PEDIATRICS Vol. 9 No. 2 February 1952, pp. 243-248
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THE PEDIATRICIAN AND THE PUBLIC

THE QUALITY OF MEDICAL CARE

PHILLIP E. ROTHMAN M.D.

Editors: PAUL A. HARPER, M.D..

THESE are days of brilliant achievements in medical science. Research progresses with incredible rapidity. Each advance creates additional problems; former gains are often neglected. The attention of the medical profession is occupied with so many issues of immediate importance that the problems affecting the quality of medical care have been pushed aside. In an attempt to appraise the present difficulties, it is helpful to recall past experiences.

Thirty-three years after Roentgen's announcement of "a new kind of ray," Thayer issued the following warning: "It is a sad commentary on human weakness, the manner in which the discovery of a new method of investigation of great help, such as roentgenology, has led the medical public to neglect those fundamental methods of study which are far more important in themselves. . . . The information supplied by an X-ray plate is often of immense complementary value. Alone and without the information afforded by the history, the appearance of the patient and the results of physical examination, it is often of no more value than that afforded by percussion alone—indeed less. For he who percusses the chest cannot fail to observe the patient."

In a similar manner, the course of events that followed the development of electrocardiography has been described by Levine: