80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gradually, or set in with greater or less intensity. A quantity 

 of arsenic which ordinarily would kill at once, is borne by the 

 habitual arsenic-eater. Of two similarly constituted persons, 

 cholera will take one away at once, while another will escape 

 with a light attack. A disease is also incurable when its causes 

 work on without interruption. Malaria induces an incurably 

 chronic condition if the infected person does not leave the 

 impregnated marsh-land of his residence. A bronchial catarrh 

 continues stationary, and at last draws the lungs into sympathy 

 with it, if the person attacked by it remains constantly exposed 

 to a dusty atmosphere. "With like suddenness and energy of 

 the causes of disease, with like continuance of the local pro- 

 cesses, the individual's power of resistance, the vigor of his consti- 

 tution are important factors in determining the outcome. A 

 vigorous thirty-year-old man will overcome an inflammation of 

 the lungs which would be fatal to an old man, to a drinker, or to 

 a man weakened by luxury or a life of dissipation or suffering. 

 Finally, crimen non est artis, sed cegroti the fault is not of the 

 art, but of the patient is the phrase that may be applied to those 

 cases in which the most correct measures taken under favorable 

 circumstances fail to accomplish their purpose, because the patient 

 himself does not or can not co-operate with them. No treatment 

 can relieve the smoker from his throat-catarrh, so long as he per- 

 sists in his habit. This aspect of the case is especially pertinent 

 to the nervous disorders which are one of the growing scourges 

 of our age ; incapacity and vacillation, the force of outer influ- 

 ences, or the pressure of business too often intervene to interrupt 

 a cure which was otherwise fairly possible. 



Gloomy as are the prospects which we have before us here, 

 we still recognize that all diseases which do not fall under one of 

 these mentioned categories are curable, or that their curability is 

 only a question of time. Strange as it may sound in the present 

 state of medicine, we believe that the possibility of in time curing 

 malignant tumors is not yet closed. 



Real healing, the restoration to their normal state of functions 

 and tissues that have been changed by disease, is brought about 

 in its essentials only through the life-processes in the organism. 

 Therefore the answer to the question to what degree the healing 

 art is or may be in a condition to influence these processes will be 

 decisive as to whether it shall enlarge the boundaries of its 

 knowledge. And if it results that this can not be, or can be 

 only within a small compass, then will arise the further question 

 whether the object shall be hopelessly given up, or whether still 

 other possibilities are open for medicine to strive after its high 

 aim. It will never be possible to re-form lost cells or to cause 

 separated ones to grow together again; never immediately to 



