314 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



preservation of health and the cure of diseases, 

 continues like them to perfect itself inces- 

 santly ; but all it can do is to follow them at a 

 distance, and it can never hope to reach their 

 degree of superiority. 



These are truths which have been long ad- 

 mitted and felt by us. Therefore, we have 

 appealed for assistance to the discoveries of 

 the natural sciences : physics, chemistry, have 

 in our hands become effectual means of ob- 

 servation and analysis; and we, in our age, 

 gain more knowledge in fifty years than our 

 forefathers did in several centuries, for they 

 were then necessarily rather artists than 

 scholars. In a word, medical science or 

 biology is constituting itself, and if it be fully 

 conscious of its impotence in the case of many 

 diseases, it also knows its progressive improve- 

 ment. It is striving to Achieve the highest 

 place among social institutions, and the day 

 may come when it shall obtain it, for nations 

 will then owe to us their health and life that 

 is to say, their earthly happiness. 



The laws by which organic phenomena are 

 regulated, are, we have said, everlasting; we 

 may also declare that they are general. One of 



