Abstract
A PRINCIPAL feature of the 1945 issue of The Fight against Disease, the organ of the Research Defence Society, is the fourteenth Stephen Paget Lecture, given by Sir William Savage, entitled “Public Health and its Debt to Experimental Medical Research”. Public health, said Sir William, is concerned with all measures which operate to promote or to maintain the health of the community, the direct treatment of disease being usually outside its scope. It is, therefore, not a science, but includes the application of many sciences to all its purposes. Because the development of many sciences has depended upon research which involved the use of experiments upon animals, developments in public health during the last fifty years have also depended upon this use of experimental animals. We now have, speaking generally, sufficient knowledge to control most of the infectious diseases, but we cannot always apply that knowledge, because its application would be prevented by interference with the liberty of the subject, the reluctance of many people to respond to preventive measures or to endure the inconveniences involved.
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LAPAGE, G. PUBLIC HEALTH AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDICAL RESEARCH.. Nature 157, 813–814 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/157813a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/157813a0