Preventive medicine to the public health / by Alfred Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, Alfred.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Preventive medicine to the public health / by Alfred Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/390 (page 5)
    The belief, however, is now becoming popular that a very large percentage of ordinary diseases is quite preventible. It is supposed that 50 per cent, of all the maladies which employ the time of the general practitioner would not arise if sanitary works were properly carried out, and the ordinary laws of Nature as to cleanliness obeyed. The duty of the family medical adviser is not only to instruct his patient in the way to get better of his disease, but also to tell him how to prevent the recurrence of similar attacks in the future. The public are becoming fully aware of this fact in consequence of the teaching of our profession, and they will be certain even to demand more assistance than we shall be able to afford. They are now enquiring most urgently to be saved from the infliction of those evils which they are assured, both by experience and analogy, can be prevented if proper means are adopted at the right time. The fact that a large portion of the members of our profession are uneducated in the laws of pre- vention does greatly tend to diminish our power in the State as a profession, and also gives an impetus to those forms of quackery which too often find favour with enquiring and reforming minds. These people see that serious errors are often made by medical men in the matter of preven- tion, and, losing confidence in their usual family adviser, they seek fresh advice from men of the world, who idealise and seek safety in specious platitudes rather than in accuracy of diction.