Health and Disease, Their Determining Factors
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: Roger I. Lee, M.D. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1917. Pp. xvi 378.
Dr Lee, who is professor of hygiene in Harvard University and visiting physician to the Massachusetts General Hospital, dedicates his book “to the anonymous graduate of Harvard whose wisdom and generosity made possible the department of hygiene in his alma mater.” It is a noble tribute to the munificence of one and the intelligence of the many. “The book contains,” says Dr Lee, “the principles which should guide an individual in living an effective life to its allotted span; the principles which should govern a community in facing its many problems of health and which a citizen should know to act intelligently and wisely towards this vital function of government, and something of medical history and progress, as well as of the fields still to be explored. This material has been based on the assumption that the intelligent layman, who, after all, is keenly interested in health and disease in his own person and in his family, and who pays not only the doctor’s bills for himself and family, but also his share of the community’s medical bills in taxes, is entitled to a straightforward exposition of the underlying principles of health and disease.”
The range of subjects covered is exhaustive. The treatment is judicial, especially in discussing such moot questions as alcohol, tobacco, diet, and venereal disease. Dr Lee disarms the only serious criticism to which his book is exposed, by admitting frankly, “There has been opportunity for the inclusion of no extended amount of original material. First hand sources of all sorts, medical books, monographs, and periodicals, have been consulted freely.” The work will be of the greatest value to social workers and public health officers, to physicians as a compendious reference on preventive medicine, and in general to all employers who are far-sighted enough to see their own profit in the welfare of their employees. A. T.
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