According to its preface this volume sets forth a new way to look at preventive medicine and is intended for medical students, general practitioners, specialists, and workers in health agencies. It endeavors, through the contributions of 29 experts, to discuss the prevention of disease and to show how a disease, once established, may be managed in its further progress.
Early diagnosis is often impossible because the patient insists on self-medication for the complaint at hand. Then, when it gets beyond relief, he seeks medical advice—often too late. Advances in preventive medicine continue to be publicized in both the medical and the lay press. This is all to the good; for the high hope is that much disease can be prevented if patients, or the public in general, become fairly well acquainted with symptoms which will lead to consultation with doctors of medicine. Unfortunately, this is too often wishful thinking. Further