Ebook The Relation of Medicine to Philosophy

That the progress of medical science has enor mously reduced the death-rate no one can possibly deny. The cry occasionally heard, that there is a vast increase in diseases which were never heard of before, is purely absurd; this increase of disease is merely increase in the differentiation of disease. Because at one time the word fever served to cover almost every affection in which the pulse and respiration were quickened and the skin hot, the sum total of disease has not been increased by giving different names to the various fevers. To take a more techni cal instance, the disease of the nervous system called Disseminated Sclerosis will almost undoubtedly be divided up with increasing knowledge into several diseases of the spinal cord, but the sum total of diseases will not be larger. There is, however, just this much truth in the outcry, that as man's life has become more complex with advancing civilisation, so the possibility of minor oscillations from complete adjustment to the environment becomes increasingly great; it is more difficult to be perfectly healthy, because a higher standard of health is required by modern life. This is particularly seen in the case of insanity for civilisation, by increasing the number of social and moral rules to be observed, increases the possibility of their infraction.