactions are determined by molecular
structure. Above physics comes biology, but
we cannot even guess at the links of the
chains where physics recede and biochemistry
takes the lead" Merely to glance at the ques-
tons presented to US, he declares, is to discern
how vast is the realm Of knowledge yet UNI
conquered-nay, undiscovered" The tiny cell
itself is microcosm full of intense activities,
through the labor of the mathematical physicist
of the spectroscopist of the radiologist, and of
the physical chemist.
How are those new and vast worlds to be
explored, and the knowledge of them adapted
to the welfare of man? This is the practical
ology Sir Clifford says in fine image, must
be continually carried and woven into the web
Of the practcing doctors art. 1t is impossible
for any man in practice, whatever his abilities
and his industry, to perform the work for
himself. He cannot by his unassisted efforts
keep pace with the great tide of fresh learning
that is sweeping in upon him. There must be
some intermediary between the working doc
tor and the men devoted to laboratory re-
search-some middlemen, some liaison officers
to keep them in touch-and the investigator
be it remembered, needs this touch as much
as does the practitioner; the bedside and the
laboratory must work hand in hand, if either
rogation of nature Sir Clifford is clear that
in every good clinical school there ought to
be body of whole-time professors with fully
equipped laboratories and stats, who should
be Continually irrigating the profession from
the springs Of the pure sciences" In that
way or in another, the problem must be
solved, if English medicine is to keep its I'M