Armstrong – Table of Contents

contributing to weakness of the immunological system and the resurgence of highly
virulent, but previously infrequent infections, such as poliomyelitis. He felt that man had
contributed to “biological imbalance throughout the world” adding new dangers to man’s
existence.
Armstrong also had major concerns about the world’s subjective social and
ethical ills as well as the factors that were affecting “mere” physical factors. He felt that
the tendency toward specialization was influencing the country’s whole economic and
national life. He stated that representative government in the United States was becoming
more and more a government by organized specialized groups having common aims and
ambitions. He worried that these ambitions unless accompanied by ideals were apt to be,
and often were, selfish and not to the best interest of society as a whole.
Armstrong indicated that medicine had traditionally been a calling in which recent
graduates had, as part of the graduation ceremony, the reading and the recitation of the
“Hippocratic Oath” that outlined the ethical relationships and duties of the physician to
his patient, the public and to other members of the profession. He did not infer that the
medical profession was free from the human traits of greed and jealousy, but it was a
matter of pride that medicine’s countless discoveries had usually been donated to the
world for the benefit of mankind without the thought of compensation. He speculated on
how different things might have been at the present time if politicians, bankers, business
men, and other groups and professions had kept a similar code of ethics constantly before
them for the past few centuries; he proposed further that in the field of social
relationships, as in geology, apparently insignificant forces when acting for long periods
of time might produce significant effects.