78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



healing art ? It is indeed humanly proper to hope for a still wider 

 extension of its scope, and it is a duty to try to obtain it. But it 

 is becoming to the scientific man to look without prepossessions 

 only at the facts, and with calm consideration to take account, 

 not of what has been obtained only, but of what is attainable. 



" Being ill is life under changed conditions." What, then, is it 

 to heal ? To influence pathological processes in the organism in 

 such a way that they shall be brought to a halt, that the deranged 

 tissues and disturbed functions shall be restored to the normal, 

 and the interrupted interchanges between individual tissues and 

 functions and the whole system shall be brought back to health- 

 ful relations ; that is what we call healing. 



Healing, in the sense that the physician's art can control or- 

 ganic processes in full activity, has not been advanced by the 

 practical progress that has been made through antisepsis. For a 

 tumor or an abscess can no more be made to go backward at this 

 time than formerly. The exsection and opening of them are not 

 synonymous with a real cure. And as with superficial lesions and 

 those arising from external causes, so it is with those in the inte- 

 rior organism, out of whatever causes they may have originated. 

 In an ulceration of the bowels, a cure may be speeded by a series 

 of appropriate measures to the extent that further injuries may 

 be prevented, but the restoration of the injured parts will not be 

 accomplished by them. On the bursting of a blood-vessel and 

 the lesion of the brain-substance, it is necessary to apply suitable 

 preventives to limit the congestion of the brain ; but no measure 

 of the surgeon hastens the coagulation of the blood or the adhe- 

 sion of the divided nerve-substance. 



Inflammations constitute another class of clinical affections, 

 either acute or chronic, which, appearing in different organs, are 

 grouped under that single designation. As we know from daily 

 experience, the acute forms of inflammation are often cured, the 

 chronic more rarely. There is, however, no internal medicament 

 of demonstrated direct application for acute inflammations. Such 

 remedies can only act indirectly in special cases as, for instance, 

 most means in acute catarrhs as supporting applications. 



The therapeutic potentiality of the physician's art is its most 

 ancient possession, grossly overapplied through centuries, then 

 abruptly abandoned in part, and now wavering in uncertainty. 

 Quiet, cold, and local bloodletting are the basis of a treatment 

 which is, under well-defined conditions, very helpful in acute in- 

 flammations. But it is sometimes fruitless, sometimes inapplica- 

 ble. Deep inflammations, skin eruptions, and processes that set 

 in with great activity, are regarded quite apart from specific 

 forms like tuberculosis ; and still it is far from being proved that 

 the therapeutic treatment, even when the symptoms have sub- 



