FOUR SCORE

The inner regions of the heart will no longer be sacred, for medical science has invented a "cardioscope" enabling physicians to see inside the beating heart. To Dr. Duff S. Allen, a young surgical assistant at Washington University, belongs the honor of having perfected the instrument. By making a slight incision directly over the heart, and gazing through what appears to be a combination of flashlight and microscope, he can distinctly see the working of the heart valves.

But this invention assumes its proper significance only when placed in a series which has gradually been developing, and when it is realized that diseases of the heart now cause a larger number of fatalities than any other single type of illness. Not long ago tuberculosis and pneumonia led all the rest, but medical research has now found means of fighting these, with fresh air, with oxygen, with serum, and by other more technical means, until the number of deaths recorded from each has become less and less. But on the other hand the recent cardioscope is merely the continuation of the idea of other inventions dealing with surgery of the chest. The cardiograph--an instrument for recording heart-beats; electric photography, photographic magnifying of stethoscopic sounds, and the comparatively recent development of adrenalin have all helped in the medical warfare for the saving of mortal hearts, so that now this last "disease of civilization" seems succumbing to the attacks of science.

Ever since civilization began, science has thus kept pace with the evil effects arising from its development. The perfection of eye-glasses followed upon the introduction of the printing press, surgery was stimulated by the invention of gunpowder and artillery, and gas-masks appeared soon after the introduction of gas as a weapon of offence. But medical science has more than kept pace with disease. At a dinner of prominent physicians it was possible to state that the man of today can reasonably expect ten years more of life than the man of a century and a half ago. The motion might be in order to substitute "four-score" for the famous "three score and ten".