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Association of Schools of PublicHealth is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to and other distinguished guests. Selections from the program appear below. William E. Robinson was chairman of the convocation and Charles S. McVeigh, chairman of the steering committee. A message to the convocation from President Eisenhower was conveyed by Maj. Gen. Howard McC. Snyder. The program was devoted to four general topics: chronic diseases, mortal enemies of man (cancer, viruses, bacteria), medical research at the crossroads, and major approaches to health.
Virus DiseasesViruses cause no fewer than 50 dif-L rief, ferent diseases in man and many Drief more than that in plants and in animals. In human beings they lead to an enormous burden of illness, although in general, except in huge pandemics of the kind that occurred in 1918, most virus diseases do not directly cause death.In this country they tend to produce between 4 and 6 episodes of illness per person per year. On the average, in the United States, man is afflicted by one or another virus disease about 10 percent of his life. Over a span of 70 years, man suffers for 7 years with virus diseases. To put it another way, in this country, about 5 billion man-days are lost each year through virus diseases. No other category of disease approaches this total in terms of human (lisability.The highest incidence results from those dise ases we think least of and accept as inevitable ailments. These are the diseases of childhood, such as measles, chickenpox, and mumps, and the numerous respiratory infections, colds, influenza, and various forms of pneumonia, which occur throughout life.The severity of these processes ranges from exceedingly mild, as in the afebrile common cold, through severe, as in paralytic poliomyelitis, to fatal, as in rabies.The duration of virus diseases ranges from a few days or a week or two, as with the childhood and respiratory infections, to months,
