JAMA Revisited
May 1, 2025
The Romance of Medicine
JAMA. Published online May 1, 2025. doi:10.1001/jama.2024.18830
Originally Published May 30, 1925 | JAMA. 1925;84(22):1611-1616.
William D. Haggard, M.D., Nashville, Tenn.
The story of medicine enthralls the imagination by its infinite charm and arouses admiration for its victories in the battles against disease.
Its romance is so compelling that men cannot be unmoved by its blessings, when they realize with us its splendor. The records of the discoveries of medicine are more fascinating than fiction…
The price of these great benefactions is beyond all the rubies of the world; it can never be computed and it can never be paid. In the Middle Ages the average life of man was twenty-odd years. Now the span has been increased almost threefold.…What a glorious thing it is when the piteous procession of men and women beg of you to be allowed to live a little longer on any terms, that you can succor them by the knowledge of Nature’s secrets that are your heritage from the studies of the scholars of all times.
Wonderful as the past has been, the last fifty years of medicine has witnessed more achievements of a miraculous character than the five preceding centuries. This is the golden age of medical advancement.…The last century gave us ether and chloroform, by which, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “the fiercest extremity of suffering was steeped in the waters of oblivion and the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed away forever.” Antisepsis has revolutionized surgery and made possible the present proud perfection of that most brilliant of all the arts.…Although the heart is only one inch from the surface of the body, twenty centuries of surgery rolled by before the scalpel could travel that inch.
Medicine is the only profession that is literally and altruistically devoted to professional suicide. It endeavors chiefly, not alone to cure, but to prevent disease, and thus to banish from mankind pain, suffering and ultimate death from maladies of the flesh. But what it cannot prevent it must cure. What it cannot cure it must palliate.…
The discovery of the germ of tuberculosis, “the Captain of the men of Death,” was the beginning of the annihilation of the Great White Plague and is a more important victory for mankind than resulted from the Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.…We must prevent, rather than be faced by the necessity of attempting later cure.…
A romance in medicine to grip the admiration of the world is the subjugation of typhoid fever. In the Boer War, typhoid destroyed 8,000 British soldiers, while only 7,000 were killed by all the enginery of Mars. In the World War, as a result of antityphoid vaccine, which was given to each of our 4,000,000 American soldiers, and increasing knowledge of sanitation, only 1,083 cases of typhoid fever developed, with only 158 deaths.…This conquest of typhoid is one of the greatest benisons of modern medicine.…
Most dramatic among modern victories is the conquest of yellow fever…“the pestilence that walketh in darkness;…the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” An epidemic of this in 1793 took the lives of 10,000 people in Philadelphia in three months and kept the Southern states in consternation with the recurring seasons. Its devastation prevented the genius of France from building the Panama Canal…The indomitableness of Roosevelt was matched by the genius of Gorgas, the master of yellow fever, who made…Panama the healthiest spot on earth. Thus occurred the union of the oceans through the canal.
In the opening year of the twentieth century, Reed, Carroll, Lazear and Agramonte proved…that a mosquito transmits yellow fever. While experimenting with death-laden Stegomyia, one of these army surgeons was bitten on the hand and sacrificed his own life in the consuming passion to save his fellow man. No man hath greater love than this.…Is it immodest for us in recounting this heroic self-sacrifice to have the pride of guild and to regard proudly the noble deeds of our profession?…
The use of safe drugs for local injection in rendering surgical operations painless is now like a performance in a world of magic. Antitetanic serum to prevent lockjaw is the king of preventive serums.…
The greatest romance of the last few years in medicine was the discovery of insulin by Banting. The wizardry of rescuing the diabetic patient by this remarkable discovery is truly a marvel.…
…These and other contributions of medicine to the relief of humankind are more thrilling to the man of science than all the wars of selfish kings..…
Editor’s Note: JAMA Revisited is transcribed verbatim from articles published previously, unless otherwise noted.
Article Information
Published Online: May 1, 2025. doi:10.1001/jama.2024.18830
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