Preventive Trend in the Practice of Medicine

Abstract

THE trend of medical practice toward prevention is inevitable and it behooves the average citizen to study carefully the means to this end. The reason lies in the fact that the possibilities in the direction of prevention by the application of scientific knowledge are very great. It should be obvious even to the most superficial observer that this is the consideration which will bear the greatest weight in the determination of the type of medical practice which will prevail in the future. The common good will unquestionably be the criterion of adjustment. How radical that adjustment will be remains to be seen. The traditional type of medical practice is based on the possibilities of cure. Up to the last 50 years little thought was given to prevention because there was little knowledge of how to prevent. Today our point of view is changing with the increase in our scientific knowledge. We know that, largely as the result of the application of the work of Pasteur, about 18 years have been added to the expectation of life in a little over 50 years. Some of this has been due to the application of scientific knowledge in ordinary medical practice; much of it has resulted from communal action in which the health officerusually a physician, working in a profession the practice of which is so unlike ordinary medical practice that he-may be said to be a member of a new profession-plays a very great part. Today we attempt to ascertain how much more remains to be done and how it is to be done, particularly the part which is to be played by the medical practitioner-using the term in its accepted sense. That much remains to be done cannot be gainsaid; nor the tremendous social significance of the task and its achievement be denied. Illness is too prevalent and preventable illness and postponable death are too costly. Investigators tell us that 2 per cent of our entire population is constantly suffering from disabling illness. Irving Fisher estimates that 2.5 per cent of all workers in the United States are constantly ill. An English investigator estimates that workmen