Health of the Future
- Author:
Aleck W. Bourne, M.B.,
F.R.C.S. Penguin. 9d.
It is impossible in the compass of a ” Penguin ” to give with any great statistical detail, a picture of the health of our community. Nor, in a book intended for a wide public, is it desirable. Mr. Aleck Bourne, in Health of the Future, has done something of infinitely greater value. He has examined the very foundation of his subject, and established an attitude of mind towards it which, if generally accepted and understood, would do much to bring us nearer to a sane and constructive solution of the whole problem of health and disease. He finds his ” causa causarum “, the root of all ills, in that form of social organization which permits poverty to exist. Under present conditions, ” the good life ” is impossible for all but the very few, and it will remain so as long as palliative measures only are applied to the four major manifestations of poverty. Bad housing, bad feeding, overwork and anxiety constitute an environment in which illness flourishes and ” off-health ” is normal.
The facts and figures are gloomy enough. They strike the mind with the force of things, known, perhaps, but inadequately realized. That dark region lying beyond our surgeries and hospitals is vividly, if briefly, illuminated.
There are some suggestions for immediate and practical advance. It is not quite clear whether Mr. . Bourne believes these to be useful in themselves, or only in conjunction with the great major reform of the abolition of poverty. In any case, most of them, as he points out, are already under discussion by the various bodies which are planning the future of medicine. The unique value of his book lies less in these, than in the angle of vision from which the whole is viewed. He sees that both systems and science have virtue only in so far as they minister to the fuller and happier development of individual men. It is an attitude not yet altogether common either among professional administrators or professional medical men.
Some of the philosophical premises are arguable. We may doubt whether happiness, even as a by-product, is the most satisfactory goal of life; we may wonder if economic security and health education will, in fact, defeat the whole of ” credulity, prejudice and super- stition “, as readily as Mr. Bourne appears to believe. But, with the more specific conclusions, the insistence on the sociological causes of illness, and the vision of the whole man trained in joyous positive health, there will be ready and enthusiastic assent. The book should stimulate a wide public. It may, perhaps, be hoped it will not be a wholly non-professional one. H.S.D.
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