An appeal for the sake of man and of medicine / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An appeal for the sake of man and of medicine / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    6/28 (page 6)
    young men and young women, is less than that in high-school, college, and university classes, one can only add the fervent prayer that it may be so. The doubt of it still • clings. A disease that afflicts some 80 out of ioo of our educated classes, is a bitter commentary on education, and upon the official guardians of the public health. And such a disease! A variation from an upright support, a curve, or kink, at the base of the single column which supports the human body! What architect would be reckless of such a fact in the steel beams of his bridges or sky-scrapers? And only one or two orthopedic surgeons in the United States and Canada accept even partially the truth. The rest of the several hundred thousand physicians and surgeons do not know the cause of the disease, can- not cure it, and make light of it when they are prodded. They do not look for it, could not even see it, unless it were pointed out to them, that is when it exists in its functional stages, those only in which it is curable. Thus they go on treating its symptoms and effects with drugs, opera- tions, morphin, institutional life, “rest- cures,” etc. How often I have witnessed the grief, the shame, the tragedy of noble physicians, when I, an oculist, have revealed to them the fact unsuspected before, that their own children were hopelessly deformed