If the fortitude, money and inventiveness used for wars were waged against man's diseases and vices, "man's lot would be well nigh divine," Dr. Rudolph i£atas declared last night at a meeting of the Aristides Agramonte chapter of the Gorgas Medical Society at Charity hospital nurses' home.
Describing the waste of money and scientific talent In designing death-dealing war machines as a "dread farce," Dr. Matas compared humanity's treatment of war and science to "a sultan with two wives—one young and beautiful, the other a dirty old hag." The sultan, he said, gives the hag everything, and makes the young wife the slave of the other just as humanity makes science a slave to war.
"If $100,000,000, a small fraction of the amount being spent today on wars, was used against alcoholism, tuberculosis and syphilis, all those diseases could be wiped out," he-declared.
Dr. Matas, who was awarded an honorary fellowship in the society was a personal friend of the late Dr. William C. Gorgas for whom the society is named and paid tribute to Dr. Gorgas' work against yellow fever. He was presented a key by Daniel T. O'Quinn, past president of the group, which is composed of honor students in freshman and sophomore years at the Louisiana State university school of medicine.
