The Ypsilanti daily press. (Ypsilanti, Mich.) 1928-1962, 1941-04-09

from the physician OF To-Day II
we can imagine the physician Of
today going into the Office Of
physician seventy-fve years ago
in the middle-western part Of the
United States, it is quite possible
he would not know what. to make
of a great number of the patients.
On many of the calls which he
would make, he would meet pa
tients whose ailments would be a
complete mystery to him.
Agues and Feyers
After the Civil War, with the
rapid expansion of our country,
people settled in regions where
many kinds of infectious diseases
attacked them. These were agues
and fevers. | doubt if there are
many physicians today, except in
the extreme South, VINO would be
competent to treat a case of mall
aria, which was regular expert
ence of our predecessors seventy
five years ago. Yellow fever would
hardly be recognized, let alone
treated by the modern physician.
Preventive medicine public
health activity-has caused these
diseases TO disappear. Conse-
quently, more people are reaching
the middle-age period of life and
the diseases with which the mod
ern physician deals are mostly
chronic disease of the heart and
the kidneys and arteries. His pre-
decessor would be just as lost in
the modern physicians Office as
his predecessor
Besides this, we have found that
the individual physician cannot
handle successfully a great many
diseases. A striking example of
this is tuberculosis. tuberculosis
will never be entirely eradicated
unless public health surveys of the
entire population are made and
the infected individuals are put in
hospitals, where they are-pre-
vented from injecting others and
where they are healed and cured
in a modern scientific manner. II
is plain common sense that if the
person with tuberculosis cannot
afford this form of treatment, it
must be provided for him.
Public Health
1t is a matter of controversy
just how many diseases should be
handled in this public way. Indus
trial diseases, l think everybody
agrees, should be handled by or
ganized public health doctors,
whether they are employed by the
state or by the industrial concerns
involved. A great deal of the
training and feeding of infants
and children must be taken over
as a public health measure.
l shall describe tomorrow some
Of the experiments that have been
made in handling rheumatic fever
on a wholesale scale.
AS consequence Of these
changes, the position of the physi-
clan in modern civilization is in
evitably changed. The old-fash-
toned individual doctor can only
survive sporadically. The physi-
clan is an adviser to the states
man.
The chief cause of disease is
still poverty, with all its conse-
quences slums, malnutrition,
prostitution, alcoholism and crime.
The solution Of these problems is
only partly medical. The physi-
clan must begin TO be sociologist.
Doctor Sigerist thinks that med
ical schools are behind times in
not providing instruction in social
problems.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
W. M.:-"Please state through
your column if there are such peo-
pie as germ carriers of tubercu-
losis who never fall the victim of
the disease, but transmit it to
others
>Answer-Tuberculosis is trans
mitted by human carriers, but
they are not carriers in the sense
that diphtheria carriers are such.
The diphtheria carrier harbors
the germ in the mouth or nose
without actually having the dis
ease, but the tuberculosis carrier
alwaYs has active tuherculnns.
economies. For whatever 1t may
be worth, I'm merely repeating
what / hear from EN-, as a repor-
torial listener at their keyhole.
Anyhow, Uncle Samuel doesn't
seem to frighten 'em much by talk
4 l.