THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 797 



that of chemistry with physics is of still more modern revelation ; 

 that of physics and chemistry with physiology has been stoutly denied 

 within the recollection of most of us, and perhaps still may be. 



Or, to take a case which affords a closer parallel with that of medi- 

 cine. Ao-riculture has been cultivated from the earliest times, and 

 from a remote antiquity men have attained considerable practical skill 

 in the cultivation of the useful plants, and have empirically established 

 many scientific truths concerning the conditions under which they 

 flourish. But it is within the memory of many of us that chemistry 

 on the one hand and vegetable physiology on the other attained such 

 a stage of development that they were able to furnish a sound basis 

 for scientific agriculture. Similarly, medicine took its rise in the prac- 

 tical needs of mankind. At first, studied without reference to any 

 other branch of knowledge, it long maintained, indeed still to some 

 extent maintains, that independence. Historically, its connection with 

 the biological sciences has been slowly established, and the full extent 

 and intimacy of that connection are only now beginning to be appar- 

 ent. I trust I have not been mistaken in supposing that an attempt to 

 give a brief sketch of the steps by which a philosophical necessity has 

 become an historical reality, may not be devoid of interest, possibly of 

 instruction, to the members of this great Congress, profoundly inter- 

 ested as all are in the scientific development of medicine. 



The history of medicine is more complete and fuller than that of 

 any other science, except, perhaps, astronomy ; and, if we follow back 

 the long record as far as clear evidence lights us, we find ourselves 

 taken to the early stages of the civilization of Greece. The oldest hos- 

 pitals were the temples of ^sculapius ; to these Asclepeia, always 

 erected on healthy sites, hard by fresh springs and surrounded by 

 shady groves, the sick and the maimed resorted to seek the aid of the 

 god of health. Votive tablets or inscriptions recorded the symi^toms, 

 no less than the gratitude, of those who were healed ; and, from these 

 primitive clinical records, the half -priestly, half -philosophic caste of 

 the Asclepiads compiled the data upon which the earliest generaliza- 

 tions of medicine, as an inductive science, were based. 



In this state, pathology, like all the inductive sciences at their 

 origin, was merely natural history ; it registered the phenomena of 

 diseases, classified them, and ventured upon a prognosis, wherever 

 the observation of constant coexistences and sequences suggested 

 a rational expectation of the like recurrence under similar circum- 

 stances. 



Further than this it hardly went. In fact, in the then state of 

 knowledge, and in the condition of philosophical speculation at that 

 time, neither the causes of the morbid state nor the rationale of treat- 

 ment were likely to be sought for as we seek for them now. The an- 

 ger of a god was a sufticient reason for the existence of a malady, and 

 a dream ample warrantee for therapeutic measures ; that a physical 



