OUNCES OF PREVENTION

Following directly on the heels of the announcements of the Nobel awards for medicine and physics, comes a report from abroad of a young Swiss physician, Dr. Leander Tomarkin, who has apparently discovered, in a new drug called antimicrobum tomarkin, a cure for pneumonia. Results of experiments carried on in military hospitals and at Rome University indicate that the mortality rate of thirty-five per cent in pneumonia and bronchial pneumonia can, by the use of the drug, be reduced to less than one per cent.

The story of Dr. Tomarkin's success is the usual chronicle of struggles with privation, and perseverance in the face of continued popular disbelief. During the fatal illness of the late Pope Benedict, he volunteered his services, only to be received with coolness and question.

Dr. Tomarkin and his fellow scientists would seem to have a thankless task on their hands in striving to find means with which to prolong life and crush out sickness and disease. As human nature apparently stands at present, each person who is saved today from the ravages of consumption and pneumonia is one more to serve tomorrow as a target for gas waves and poison bombs. Destruction has always been a much more interesting pastime than mere beneficial prevention. This is proved by the popular renown of such geniuses as Attila, Nero, and Guy Fawkes, about whom every student of history reads with a secret feeling of fellowship. On the other hand very few could tell offhand the accomplishments of Laennec, Koch, or Takamine.