EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE. 181 



expert, and takes upon himself the initiative of therapeutic treatment. 

 Many have hoped to bring pharmacology and medicine more together 

 by recommending and bringing about the establishment of clinical 

 departments in pharmacological institutes. But it appears to me that 

 laboratories for the study of experimental therapeutics would have had 

 more scientific justification, and more prospect of a practical result, 

 than special pharmacological clinics. It matters not what the clinic is 

 called, the sick person in it can be made just as little the subject of 

 experiment as elsewhere. Further, special clinical pharmacology would 

 have no superiority in a systematic and competent handling of thera- 

 peutic remedies, since this competence is sought after by every clinical 

 teacher. Thus without any special good to the science itself, either the 

 experimenter will be lost in the clinician, or the clinician in the experi- 

 menter. A lasting and stable combination of these separate activities is 

 scarcely to be achieved in practice. 



And now for our conclusions : It is only when medicine is able to 

 stand the crucial test of experiment that it can become what it should 

 be, namely, in its whole extent a conscious and purposively acting 

 medical art. We have an example in proof of this in modern surgery, 

 On what are its brilliant results founded ? Simply on its perfect 

 knowledge of how to achieve its aims. Aided by the plasticity of the 

 organism, and secured by asepsis and antisepsis against its arch enemy 

 the micro-organism, it can now treat its subject from the purely 

 mechanical standpoint, guided by a knowledge of the anatomical 

 structure and physiological importance of the several parts of the body. 



With unfeigned interest I now stop to ask myself in how far I have 

 succeeded in convincing you of the extreme importance for practical 

 medicine of the method of experiment, and in stimulating you to real 

 activity ? If I have succeeded at all, it is your duty to forward in 

 every way the interests of biological experiment, not only by personally 

 taking part in it to the fullest extent possible, but also by actively 

 supporting experimenters in their efforts, because in the interests of 

 biological, and also of medical science, suitable men, suitable conditions, 

 and suitable means are necessary. 



Do not forget, gentlemen, the following important difference 

 between the representatives of clinical and of experimental medicine : 

 The scientific representatives of practical medicine are drawn from the 

 whole mass of practising physicians. Every physician who has the 

 mind, the talent, and the energy, can take part in general scientific 

 medical work, and ultimately become an important and ceaseless 

 worker in this field. Experimenters, on the other hand, form an 

 inappreciably small number of devotees, since it is only within the 



