A NEW CRUSADE IS NEEDED FOR HEALTH AND SANITYAuthor(s): Gordon BatesSource: Canadian Journal of Public Health / Revue Canadienne de Sante'e Publique, Vol. 62, No.5 (September/October 1971), pp. 363-365Published by: Canadian Public Health AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41986988 .

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trop radicaux dans les modes de vie où les facteurs étiologiques sont tellement nom- breux qu'il est impossible de réduire efficace- ment les risques de maladie en en éliminant un ou deux. En même temps, la prévention d'une maladie peut créer un autre problème. Par exemple, une orientation génétique pour réduire les cas d'anémie à hématies falci- formes pourrait augmenter le risque de ma- laria, et la maternité précoce pour réduire le risque de cancer du sein pourrait augmenter les cas de cancer du cervix.

Nous qui nous occupons de médecine pré- ventive n'avons pas gardé pour nous la Solu- tion dans notre petit coin pendant que nos

collègues qui s'occupent de guérir baignaient dans la gloire et l'adulation. Au fur et à me- sure que la prévention remplacera la guéri- son, le prestige professionnel et public de la médecine préventive augmentera. On atten- dra aussi beaucoup plus de nous. Qu'il s'a- gisse de recherche pure ou de programmes de prévention, nous devrons répondre à cette at- tente. Si nous sommes diligents et si nous avons beaucoup de chance, peut-être que la prévention, par opposition au mythe de la prévention, remplacera le mythe de la guéri- son.

Robert W. Morgan

A NEW CRUSADE IS NEEDED FOR HEALTH AND SANITY1

Gordon Bates, s.m., m.d.

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated need but to be seen Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

Alexander Pope, Essay On Man

^HE above words were written by Alexan-

der Pope, famous British poet and philos- opher of the 18th Century. Many of us re- membered them when about a year ago we read that the Central Council on Health Edu- cation of Great Britain (formerly a reliable source of health information) proposed to is- sue pamphlets advising the young people of Great Britain that since we are living in an opulent and permissive society we might do well to follow the philosophy of Casanova.

1. Reprinted from The Canadian Register, June 26, 19711.

September/October 1971

"After all Casanova had a good time and he did not hurt anybody." Was this a singu- larly bad joke or was it just another indica- tion of permissiveness of the society in which we live? Did the authors of this invalid piece of cynicism forget to tell the British people that Casanova was perhaps the most noto- rious libertine in history, that he seduced his own daughter because he had forgotten that he had seduced her mother 20 years pre- viously and that he died of syphilis, charac- terized by the great Osier as the 'Captain of the Men of Death'.

There is some evidence in our country that our self assumed halo of sanctity is slipping. When a single municipality accepts the prin- ciple that it is wise to encourage the distribu- tion of contraceptives among the young as a

Editorial Section 363

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valid preventive, there is something wrong with our thinking.

Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man found part of the answer to the devious ap- proach by an indifferent society which seems to attempt to create a new morality which is simply the old immorality under another name.

Self-sacrifice Arnold Toynbee, famous British philoso-

pher and historian, has issued prophetic state- ments during the last few weeks. He has sug- gested that the materialism characteristic of our current society will disappear because trade unions, originally created with the best of intentions, will make such exorbitant de- mands on industry that they could destroy in- dustry itself and thus themselves, and that the future of mankind depends not on our cur- rent and ever-expanding greed but on accept- ance of self-sacrifice as an essential religion.

We are at this moment a society misled by a misuse of terms. We have accepted greed on the part of nearly everybody as a virtue. The cost of relief and welfare is increasing everywhere, because we have not yet recog- nized the fact that poverty is caused by sick- ness, whether it be moral or physical. We are not doing enough to prevent it.

Iron lungs and crutches and the care of cripples were once considered sufficient to deal with the dreaded polio. With the discov- ery of a polio vaccine, polio in Canada has at last disappeared. But neither a vaccine against venereal disease nor the pill, nor pen- icillin will prevent the ravages of venereal diseases any more than legal abortion will prevent moral delinquency.

Conscience of the Nation Mark Twain said that "everybody talks

about the weather but nobody does anything about it". It is equally futile to think that we can prevent the evils of illegitimacy or vene- real disease by a mere publicity campaign. When Alfred Tennyson named as sovereign

364 Canadian Journal of Public Health

virtues - self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control, he spoke as a poet and a proph- et. When Senator Edward Muskie of Maine said, not long ago, that the voluntary associa- tions are the conscience of the nation, he gave voice to another great truth. The doc- tors, the clergy and the press must now face the urgent necessity for a new crusade, a cru- sade for health and sanity in our new and in- different society.

The venereal diseases, gonorrhea and sy- philis, are originally evidence of moral delin- quency even though they result finally in suf- ferings to millions of the innocent. It is not without significance that the Wall Street Journal some months ago published an edi- torial on this subject suggesting that recent efforts to control both illegitimacy and vene- real diseases have as their immediate cause the use of the pill to prevent pregnancy and peni- cillin to control venereal disease.

It was Rabelais, a famous monk and physi- cian of the 15th Century, who said in one of his plays that "science without conscience is the death of the soul". Science has made great advances in our own time to the end that human beings are now living to be older than they used to. In the year 1850, the aver- age life of man was 40 years; in 1900, it was 50 years. It is now 73 except in very back- ward countries. Yet we have followed false prophets just as the Israelites followed false prophets in the era of Moses and Aaron when they worshipped the Golden Calf. One of our modern evils is that we still very large- ly worship the Golden Calf.

Are we to be pursued by these maladies again? As a matter of fact they have already reached epidemic proportions throughout America; their victims are now counted in millions when they used to be counted in thousands. Yet clergymen who have no spe- cial knowledge about venereal diseases or sex, for that matter, seem to be immune.

In the face of these facts apparently up to now all efforts by governments seem to have failed. Both illegitimacy and venereal diseases

Vol. 62

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are increasing. In the opinion of this writer, efforts to control either illegitimacy or vene- real diseases by doing nothing further than merely telling the public that they exist and are serious, is of little avail.

It was the Archbishop of Canterbury who, during the Second Great War, warned the medical authorities in the Army that they were making the serious mistake of treating a moral problem with drugs only. It has been suggested that physicians who have studied the ills of humanities during the centuries should take the lead in the attack on mala- dies that are not only of medical significance but of moral significance as well.

Forgetting the Spirit Every physician down through the ages,

under the leadership of great men, one of whom was Galileo and who number among their ranks Edward Jenner, Lord Lister and the Great Pasteur who was a chemist, are getting little enough opportunity to stand side by side with the clergy and the press in an ef- fort to cure maladies in which things of the spirit are forgotten. It is high time that we re- alize that in the kind of society in which we live, Armageddon could be just around the corner.

Despite the scientific knowledge of an Ein- stein who split the atom or Sir Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin, we seem to have forgotten the virtues of our fore- bears.

It was George Vincent, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, who more than 25 years ago stated that the ultimate Medical Officer of Health is the practising physician. It must be true that no mere book work can produce the sympathy in the hearts of man which creates the charity which can only be

September/October 1971

translated into love for one's fellow man. This article is an appeal to citizens to sup-

port a new crusade to enlist the support, first, of the clergy, physicians and the press in a voluntary effort to attack the evils which plague us. This crusade is already underway. A letter goes forward this week to every phy- sician in Canada asking him to put the great powers which science has given him into ac- tion and with the clergy proclaim themselves proponents of a new crusade which can only be achieved by the co-operation of the public organized as they are in the great voluntary associations in this country.

Stand Up and be Counted Jenkin Lloyd Jones, an eminent American

editor, wrote an address to the American press entitled "The Decline of Morality". He said that it is time for the press of North America to stand up and be counted and in effect 'raise heir. We should now stand up and be counted. The crusade has com- menced. Let us encourage our young people by protecting them against these evils which are at present being flaunted before them as if all teenagers were expected to be promis- cuous and that permissiveness is part of nor- mal life and presenting them with what is considered to be a preventive - the issuance of contraceptives to the young. Bad as condi- tions are, they involve a small percentage of our population.

Talking to children about venereal diseases is futile when they are still too young to un- derstand the mechanism of sex in humans but old enough to learn the difference be- tween right and wrong. They can learn these virtues from wise parents, the Bible, Shake- speare, and the poets.

Editorial Section 365

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