Show LAYMEN AIDING IN MEDICAL RESEARCH Important Discoveries Mndo by Men Not in Profession Medical discoveries by the nonmedl cal arc being discussed by physicians generally and Investigations of the subject reveal that many Important aids to the profession are the result of the laymans labors In writing on the I topic Dr George M Gould 01 Philadelphia Philadel-phia says I I have been struck by the fact that the majority of great medical discoveries discov-eries truths and Instruments have not been made completely and suddenly but have been led up to by preliminary and progressive steps and that the layman i lay-man has often made those discoveries prior to the medical practitioner Thin groat medical truth Is Indeed but an Illustration of tho general law that all professional progress In whatever branch of study la a result oC stimulus from without > Many lessons are to be drawn from such observations In medical history One lo struck by the fact that our brothers the animals were first In learning not a little of medical art Birds often show surgical instinct M Talk baa often killed woodcock convalescent from wounds previously received and in every instance ho found the injury neatly dressed with down plucked from the stems of feathers feath-ers and skillfully arranged over the wound evidently with the beak In other cases ligatures have been applied to wounded or broken limbs Fulbert Dumontell vouches for the fact that ten times he had found birds with the fractured frac-tured ends oC their legs l neatly approximated ap-proximated sad llgated together Dr Wier believes many higher animals ani-mals have discovered a materLa medica which should be recognized by physicians physi-cians Dogs will seek out conch grass when ailing horses and mules will eat clay for Internal l maladies and cattle with eczema have been seen to plaster hoof and Joint with mud Dr Wier mentions c cow which broke thin Ice on a pond to treat a Joint to a mud poultice poul-tice Sick cats will 50 miles for a dose of catnip Wler also tells of a largo monkey who scratched his shoulder on a projecting pro-jecting nail In his cane The animal seized a handful of clean sawdust and pressed It to tho bleeding sate stopping stop-ping the bleeding and leaving a coat under which the healing was prompt Ophthalmology was one of the earliest earli-est subjects to command professional opinion The origin of the operation of couching cataracts Is so lost In antiquity an-tiquity that Bllanus says men learned it from goats who by pushing their heads against thorns of n bush operated oper-ated on their own cataraclous eyes Babbnge a nonmedical man devised an Instrument for the purpose of lookIng look-Ing Into the Interior of the eye Pllneys description of the visual defect of the Emperor Nero suggests compound com-pound astigmatism Nero viewed the arena through t a large highly polished emerald probably of uneven curvature In Its two principal diameters Nero may thus be credited with the discovery of an eyeglass suited to shortsighted people Bifocal lenses were devised by a layman Benjamin Franklin Tho laryngoscope Is a great medical discovery made by a nonmcdlcol man Sonor Manuel de Garcia a singing master mas-ter of London made physiologic observations obser-vations on the voice In 1S55 using mirrors mir-rors on his throat as are employed l today I day Czcrmak converted the Invention Into an Instrument of Eclendfla research re-search Sir Kenelm Dltfby published a book on tho Powder of Sympathy In tho seventh century The knowledge of this powder he says came from a priest out of the Orient He claimed to heal wounds without either touching or seeing the patient by dissolving some of the powder In water und putting in this water any article having on It blood from the wound In the meantime mean-time tho patient was advised to castaway cast-away nil plasters keep tho wound clean and In moderate temper twlxt heat and cold Absurd though this may seem It was tho beginning ot the cure of wounds by Immediate union The Apaches employed ftS splints I strips of cedar wood bound together with sinews and fastened to the arm I with knots In the loose ends of tho sinews Water could bo applied through the spaces and a freo discharge dis-charge could bo secured In passing from surgery to medicine It Is noted that tho most andomt and persistent philosophy of disease lasting down to the present tlmo was that tho malady ivajj due to somo evil principle or spirit coming Into the body from tho outside to be fought against and driven out by any means possiblo and powerful power-ful Tho germ theory Infection and parasitiam on which medical science Is now bullded chows how essentially true was the old perception Indeed l the foreBhadowlngs of tho mIcrobic origin of dloease are numerous More than to all others is duo to Pas tsar the credit for discovering tho rrl crobic origin of contagious diseases yet Pasteur was not a medical man or even a physiologist was simply a chemist By his researches into tho origin of the silkworm disease of splenic fever and of chicken cholera he laid the foundation of preventive medicine a branch of science beyond question the greatest benefactor of civilization Chicago RecordHerald |