TABLE OF CONTENTS. Our Social Readjustments and the Relation of the State to Mother- hood and Children. By George A. Hare, M.D., Fresno, Cal. Legislation Affecting the Entrance upon the Practice of Medicine: Legislation Regulating the Practice of Medicine, Preliminary and Medical Education. By N. P. Colwell, M.D., Chicago, Secretary Examinations for License to Practise and Hospital Interneship. By John M. Baldy, M.D., Philadelphia, President of the Bureau of Medical Education and Licensure of the State of Pennsylvania. 37 Legislation Affecting the Status and Duties of Physicians: Legislation Creating Civil Positions for Physicians. By John B. McAlister, M.D., Harrisburg, Pa., President of the Medical So- ciety of the State of Pennsylvania.. Social Insurance against Accidents (Workmen's Compensation Laws). By Frederick L. Van Sickle, M.D., Olyphant, Pa..... Health Insurance. By John B. Andrews, Ph.D., New York City, Secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation.... Unemployment Insurance. By Hon. Rufus M. Potts, Springfield, The Relation of Medical Benefits of Health Insurance to Existing The New York State Sanitary Code, How Enacted-Its Scope and Legislative Protection of the People from the Evils of Patent Medicines and Medical Fakers. By F. F. Lawrence, M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.A.C.S., Columbus, O.. Industrial Legislation: ......... 154 176 Standards Applicable to Child Labor. By Helen L. Sumner, Ph.D., Legislation for Care of Exceptional Cases: 179 183 189 The Physically Defective. By E. O. Otis, M.D., Boston... The State and the Insane. By Richard H. Hutchings, M.D., Ogdensburg, N. Y., Superintendent, St. Lawrence State Hospital...... 209 The Necessity for Medical Examination of Prisoners at the Time of Trial. By Paul E. Bowers, M.D., Michigan City, Ind., Physician to Indiana Hospital for Insane Criminals.. 220 OUR SOCIAL READJUSTMENTS AND THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO MOTHERHOOD AND CHILDREN. By GEORGE A. HARE, M.D., Fresno, Cal. We have met this evening to celebrate the forty-first anniversary of the founding of the American Academy of Medicine. I will not attempt to recount our achievements, for society has moved so rapidly during the past forty-one years that should any one have had the temerity to have outlined our progress he would have been classed as a dreamer of dreams. It was Morse who tried to forecast our progress in 1819 by teaching school children in his Universal Geography issued in that year that "All settlers who go beyond the Mississippi River will be forever lost to the United States." And again it was tried in 1840 by no less a person than Daniel Webster who, in one of his eloquent speeches before the United States Senate, exprest his belief that the Mississippi River formed the Western boundary of modern progress beyond which American civilization could hope to make no substantial headway for he askt, "What do we want with that vast and worthless area that region of savage wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirling winds, of dust, of cactus and of prairie dogs?" "To what use could we ever hope to put those great deserts and those endless mountain ranges-what could we ever do with that western coast-a coast of three thousand miles-rock bound, cheerless and uninviting." Even Webster had no dream that the children of his day would see a Lincoln Highway unite the undisputed center of the commercial world with the unrivalled paradise of the Pacific. As an illustration of our rapid progress take the interesting problem of intelligent quarantine. Suppose that New Orleans, during a scourge of yellow fever fifty years ago had had a really intelligent health officer, who would have considered that physical contact with a person dying of yellow fever involved no danger whatever, and who would have considered green peas, cucumbers and water melons as deliciously harmless as they really are, and permitted them freely in the open market, and should have directed his energies and authority toward the extermination of the stegomyia mosquito. Such intelligence would have caused him to be considered the victim of hallucinations and a fit subject for the insane asylum. But when society gave sufficient study to the problem of control of infectious diseases it found the adoption of this apparently insane idea a practical necessity. Yellow fever, malaria and bubonical plague have remained unchanged, but society has had to change its viewpoint, and to consider them no longer questions of green vegetables, foul air and evil spirits, but rather of mosquitoes, of fleas, and of bedbugs, no longer questions of dietetics but questions of entomology. But I hear some one say, we had to change our view point in the treatment because doctors had not discovered the bacterial cause of these diseases. All right then, let us illustrate the changed view point of society by citing another instance. We have done a wonderful work in controlling the ravages of tuberculosis. We certainly have discovered its bacterial causation, never was conformation to Koch's postulates more rigidly demanded. We have educated the public until its bacterial cause is the common knowledge of every school boy. We have demonstrated beyond a question that this is a preventable disease and should no longer be the white plague of an intelligent civilization. We have lowered the death rate some, but the real problem of its control and its eradication is yet before us. |