Ernest E. Irons

CITIZENSHIP—A PHYSICIAN'S OBLIGATION

American freedom or socialistic enslavement—which shall it be? A decade or so ago, most citizens would have been shocked that any sane person should dare to ask such a question. Liberty and opportunity were the substance of our social, political, and economic tradition. True, the increasing complexities of urban life with its rising standards of living and the impact of world troubles constantly imposed new problems to be solved and new social injustices to be corrected, but, despite these difficulties, we continued to enjoy our American freedom and assumed that our birthright could never be taken away. The vast and increasing confusion in which the American people now are groping would have been inconceivable to the average intelligent citizen thirty years ago. We had made mistakes, but our former national common sense saved us from catastrophic accidents. Our departure from sound economics and honesty can be explained only by a

EPOCHS IN MEDICINE: THE IMPROVEMENT OF MEDICAL SERVICE TO LABOR

In the years previous to our present world war most of us were none too clear as to the changes in social and economic thinking that were insidiously creeping upon us. The stupendous war effort after Pearl Harbor, about which most of our daily activities now revolve, has still further diverted attention from the social and economic trends, which have been accelerated by the dislocations and modifications in living incident to the war. Some of these trends if properly guided will lead to salutary results for the nation; others if relegated to the hands of the ignorant may destroy the fruits of decades of effort. The real significance of still others is not immediately apparent without the aid of some perspective. We can, however, get some notion of what the future has in store by looking back at the epochs of history, economic, social and medical. There we find almost