THE METHOD OF OBSERVATION 233 



sound. Enlightened practitioners were saying : 

 "Let us cease to pour drugs of which we know 

 little into bodies of which we know less"; indis- 

 criminate blood letting was being given up, and 

 the leaders of the profession were not only admirable 

 bedside observers, but were awake to the import- 

 ance of records made, in accordance with the 

 teaching of Louis, on a numerical basis. Moreover 

 the custom of checking the results of clinical 

 observation by means of post mortem examinations 

 was beginning to add greatly to empirical know- 

 ledge, and to the accuracy of diagnosis. 



At this middle point of the nineteenth century 

 our own country was fortunate in possessing for its 

 medical leaders men of great intellectual power and 

 attainments. Let us note how one of them writes 

 concerning his own methods. William Jenner, 

 following in the footsteps of Louis, had been 

 striving to make it clear to his English colleagues 

 that Typhus and Typhoid Fever are distinct 

 pathological entities. His views, though of course 

 sound and correct, met with opposition and criti- 

 cism. "I considered, therefore," he writes in the 

 preface to his book on fevers published in 1850, 

 "that it was necessary to begin de novo, and consult 

 only the voice of nature convinced that, although 

 the most intellectual might fail at first to compre- 

 hend her often ambiguous language, yet that her 

 most humble votaries might by patience and 

 daily watching, by keeping honest record of every 



