Vol. XXX.

WHEN the sentiment, to comprehend is to forgive, once "takes holt," it is likely to percolate into the subliminal strata of our consciousness and help shape our conduct toward the rest of humankind-toward a man like Doctor Morton, for example. Here is a medical man that was foolish enough to go into the mining business, and to do things he ought not to have done, evidently because he felt sure-was induced, perhaps, by people better versed than he in the ins and outs of mining mysteries, to feel sure that the mines in which he became interested and which he wrongfully exploited contained the precious things he hoped-or was led to hope-were there. Consequently he, justly enough, spent a year in a Federal prison. If all the people who commit that kind of crime were incarcerated, where would be the jails to hold them? Well, having regained freedom, it is being insisted that the crime he has now fully expiated disqualifies him from further practicing medicine. Certainly such disqualification should hold for doctors that have been convicted of medical malpractice;

No. III

but Dr Morton's crime had nothing to do with his physicianship, which latter many consider illustrious in itself, which all physicians agree is at least of illustrious lineage. For humankind is indebted to Dr. Morton's father for one of the greatest boons ever vouchsafed it-ether anesthesia. And Dr. Morton has himself achieved no little in his vocation. We are all to-day greatly interested in radium; but years ago Dr. Morton did what is being done now-buried radium deep into cancerous tissues; and was ignored. And his pioneer work with high frequency currents has hastened the now general employment of this undoubted remedy by physicians specializing in electrotherapy. And it is well to reject the fact that whereas in the past many have been benefited by Dr. Morton's ministrations, many now looking for relief are now rejoicing in his return to the practice of his profession. Why, then, further punish either him or his patients? It is to be hoped, by the way, that Julian Hawthorne is not going to be prohibited from producing another line of English literature.

news the youth and energy of the people. Everything I know about history, every bit of experience and observation that has contributed to my thought, has confirmed me in the conviction that the real wisdom of human life is compounded out of the experiences of ordinary men."-President Wilson.

In modern warfare the cost of killing one soldier averages $15,000. In the Boer "row" this item came as high as $40,000. The Balkan conflict with Turkey was conducted more economically; and yet $10,000 was burned up in making one man food for powder-really a scandalously unprofitable business, considering that the outlay was a dead loss (nothing funny intended) except in fertilizer product. The most expensive thing in nature is the destruction of human life; the proceeding would be outrageously costly for the world if not a dollar were sunk in it. At $15,000 the head no one has any right to claim humankind to have more sense than the most dunderheaded creature in the cosmos. The Balkan peninsula has thrown a scare into Europe that is evaporating two billion dollars; for such is what the six great European powers composing the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente are paying for military preparations not for war, but to prepare for war. Add to this money waste the loss of production by two and a half million young men being withheld from the world's real work, for military and naval service; and the total cost (at the individual rate of $400 annually) of the fighting forces of Europe would reach the three billion mark. All this is on the highly rational theory that the more crushing and blood-sweating the war taxes levied on the toiling masses, the less likelihood of international slaughter there will be! It makes one recall Heine's terribly grim and unholy apostrophe to the Almighty; "Oh, Thou magnificent Aristophanes of the universe, how your sides must shake with laughter whilst you look down upon us mortals and contemplate the epic idiocies of which we are capable." (Or words to that effect.) The paradox has been well put that the most precious thing in life is the cheapest (in dollars and cents), whilst the most useless thing is the dearest, in money. And what is there cheaper than life conservation-which is, by the way, the biggest idea the twentieth century has thus

far evolved. Panama, for example, was a generation ago about the most pestiferous and gangrenous spot on the globe. Colonel Gorgas and his associates have turned that region into a veritable health resort; only two or three communities in these United States can to-day get under the Canal Zone death rate; and the actual cost of this job has been $2.43 the individual. The Rockefeller Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease and its humane allies are curing many thousands of the people in our southland at something under seventyeight cents the head. Which is the nobler achievement; such a life-saving one; or that other $15,000 the man life-destroying proposition? Nowadays, on this side of the Pond at any rate, a great many people are seeing the point; for example, these citizens who are in the Life Insurance business. Actuaries are estimating that $1,500,000,000 is a safe estimate of the economic value of lives that are lost needlessly each year in the United States alone, not through wars, but only through preventable sickness and accidents. The idea of health conservation was Professor Irving Fisher's of Yale. He several years ago outlined a plan for the education of the public to the end that Federal, State and municipal authorities might provide improved health protection; and he suggested that life insurance companies, purely in the way of business, and of "enlightened selfishness," could well afford to contribute in money and brains to such a campaign. Well, the Association of Life Insurance Presidents, representing policy holders all over the world (some twenty millions in the United States alone) are working the suggestion for all it is worth. They are educating their clients, and urging them by every means in their power, for personal and communal hygiene and for disease prevention. And the movement is permeating every phase of our civilization. Up to date, the biggest idea the twentieth century has evolved is this of the conservation of human life!

THE medical profession can and does devise means of prevention and cure; never before in its history has it been so effective in these premises. It has clearly demonstrated the practicability of eliminating such diseases as cholera, typhoid, the malarias and tuberculosis; the reason why they continue to exist is that, besides having their medical aspects, they bristle with economic and social difficulties. The physician gives freely of his strength of mind and body, without money and without price, in the service of the afflicted poor; and much too often also, be it said, in the unremunerated service of those not at all poor.

Beyond this who can expect him to go? He cannot, except by his example, make men and women humane. He cannot so affect the stress and strain of our modern civilization that cardiac and kidney diseases and insanity shall decrease, instead of increase, as is now the case; he can only indicate what should be done. He cannot of himself obviate starvation, alcoholism, lack of warmth, unclean habits of living, unsanitary, overcrowded, ill-ventilated tenements and factories.

The physician is constantly, in a most disheartening way, running into stone walls like the following: A widowed mother, with four small children, living in one room in a dirty tenement, is found consumptive. The children are in imminent danger of infection through ignorance and the impossibility of maintaining decent or sanitary con

ditions in such circumstances. The doctor explains how the sputum must be disposed of to prevent infection; but how is this woman to change life-long habits, and be of a sudden so careful as not to jeopardize her children? Rest she must have; how is she to get it, and maintain her home? And sunshine and fresh air among the trees and thetic status! Abundance of nutritious food, flowers; what irony such advice in this patoo; but what is she likely to get but meats spots"? Obviously the cure of this woman many months in cold storage and "rots and is a question, not of medicine, but of means. The ultimate problem here, the question how to prevent the conditions which produce such hopeless cases, is essentially economic. Much too often they are taken in hand after the irretrievable harm is done; and then public or private philanthropists lend a futile assistance.

It is as if a dreadful precipice had no railings at the summit and no signs to warn the wayfarer; yet at the bottom are ambulances to remove tenderly to the hospital those who have fallen quick, and mortuary wagons for the decent burial of those who have been dashed to death.

All this is by no means the presentation of new phases of public health; physicians and social workers have for years been setting them forth. The public has been informed concerning them; but it seems to be as yet dimly conscious of the truth concerning them and of their gravity. The public needs over and over again to be re-informed.

THE surgeon has to be a good deal of a mechanician; only the material on which he must work is not of wood and stone and metal, but most consecrated, such as houses a precious human life. To illustrate:

There is in the whole realm of medicine, which is so replete with melancholy instances, nothing so pathetic as the condition of the sufferer from a thoracic aneurism. An aneurism is a swelling, by reason of disease, of any blood vessel; and such an ailment is always most serious. But most grave of all is an aneurism of the thoracic

aorta, the largest artery in the body and the one coming directly from the heart. Thorax, by the way, means a "cage," and the cage here referred to is made by the ribs which enclose the chest.

People talk about heroism; but only those know what this word means that can sympathize with the man who realizes he had within his breast an aneurism, constantly growing larger with the increase in his gnawing pain, his brassy cough, and his difficulty in breathing through pressure of the growing tumor on his windpipe; who