CRISIS IN MEDICINE SIR,—The thoughtful and courageous manner in which
Mr. Brian Inglis is tackling this most important problem should stimulate the medical profession to prompt and vigorous action.
Prevention, however, is admittedly better than cure. The alarming increase of psycho- somatic diseases is due, not to the failure of the medical profession to apply suitable remedies, but to the failure of the educational and religious authorities to overcome the out- of-date conflict between scientific knowledge and faith. The consequent sense of insecurity and lack of any fundamental principles of con- duct produce the state of mind which pre- disposes a large percentage of the population to become sufferers from mental disorders and their physical results.
It is probably correct, with reference to the medical profession, to say that 'the mechanist
fallacy, after all, has only established itself within living memory'; it is also true that a mechanist or materialist philosophy has only destroyed faith within living memory amongst that great mass of the public whose mental attitude has been so drastically changed by compulsory education. The prevalence of psychosomatic disorders at the present time is due to the failure of so much of our present- day education to overcome the apparent con- ilia between knowledge and faith. The teach- ing of science seldom produces any real under- standing of the change from the mechanistic basis of scientific thought which has resulted from recent developments in quantum theory, the implications of relativity and probability and, less decisively perhaps, the study of the manner in which genes influence development and growth. The teaching of religion is still often dominated by mediaeval and even primi- tive concepts which undoubtedly appealed to the masses a century ago but which are pain- fully repugnant to the majority of educated minds.
Until education authorities make some honest and intelligent effort to blend modern know- ledge and intuitive faith into some acceptable philosophy, thereby ridding the great majority of minds of the conscious or unconscious con- flict between apparent facts and normal human hopes, the medical profession will continue to face 'the coming crisis' without any genuine remedy for psychosomatic ailments.—Yours faithfully,
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