WONDERS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3583, 24 July 1912, Page 8

WONDERS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

THE PROGRESS IN THE LAST DECADE.

In a recent lecture, Dr. Woods Hutchinson, of U.S.A., listed the important medical achievements of the decade as follows; Discovery of the tuberculin test for tuberculosis.

Identification of the house fly as the principal carrier of typhoid.

Identification of the tsetse fly as the cause of yellow fever and of ma-

le ria. Recognition of the rat as the pm; cipal carrier of plagueDiscovery of tho hookworm and its cure.

Discovery of antitoxin for cerebrospinal meningitis, reducing fatahrb-s from 70 -per cent, to 25 per cent. Identification of the germ causing tho worst forms of blood disease, and discovery of tests which demonstrate infection and cure. Transference of vital organs from ■one animal to another without death of the animal. In regard to tuberculin, Dr. Hutchinson says:— “The great discovery of tho decade has been tho skin tests of Calmette and Von- Pirquet. Simply by scratching or rubbing a little tuberculin into the skin a reaction is produced which enables us to discover tho disease at its earliest stage, when it is as curable as measles and long before it has become infectious to others. With the aid of this tost we can break up each nest of disease as fast as we discover it. We can stop our present practice of burying 10,000 cases of the disease every year and breeding 20,000 new cases to take their place, which means that each case before it died infected at least two others.”