34 



but tuberculosis and typhoid fever came iu so quietly and unobtrusively 

 that no notice was at first taken of them, at least we have no records of 

 their first appearance. People ordinarily do not reason about these things, 

 but the early Indiana doctors realized that a change was going on and 

 long ago the Indiana State Medical Society had appointed a committee 

 to look into the matter. (In this connection I may say that only last week 

 I reported to the Cass Countj- Medical Society a case of tropical sprue, or 

 psilosis, brought into the State by a missionary returned from Korea. New 

 cases are, however, not apt to arise from it.) 



Althougli there is an analogy between weeds and diseases, the former 

 growing in the earth, the latter on or in the body, yet diseases are not en 

 titles that can be handled and examined. But in the childhood of the race 

 disease was held to be a thing that had gotten into the body, had taken 

 possession of it, and the early medicine man tried to drive it out by the 

 use of all sorts of noises and nauseous drugs, even by torture. "1 he Chi- 

 nese and Korean medicine men of today are quite expert in thrusting long 

 needles into the body of the sick ; it is really wonderful how little dam- 

 age they do — they have learned how to avoid the vital spots or organs. In 

 some other countries the sick are filled up with all sorts of nauseous drugs, 

 and the physicians are quite skilled in luiowing what to give so that the 

 patient may not die from the effect of the supposed remedy. 



A specific disease is now regarded in tlie light of a reaction of the 

 organism, of the body, toward some foreign cause, the reaction depending 

 on the kind of cause. The reaction may be so definite that the disease 

 may be diagnosed from the symptoms alone, without examining into the 

 nature of the cause, though diagnoses based on a recognition of the cause 

 are of course more exact than when based on symptoms. 



The classification of diseases a hundred years ago, at the time when 

 our State was first being settled, was by classes, orders, genera and species, 

 just as in tlie case of botany and zoology. Many systems of classification 

 have appeared, each one supposed to be an improvement over preceding 

 ones, and physicians are just now working upon a new system which they 

 believe will stand the test of time. Old systems were based on symptoms, 

 the new is based on the recognition of the cause of the disease. Thus 

 Osier's recent treatise takes up first the diseases due to animal parasites — 

 those due, in order, to protozoa, parasitic infusoria, to flukes, cestodes, 

 nematodes, and so on — followed by the specific infectious diseases, from 

 typhoid and typhus fever running down to tuberculosis and leprosy, in- 



