Atlanta Daily World

Psychiatry
Lesson
A MEDICAL SPECIALTY

By ORIN R. YOST, M. D.
Medical Director, Edgewood Sanitarium

(Dr. Yost is a graduate of the Medical College of Virginia at Richmond, studied psychiatry at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D. C., taught psychiatry at Columbia University, New York, was division psychiatrist of the 79th division in World War II, and is presently Medical Director of Edgewood Sanitarium Foundation.)

Man has not always known what was best for his welfare. In the early days of Jenner's great discovery of a vaccine to prevent small pox, hundreds of thousands died rather than submit to the seemingly-absurd practice of vaccination.

Though printing had long been introduced and used to revolutionize civilization, only gradually, two centuries later, did there dawn upon man the realization that women might prove more useful if they were taught to read. Truly mankind has a poor ear for new music.

Today marks a new era, swift in its pace, marvelous in its achievements and unique in its potentialities. At such a time when wonder drugs are saving countless lives, when skillful surgery is plucking a soul from the brink of death itself, and when inoculations are successfully forestalling serious diseases, the person who ignorantly denies himself or his loved ones the therapeutic marvels of the age appears guilty of gross neglect. Truly, no longer can mankind afford to keep a poor ear for music. What think we, for instance of the person indifferent to new research findings in the fields of cancer, of poliomyelitis and of heart ailments?

Because of such a high incidence of these disabling maladies, the public encourages and supports the cause of research and avidly scans reports of the minutest degree of progress.

On the other hand, in the same difficult manner by which pediatrics finally advanced from its crawling to its walking stage, the medical specialty of psychiatry is experiencing a difficult period of development. It is almost unbelievable to think that in some sections of this country - the most progressive, the wealthiest and the greatest in the world - those who do not understand the significance of psychiatry actually sneer at it, shun it, ridicule it and disparage it.

Though there has been, since the dawn of civilization perhaps, a certain kind of psychiatry, it has been only within recent times that this medical specialty has come into its own. Perhaps to only a few other fields has the unparalleled scientific progress of this age made so many contributions. Science has revealed in many instances the causes of mental illnesses and emotional disorders and has likewise produced many new therapies which are today effective in approximately 80 per cent of the psychiatry cases.

(To Be Continued)