190 INTERNAL MEDICINE 



with but slight rebuke, they rode on the tide of science and circum- 

 stance, encroaching farther and farther, until they were discovered 

 in the act of laparotomy; and rather in defiance than by conversion 

 of the prevailing sentiment within those walls, they went on doing it. 



Meanwhile the surgeons, emboldened by great events in their 

 mystery, wrought much evil to the "pure" physicians; accusing 

 them with asperity of dawdling with cases of ileus and the like until 

 the opportunity of efficient treatment had passed away: nay, auda- 

 cious murmurs were heard that such "abdominal cases" should be 

 admitted into surgical wards from the first. Then, by dexterous 

 cures, growing bolder and bolder, the surgeons went so far as to make 

 a like demand for cases of tuberculous peritonitis, of empyema, and 

 even of cerebral tumor. As thus the surgeons laid hands on organ 

 after organ which hitherto had been sacred to "pure" medicine, and 

 as indeed the achievements of surgery became more and more glo- 

 rious, not only the man in the street but the man of the Hospital 

 Committee also began to tattle about the progress of surgery and the 

 diminution of medicine, until it was only by the natural sweetness of 

 our tempers that the surgeon and the inner mediciner kept friends. 

 At a dinner given on June 30 last to Mr. Chamberlain, in recognition 

 of his great services to tropical medicine, this vigorous statesman 

 said, "I have often heard that while surgery has made gigantic pro- 

 gress during the last generation, medical science has not advanced 

 in equal proportion;" then, while modestly disclaiming the know- 

 ledge to "distinguish between the respective claims of these two 

 great professions," he generously testified that "medical research 

 assisted by surgical science has thrown a flood of light on the origin 

 of disease, and that this at any rate is the first step to the cure of 

 disease." Now Mr. Chamberlain is the first of English statesmen to 

 ally himself actively with our profession; the first with imagination 

 enough to apprehend the great part which medical science is playing 

 in the world already, and to realize that only by medicine can vast sur- 

 faces of the earth be made habitable by white men, and those "great 

 assets of civilization," the officers of our colonies, be saved alive. It 

 seems to me, then, that the present is a critical moment in the rela- 

 tions of medicine and surgery, especially in England, where the two 

 branches of the art have been separated so radically as to appear to 

 be "two professions; " a moment when it is our duty to contemplate 

 the unity of medicine, to forecast its development as a connected 

 whole, and to conceive a rational ideal of its means and ends. But 

 this large and prophetic vision of medicine we cannot attain without 

 a thoughtful study of its past. 



If, as from a height, we contemplate the story of the world, not its 

 pageants, for in their splendor our eyes are dim, but the gathering, 

 propagation, and ordination of its forces, whence they sprang, and 



