48 On Medical Science : [Jan., 
two powerful remedies, which in their operation on the bram and 
nervous system are antagonistic to each other, such as morphia 
and atropia, the active principle of belladonna, are injected stmul- 
taneously. The headache and phantasms of atropia have been 
found to be controlled by morphia, as well as the partial deafness 
and the visual defects of the former alkaloid, Conversely the 
drowsiness and stupor caused by morphia disappear under the use 
of atropia. In other respects the two remedies thus administered 
have been found to be mutually antidotal.* 
Who knows how many lives of persons poisoned by opium, and 
too far narcotized to be capable of swallowing, may be saved by the 
subcutaneous administration of atropia ? 
To these triumphs in the cause of humanity something must 
still be added. It must often occur to the earnest-minded practi- 
tioner that in the exercise of his calling he is treading in the steps 
of his Divine Master, whose chief work on earth was to heal the 
mental and bodily diseases of those who came to Him. 
But the physician now, if it may be said without irreverence, 
goes beyond his Master, although he is only following out the 
natural developments of his Master’s teaching, 
To use the words of an eloquent and popular writer :—‘ No 
man who loves his kind can in these days be content with waiting 
as a servant upon human misery, when it is possible in so many 
cases to anticipate and avert it. Prevention is better than cure, 
and it is now clear to all that a large part of human suffering is 
preventable by improved social arrangements. . . . When the 
sick man has been visited, and everything done which skill and 
assiduity can do to cure him, modern charity will go on to consider 
the causes of his malady, what noxious influence besetting his life, 
what contempt of the laws of health in his diet or habits, may have 
caused it, and then to inquire whether others incur the same dan- 
gers, and may be warned in time. . . . Christ commanded his 
first followers to heal the sick and give alms, but He commands 
the Christians of this age, if we may use the expression, to investi- 
gate the causes of all physical evil, to master the science of health, 
to consider the question of education with a view to health, the 
question of labour with a view to health, the question of trade 
with a view to heaith, and, while all these investigations are made, 
with free expense of energy and time and means, to work out the 
re-arrangement of human life in accordance with the results they 
give.’’T 
In justice to the faculty of medicine be it said, that some of its 
members were among the first to recognize these great truths. 
_ * ‘Biennial Retrospect of Medicine and Surgery fer 1865-6,—-New Sydenham 
Society, p. 460. 
+ ‘Ecce Homo,’ 4th edition, pp, 196, 202. 
