THE LIMITATIONS OF THE HEALING ART. 83 



of investigation. However favorable results may be reached in 

 it, it seems practically clear that preventive immunity, even when 

 we have gained sufficient experience in it, will be conferred only 

 against those infections to which many men are likely to be ex- 

 posed such as small-pox, measles, possibly scarlet fever, whoop- 

 ing-cough, inflammation of the lungs, diphtheria, and enteric 

 fever ; in the time of approaching epidemics, as cholera, influenza, 

 and typhus and relapsing fever. On the other hand, it is ex- 

 tremely improbable that preventive measures of immunity will be 

 adopted against rabies, anthrax, and tetanus. The problem of 

 warding off and removing the causes evidently exists in the great- 

 est possible comprehensiveness, and in the most diverse other 

 conditions, but its working is not so strikingly manifested in them 

 as it is against bacterial infections. 



While art is limited, in the curing of pathological processes, 

 by the impossibility of changing the course of life at pleasure ; 

 while it also reaches limitations in warding off disease, yet its 

 function is not exhausted ; there still remains to it the extraordi- 

 narily important work of treating symptoms. An inconceivable 

 number of pharmaceutical preparations look directly to this pur- 

 pose. In numerous cases, also, the application of burning and 

 bath-cures, of electricity, and many other therapeutic helps, is 

 made for the same end. The importance of this part of the art 

 is not underrated. It is often indifferent to the patient whether 

 these or those anatomical and functional changes take place ; he 

 will have no perception of them, will not be disturbed by them in 

 his capacity or have his life shortened by them. But symptom- 

 atic treatment often makes natural cure possible ; it bridges over 

 dangerous episodes in the course of the disease. And no person 

 to whom intelligent management by a physician has preserved a 

 dear one will think little of the treatment of symptoms. 



In this the healing art is not only capable of extraordinary 

 progress, but is actually advancing in an encouraging degree. 

 Since Griesinger lamented, thirty years ago, that the doctor was 

 helpless in the heat of fever, we can now, by the cold-water treat- 

 ment and a number of strong antipyretics, keep a typhus patient 

 almost continuously at the normal temperature. Recent years 

 have furnished numerous soporifics and antiseptics, pilocarpine 

 and cocaine and others, and the present is equally fruitful in the 

 introduction of symptomatic methods. Everywhere active life, 

 fresh labors ; and, amid all of it, every human existence which 

 comes to a premature end, every person who is hampered in his 

 career by chronic disease, admonishes us that here are the limits 

 of medical art. Some of these barriers it will never raise ; at best, 

 it will be able only to push them further on. Translated for The 

 Popular Science Monthly from the Pharmaceutische Rundschau. 



