THE CULTIVATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. 779 



in monographs on subjects that, to the common mind, seemed small 

 and trivial. 



And study in a Congress such as this may be a useful remedy for 

 self-sufficiency. Here every group may find a rare occasion, not only 

 for an opportune assertion of the supreme excellence of its own range 

 and mode of study, but for the observation of the work of every other. 

 Each section may show that its own facts must be deemed sure, and 

 that by them every suggestion from without must be tested ; but each 

 may learn to doubt every inference of its own which is not consistent 

 with the facts or reasonable beliefs of others ; each may observe how 

 much there is in the knowledge of others which should be mingled 

 with its own ; and the sum of all may be the wholesome conviction of 

 all, that we can not justly estimate the value of a doctrine in one part 

 of our science till it has been tried in many or in all. 



We were taught this in our schools ; and many of us have taught 

 that all the parts of medical science are necessary to the education of 

 the complete practitioner. In the independence of later life some of 

 us seem too ready to believe that the parts we severally choose may 

 be self-sufficient, and that what others are learning can not much con- 

 cern us. A fair study of the whole work of the Congress may convince 

 us of the fallacy of this belief. We may see that the test of truth in 

 every part must be in the patient and impartial trial of its adjustment 

 with what is true in every other. All j^erfect organizations bear this 

 test ; all parts of the whole body of scientific truth should be tried 

 by it. 



Moreover, I would not, from a scientific point of view, admit any 

 estimate of the comparative importance of the several divisions of our 

 science, however widely they may differ in their present utilities. And 

 this I would think right, not only because my office as president binds 

 me to a strict impartiality and to the claim of freedom of research for 

 all, but because we are very imperfect judges of the whole value of 

 any knowledge, or even of single facts. For every fact in science, 

 wherever gathered, has not only a present value, which we may be 

 able to estimate, but a living and germinal power of which none can 

 guess the issue. 



It would be difficult to think of anything that seemed less likely 

 to acquire practical utility than those researches of the few naturalists 

 who, from Leeuwenhoek to Ehrenberg, studied the most minute of 

 living things, the Yiorionidce. Men boasting themselves as practical 

 might ask, " What good can come of it ? " Time and scientific indus- 

 try have answered : " This good those researches have given a more 

 true form to one of the most important practical doctrines of organic 

 chemistry ; they have introduced a great beneficial change in the most 

 practical part of surgery ; they are leading to one as great in the prac- 

 tice of medicine ; they concern the highest interests of agriculture, and 

 their power is not yet exhausted." 



