Editorial January 9, 1915 Issue

Peace in the Midst of Alarms

Archibald McLellan

Among the imaginative yet instructive tales of light literature is one about an Oriental king who employed a physician to keep him well. On the surface the arrangement seemed a simple and satisfactory one, but the outcome was less so—for the royal physician—as when the king fell ill, the doctor lost not only his employment, but his head as well.

In an address delivered not long ago by a physician and professor of a medical school before the social and economic sections of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a proposition was advanced which in one respect at least reminds us of the tale referred to. The speaker is quoted as saying that "when a man of active affairs feels an exuberance of health, and is able to accomplish a greatly increased amount of work without sense of fatigue, he is in danger, and should consult a physician." By his failure to advocate that the physician consulted should lose his head in case the man of active affairs became ill, the professor avoided the deadly parallel, and took nothing from the romance or the orientalism of the proposition. Whether his remarks were taken seriously by his audience, is not disclosed by the newspaper reports, but these same reports indicate that the editors do not expect a large portion of the public to follow immediately his advice.

The New York World, speaking editorially, says: "From medicine, as from Africa, always something new; but is there not to be even a constructive recess between doctors' visits? If a man must seek medical advice when he feels well, just as when he feels ill, his bondage to materia medica, as Mrs. Eddy would say, will become a real servitude. . . . But are the doctors to dangle a memento mori before our eyes? Must a man have death in his mind at all times, whether he is feeling ill or well? Diagnosis takes a curious turn when it finds dangerous symptoms in what laymen have supposed were signs of good health."