MAHOMET AND THE MOUNTAIN

In the Sunday afternoon, Lectures given by the Harvard Medical School the medical profession, besides furthering its primary purpose of educating the public, is taking out an implicit insurance policy for its members. The heritage to the modern practitioner from the Indian medicine-man and the medieval herb-doctor is an intangible dread with which he is regarded by the world at large. This atmosphere of mysticism which surrounds the consulting room erects about the physician an impenetrable barrier which, in the eyes of the layman, places him beyond the pale.

The popularization of scientific knowledge by professors of the Medical School is the sole aim of the Health Lectures. By their projection of the common characteristics of contagious diseases, the public becomes intimate with the intelligent method to treat them, and what is even more important, with the necessary steps for prevention and the reduction of susceptibility to a minimum. In bringing Medicine to Main Street the profession is making a worthwhile effort to break down the layman's fear of the Doctor.