PHYSIOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF DISEASE 101 



thought that it would ever be applied to the 

 diagnosis and prognosis of disease of the heart ? 



You may perhaps wonder that people exist who 

 can devote their lives to the investigation of what 

 appears to have no direct utility. Fortunately 

 such people do exist, people imbued with the spirit 

 of curiosity, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge 

 for its own sake, and quite apart from any possi- 

 bility of its being found useful. 



To them the pursuit of knowledge is what 

 hunting is to the hunter, and fishing to the angler. 

 It absorbs all their energies, and in the difficulties to 

 be contended with they find their chief joys. Were 

 it not so the life of scientific investigators would be 

 incomprehensible. The difficulties are enormous : 

 the disappointments sustained are endless, and the 

 prizes secured usually but small when compared 

 with the time and labour expended. What the 

 general public have to grasp is that knowledge is 

 power, power to enable us to live better under the 

 adverse forces against which we have to contend — 

 that there are a certain number of individuals who 

 are born hunters after knowledge, and that it is to 

 the advantage of mankind to give them every 

 facility for the prosecution of their hunt without 

 demanding that a utilitarian goal shall be in sight. 



'' Ignorance is the curse of God : Knowledge the 

 wings with which we fly to Heaven." 



