Public health in the space age.

Medicine and public health in the space age will work in closer partnership. Both will draw more widely from the behavioral sciences. More spectacular conquests in space will come before man learns much more about man himself and his interrelationships with his fellow man. The past century has been the era of the biological and physical scientist; we are now entering the century of the psychological man. There is a fusion of the sciences-biological, physical and social-in medical research, teaching and service. One is apt to think of public health as a specialty of medicine. Equally valid is the concept that medicine is a specialty of public health, which draws from more of the basic sciences. Epidemiology is concerned with noninfectious conditions and is moving into the epidemiology of health. The spectacular gains in life-saving in this country during the past half century are unrepeatable phenomena. The major gains in the future must come in the older ages.