State-Craft and Medicine

Abstract

GEORGE NEWMAN, until recently Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health and of the Board of Education, in a preface to his latest work, entitled “The Building of a Nation's Health”, states that he intends it to be a “summary record of how statecraft and medical knowledge took council together at the opening of a new epoch of preventive medicine”. From one point of view this admirably describes the task which the author has so excellently performed. The responsibility for building and maintaining health in Great Britain may be said to be shared between the medical profession, the State, and the individual citizen. The part of the last named, though it is of essential importance and though it may even be obscured by some activities of the other two agencies, is not dealt with in Sir George Newman's book. This is legitimate, for the responsibility of the individual for his own health, and therefore to some extent for the common health, is somewhat apart from that of those other agencies, and may well be approached from a different angle and separately described or enforced. The responsibility of the State and of the medical profession cannot, however, be so dissevered; and, indeed, one of the main features of Sir George's book is the clearness with which it brings out, and the force with which it emphasizes the unity of the field of medicine, and the need for the intimate co-operation of various bodies of persons within the wider field of health. This leads one even to hope that the phrase “preventive medicine”, however convenient when carefully used, may be abandoned wherever possible, and the phrase “the preventive aspects of medicine” used in its stead. For “preventive medicine” cannot be separated either from “curative medicine” on one hand or from “constructive medicine” on the other. It is false to regard the State as being concerned with prevention and the medical profession with cure, or one class of medical practitioner as dealing with the former and another class with the latter. These are merely aspects, and not very clearly defined ones at that, of something which is essentially a unit.

The Building of a Nation's Health

By Sir George Newman. Pp. xiv + 479 + 8 plates. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1939.) 21s. net.