MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MODERN THOUGHT. 341 



scurvy, and spotted fever, each of which then claimed regularly its 

 yearly tribute of victims, are becoming almost diseases of the past, 

 and one needs not a prophet's imagination to foresee a time when 

 cholera, scarlatina, fever, phthisis perhaps, and other diseases, will be 

 no more; when preventive medicine shall have reached such a degree 

 of perfection that the occurrence of epidemic disease will be felt as a 

 gross reproach to the community, and when there will be compara- 

 tively little for the practitioner to do in the treatment of particular 

 disease. It is unfortunate truly, as it is sadly unseasonable, that just 

 when we see before us this fairer prospect, and when an encouraging 

 beginning of progress has been made under the auspices of Mr. Simon 

 and his well-organized staff, he should have been driven from office 

 and his office abolished. But one instance more of the difficulties with 

 which progress has to contend from the selfish intrigues and obstruc- 

 tive apathy of mankind ! 



You may be disposed perhaps to smile at my outlook as fancifully 

 bright, and befitting only the imaginative flights of an introductory 

 lecture. From the beginning, it may be said, men have, through 

 unrestrained indulgence of their passions, generated disease, and how- 

 ever pure their surroundings may be made, they will go on doing the 

 same thing : were a clean sweep made of all disease from the face of 

 the earth to-morrow, they would breed it afresh before to-morrow's 

 morrow. No doubt, as they are constituted and trained at present, 

 they would be apt to do so ; but one may hope that the medical 

 science of the future and here I would carry your imaginations a 

 little way with me will have a great deal to say in the way of in- 

 struction respecting the highest concerns of man's nature, and the 

 conduct of his life ; that it will enter a domain which has hitherto 

 been given up exclusively to the moral philosopher and the preacher. 

 I don't propose or suppose that we shall ask these gentlemen to step 

 down from their platform, saying to them something of this kind: 

 " You have been preaching wisdom and goodness of conduct for 

 some thousands of years, and you haven't made much of it. Certainly 

 one result thus far is striking enough : that men are devoting their 

 eagerest energies to making the most destructive guns, and are con- 

 ferring their greatest honors and applause on those who use them 

 with the most destructive effects. For months, until quite lately, the 

 soil of Eastern Europe was deluged with blood, shed amid unspeak- 

 able atrocities, in an entirely needless war, which your statesmen, 

 presumably the highest products of the culture of your epoch, could 

 or would do nothing to check. Stand aside, then, and let us try our 

 method." To speak so would be as foolish as it would be arrogant ; 

 but we may perhaps, without undue presumption, promise them that, 

 if they will learn and use the results of our method, they will have a 

 deeper and more stable foundation in the constitution of human nature 

 for their teaching than they have now, and will add much to the effi- 



