Dialogue With Life (ca. late 1950s - early 1960s)

okay you take two or three good breath like you [Music] tell this is the beginning of man's Universal dialogue with life a blind cry that seeks a clear answer the beginning of the dialogue is constant and Universal the answers The Facts of Life change from age to age another place another time dialogue in the United States of America the city of Chicago 1931 ad the questions were the same but the answers were different statistics said lifespan 59 years 2 to one he was born at home cost to parents $50 cost of medical equipment $87.50 including the black bag in his lifetime a total of $1,700 for Health Care mostly out of his own pocket there was a new idea then Insurance to help pay hospital bills but practically nobody had it only a generation ago how much has changed within living memory what was the state of our health in those good old days Health Care like everything else didn't cost much $2 for a house call $11 for a hospital room unfortunately pneumonia was common and often fatal infectious diseases were epidemic a hospital was where you went to die and the cost of Health Care was as dreaded as the disease itself the growth of the new idea of in ing Healthcare still belong to that far off World of Tomorrow they dreamed about in the 30s where is yesterday's World of Tomorrow where is the questioning baby that was born then somewhere in the crowd an adult now continuing his Universal dialogue with life our quest for health is a dialogue a struggle between the power of knowledge and the limitation of Life question what is health ask our man somewhere in I don't think there's such a thing as Absolute Health it's the old story we all begin to die as soon as we born I think that there has to be a sensation wellbeing to be really healthy well I think that good health is just feeling good then of course Health means so many things to so many ages of people a a body is like an instrument a very complicated machine when every organ every vital part is functioning to its most perfect performance that is really what I mean by feeling good it means a a good night's rest a healthy appetite a um an energetic Spirit a participation in a very Wholesome Way with whatever interests you might have the energetic Spirit we expect more of it in this generation and with good reason I know exp yesterday's fatal diseases are almost gone and a baby born today is three times as likely to survive his first year typhoid scarlet fever diptheria only words to our children now now consider the other side of the dialogue The Power of knowledge question what does the doctor say formally we were in the dark about what we should do when a patient was Ill now I think it's a very uh good feeling to know that you're going to get a definite result we have a lot of preventive medicine which we never had before why I I haven't seen a case you now have explicit and specific therapies that were not available any of the large choice of antibiotics with a patient today we have so many to dispense today and they are so effective so all I can say is the diseases are as bad as they were but the treatment is easier I used to go around with an old scope and some aspirin that was about it carried it in the black bag when I was practicing Pediatrics you can't possibly do that today you have to have a vast array of scientific equipment available to you to get all of the data you require to make an adequate diagnosis and control the therapy of a patient anything else invol and what we've seen in the last 30 years has been the explosion of science into into medicine I went to medical school in 1932 and uh I have seen medicine through one of its great changes and when in my internship I remember that uh I used to spend u a good part of my life under a a hood giving open drop ether to children because they were working on their mastoid life expectancy since the turn of the century has increased about 20 years this is not due to the fact that the air is cleaner uh or that um people are more careful crossing the street uh this is due to the fact uh that medicine has advanced so rapidly that U people who would have died of things even 20 years ago no longer die um we save them the power of knowledge and the magic of averages to the individual lost in the blur of the crowd the security of statistics [Music] I can tell you about the kinds of illnesses that 10,000 people are going to have what I can tell you is what you're going to have for the individual the only way he can protect himself is by joining with 10,000 people and will not be struck that year with an enormous bill by joining an insurance program but when the statistic becomes an individual the desperate unexpected blow pierces the body's dialogue what will the response be question how could it happen to me the question of never knowing what's going to happen to you you realize that the Frailty of your own body your body is is is is open to anything in the world really any kind of disease any I mean you can walk along the cre any kind of accident I'm normal enough to know that anybody is susceptible and uh that is like a wash is over me and then I have to sort of have a little Soliloquy with myself and say well it's all the LA of the Gods you just have to be careful I don't live in fear of it I don't live in expectation of it but I do live with the knowledge that no person and no family is ever inviolet [Music] the bottom there your own bed don't worry about it here you must that weed is this morning didn't you a you take to get popped I'll fix you up an hour complexity of a modern hospital as unlike the hospital of 30 years ago as atomic energy is unlike steam Health Science achieving control of the unanswerable Terrors of the past 30 years ago you went to a hospital to die today you go to a hospital to get well the whole public attitude has completely changed on this I'd hesitate to go so far as to say very many people are looking for us opportunities to go to hospital but certainly they they they don't enter with with the fear and and uncertainty to the extent that that they did previously when we were sick we died and we died at home and that was the end of it so when you were ordered into a hospital why it was it was a shock for the whole family but now I don't think it means anything a child with congenital heart disease went in the hospital 4 days is that wrong are you scared of the hospital uh-uh why I don't know why did you come here because my leg hurt and I couldn't walk oh yeah mhm are you scared of this machine no why cuz it's only a camera now the worst part is going to be right little can a dying heart be saved you ever get bitten by a mosquito well that's what it hurts like just like a mosquito bite not even as bad as a ins start the C 10 seconds now he's got that little tube I told you got in before and we're going to bring this over here D how old are you seven and a half you go to school now mhm what grade are you in second in the second grade do you like it m you know we going start to take those X-ray pictures that we told you about did does it look like a valentine heart yeah you think so huh mhm art and wisdom turn to science and skill compassion to computation experience to instrumentation open heart surgery subjecting the symbolic Center of life to man's control the surgeon now preparing for the ultimate dialogue certainly several decades ago that if you even touch the heart the patient would die this was just sort of no man's man but now heavens we put incisions 6 in long into the heart muscle and really don't think too much about it 30 years ago one man the family physician would have had compassion and insight as he waited for his patient to die today instruments and hands and training and research lacking perhaps in bedside manner can act and Save now while the surgery is going on there's a team of Physicians who are actually priming the the heart lung machine we had time things so that by the time we're ready to put the patient on the bypass the heart lung machine is ready and we simply connect the tubes and then we're we're on the bipad in fact I spend days talking to the family you have to put the risk down here's your child and the risk of operating on this baby maybe 5% or whatever the entity is and I tell them that I uh personally feel very strongly about that [Applause] defect about that size although I had one that was very small but uh this is that would that is most unusual was able to estimate how much blood our experience here has been that if they get as far as this and have not blocked they'll do well there are no late troubles in this [Music] region I think we have a winner here the power of knowledge in a victory over the limitation of life but open heart surgery is only one of many wonders look how much has changed in one generation the eye of the beholder sees a strange new technology I remember when I was the first day I ever went to medical school would talk the dean talked to us and someone had asked him well now everything there is to be discovered in medicine has been discovered uh we're going to be at EST stand he said on the contrary it's like throwing a pebble into a pool the greater the circumference of this circle of little waves the more points of departure there are for new Explorations and this is the way Medical Science grows I don't think most of us been much time thinking about it but uh we never see the patient we get to know the name and the diagn nois and a little bit about the person involved there's a patient who's being kept alive because they're able to tell his sodium and pottassium several times a day and without the mechanical devices that we had this patient probably would have been dead already now don't move just keep your eyes closed and try to relax now I'm going to flash a bright light at you keep your eyes closed and please try not to move that's good just think of the things that can be done today uh that could not have been done uh 20 years ago new types of determinations radioisotopes high voltage uh radiation and the treatment of cancer these are all matters that are of great uh value to people as a whole but it cost a lot of money the eye of the beholder sees behind the facade of Machinery an unexpected host of people you must remember that a patient is a 24-hour business we've got to have people to care for these patients 24 hours a day this is not just nursing Personnel we've got to have a tech technician in the labs to do a quick test we've got to have someone on duty in the X-ray this is a trained x-ray technician uh 24 hours a day for every patient I would say we have about 3.2 employees this is one of the reasons why Hospital uh care seems costly but it isn't when you think that any given time of the evening or night a life can and is often saved because these people are on duty entering this new world of Health requires a new kind of dialogue were you born in the United States yes and when is your birthday January 4th a dialogue that would also have been impossible 30 years ago have you any kind of health insurance uh yes you have you have your card in your wallet voluntary health care insurance a new human technique for financial protection against the C cost of care and loss of income individually and in groups Health Care insurance enables us today to plan for the unpredictable spreading the cost among millions of people and over many years paying for care that could not be bought at any price a generation ago I don't know what's on the horizon but I do know that we're talking about plans that some of them that go up to as much as 15 or $20,000 now this thing wasn't even thought of 15 years ago that's how far this is gone it's pretty hard to say what's ahead in specific terms uh that would cover every type of prescribed medicine um diagnostic procedure in hospital care uh doctor's service whatever now this is uh maybe what's ahead Well it can't be done overnight but I think that's the direction strange new language of care steroids Isotopes and current years guaranteed renewable major antibacterial medical agents Health groups and blood groups personal health and impersonal statistics in a mixture the future Bears even greater promise than the past but past and future point to one end which is always present this room is our common ground with or without science technology equipment preparations whatever the surroundings this scene will be replayed so long as man remains good morning Where Do We Begin today 99 chances out of a 100 in a hospital the patient and her husband have invested on averages $425 in the Next Generation together they are using not the instruments contained in one black bag but the entire instrumentation of Medical Science just keep breathing the head is out just keep breathing breathe come on go yes breathe breathe n just breathe the gas nice and fast if it hurts you breathe faster everything's fine just breathe here here it come everything's fine [Music] here up there hey you got a boy there he [Music] is [Music] look well open up [Music] Bo [Applause] the although he will still be faced with the uncertainties of life things will be very different for our newcomer than they were for the baby born in 1930 what's his name Jo John John wait a minute statistically John can expect to live not 59 years but he allotted three score and 10 as a result of the scientific progress of the past generation the chances are overwhelming he will not die of infectious disease you want to hold the baby give me the baby a second all [Music] a generation from birth to birth separated by an age of understanding thus far have we come with some justifiable confidence that we are on the right Road in our NeverEnding dialogue with life [Music] [Applause] [Music] for