A national health policy / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A national health policy / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from first-hand contact with individual sickness and with actual environmental conditions. The subject-matter of this book consists of three parts. One part is devoted to a discussion of those fundamental principles of biology on which an intelli¬ gent health policy must perforce be built; another deals as briefly as possible with the principal environ¬ mental cause of disease at the present day in England; whilst the third part discusses the right methods of organisation of what we may call remedial work, and the medical and sanitary personnel involved in its execu¬ tion. Little attempt is made to keep these departments of the problem apart. They are, by their very nature, interrelated, and a certain amount of overlapping is inevitable. No attempt is made at completeness, for the subject is almost limitless. The book may, however, be of some help to those who are giving their minds to the subject from the political standpoint, as indicating a scale of relative values that it is hoped will assist in directing into the most important channels much energy that is at present being diverted into courses relatively insignificant. Modern medicine, remedial as well as preventive, is basing itself more and more on actual observed facts, both natural and experimental. The evil influence of Plato on all but the highest minds is largely responsible for the stagnation of medical science during more than a thousand years. The methods of intuition and guess¬ ing are all very well for geniuses ; to ordinary, dull- minded persons they serve but as an excuse for intel¬ lectual laziness. Abstract and metaphysical conceptions of disease and its processes have their use, but until they have been passed through the crucible of scientific method they are poor guides to practice. So long as medicine rested on such foundations, it was open to every doctor, and, indeed, to every layman, to make his own guess and have his own theory. And so long ago as the tenth century it was remarked that “ the patient
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