Read Ebook: The Eugenic Marriage Volume 4 (of 4) A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies by Hague W Grant William Grant

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ters, the noblest and most steadfast souls, to be maligned and assailed, to have its means of well-doing assaulted and threatened, when we know that it should be supported and protected for the sake of all it has done in the past in the interest of humanity?

Every mother should be acquainted with these facts so that she may lend her influence in behalf of honest effort and honest inquiry.

The following summary comprises a brief review of what medicine has been doing in the recent past:

Radium.--This element was discovered about fifteen years ago by Professor and Mme. Curie. It possesses the wonderful property of giving out inexhaustible stores of energy. It virtually possesses the property of perpetual motion. Professor Becquerel was the first one to suggest that it might possess therapeutic or healing powers. The suggestion came to him in a curious way. He carried a tube of radium in his vest pocket and was severely burnt as a consequence. The incident suggested to him that, if radium could attack healthy tissue in such a short time, it should be able to similarly attack diseased tissue. Experiments were soon instituted, and are still being conducted to exactly define its curative value and scope.

It was hailed as a cure for cancer and other serious conditions, but we have found that it is not a cure for these ailments. It is, however, exceedingly valuable in the treatment of certain skin diseases. In lupus, epithelial tumors, ulcers, papillomata, angiomata and pruritus, it is being widely and successfully used. It was later discovered that it can quickly kill disease-producing bacteria. It is also well known that it will efficiently purify water.

X-Ray Treatment and X-Ray Diagnosis.--Professor Roentgen gave to the world an exceedingly valuable discovery in the X-Ray. He discovered that a certain form of electrical energy, when applied in a certain way, would produce shadows that differentiated between a certain degrees of opacity. For example, it would, if directed upon the human hand, produce shadows that clearly indicated whether the substance through which the rays passed was bone or muscle. The chief value of the X-Rays has been found to be this property rather than any healing value which has been attributed to them. The fact that these shadows can be photographed has rendered them of supreme value in surgery and medicine. Previously it was essential that the surgeon should depend upon his own diagnosis, upon what he could learn from his sense of touch and from surrounding conditions. With the X-Rays at his disposal he can quite eliminate the personal equation. His pictures are precise and mathematically accurate; he can prove the truth of his diagnosis before he cuts. We can take pictures of fractured bones and from what we learn we can immediately tell how they should be set to attain the very best results. We can actually tell if there is a stone in the kidney before we subject the patient to a serious operation. We can actually take pictures of the stomach at various stages of digestion and tell what disease affects the individual with a degree of precision that was not possible before the X-Rays were introduced. These examples only suggest its use. There are a multiplicity of uses for these as yet unknown rays which have greatly aided in diagnosis and consequently in successful treatment.

Aseptic Surgery.--The utility of the aseptic principle in surgery was demonstrated by the Japanese army surgeons during the war with Russia in 1904-1905. Their success in preventing deaths from suppurating wounds amazed the world. Their method was to discard the use of antiseptics and to depend upon absolutely clean instruments, dressings and hands. The most terrible wounds healed under this method without festering. This is, of course, the method in vogue to-day all over the civilized world. The Japanese did not discover aseptic surgery, but they were the first to put it to actual test in a large way. The old method was to depend upon drugs to kill the germs which might find their way into wounds and operations. To-day we prevent the germs from getting into the wound and depend upon nature to do the rest.

New Anesthetics.--Several important advances have been made in methods of giving anesthetics and in the nature of the products used. Temporary unconsciousness with electricity was induced in 1909 by Dr. Stephane Leduc. Stovaine was invented by Dr. Jonnesco, of Bucharest. He injected it into the spinal cord after the method made famous by Biers with cocaine in 1899. Dr. W. S. Schley invented novocaine for the same purpose. Temporary unconsciousness was accomplished by the use of epsom salts injected into the spinal cord by Dr. Samuel J. Meltzer. All of these efforts to discover a harmless anesthetic by spinal injection were made possible by investigations and experiments of Dr. J. Leonard Corning, of New York, who worked along this line as far back as 1885. The most revolutionary discovery, however, was that of Dr. S. J. Meltzer at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, when he inserted a tube into the windpipe, through which he pumped the anesthetic into the lungs. While doing this he at the same time pumped oxygen to aerate the blood, thus ensuring the patient against possible accident during the course of difficult and tedious operations on the lungs and heart.

Vaccine in Typhoid Fever.--Inasmuch as typhoid fever has played an important part in the conduct of all wars, it has always been a source of much careful study by military and naval surgeons in every civilized country in the world. We had not, however, reached a stage when it was possible to hope for its extermination until medical science began to appreciate the possibilities of vaccine therapy. The Cuban, Boer and Russian wars, because of the terrible experiences of the soldiers with typhoid in each of them, stimulated inquiry along the line of discovering a serum of vaccine that would be effectual against it. American, British, French and Japanese military and naval surgeons instituted experiments simultaneously to discover an anti-typhoid vaccine. In the fall of 1909, American army surgeons were experimenting with a serum at Washington and on Governor's Island with success, but the first public announcement of an absolutely successful vaccine was made by Captain Vincent of the French navy on June 20th, 1910, before the Acad?mie de Medicine in Paris. The final success of the anti-typhoid serum has been conclusively proved by elaborate tests upon soldiers and sailors in many nations.

It is difficult for the ordinary individual to appreciate the significance and importance of a discovery of this character and magnitude. When one thinks calmly of the thousands and thousands of men who have lost their lives during wars because of typhoid epidemics, and of the thousands of others who have returned home practically invalided for life from the same cause, it is possible to, at least, conceive of the benefit to the race such a discovery promises. And when we learn that the discovery is a product of the same principle or method which gave to the world a cure for smallpox, diphtheria and syphilis, we must begin to believe that the medical profession is on the path which is unlimited in its field of promise so far as efficient treatment is concerned. Yet to-day we have people who do not believe in vaccination or in anti-diphtheritic serum. We may not live to see the time, but it is not far distant in the opinion of men qualified to speak with authority, when every disease will be amenable to the serum therapy, and when drugs will virtually be discarded by the human race.

"606."--One of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine was recently given to the world by Dr. Paul Ehrlich.

He called it "606," because it was the 606th experiment he had made with the same end in view. It was designed with the purpose of curing the most terrible disease known to man, syphilis. The name of the remedy is salvarsan. That it will do all that was first claimed for it is still doubtful, but salvarsan and its improvements, neosalvarsan, etc., are accepted by the profession as by far the best treatment yet devised for this dread disease. It points the way for improvement along the same line to an ultimate specific.

Transplanting the Organs of Dead Men Into Living Men.--To take from a recently dead individual a kidney, or a bone, or an artery, and by immersing them in certain fluids thereby keeping them alive indefinitely, and later transplanting them in the body of a living individual so that they will continue to live and perform their function in the new environment, is a revolutionary and a seemingly incredible performance. Yet Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, has accomplished this wonderful task. The smallest imagination can picture the possibilities of this kind of surgery, but, inasmuch as the discovery is so recent and the opportunities for testing it upon human beings are so relatively few, that time alone can tell how far it may be possible to go.

Anti-Meningitis Serum.--Another important discovery that has emanated from the Rockefeller Institute is the Anti-Meningitis serum. The death rate from spinal meningitis, before the introduction of the serum, was 70 per cent., the use of the serum has reduced this percentage to 30. We owe this important contribution to Dr. Simon Flexner.

A Serum for Malaria Now Possible.--Dr. C. C. Bass, of Tulane University, has succeeded in extracting malaria-producing parasites from human blood and keeping them alive in test tubes. This feat had been long attempted but never before with success. The significance of this achievement is that it is the first step toward preparing a serum that will give immunity to malaria.

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