COMBATING PARASITIC BACTERIA. 189 



ery from lockjaw is of the rarest occurrence. But 

 in many other diseases the body is able to with- 

 stand the poison, and later to recover its resisting 

 powers sufficiently to drive off the invaders. In 

 all cases, however, the process is a natural one and 

 dependent upon the vital activity of the body. It 

 is based at the foundation, doubtless, upon the 

 powers of the body cells, either the phagocytes 

 or other active cells. The body has, in short, its 

 own forces for repelling invasions, and upon these 

 forces must we depend for the power to produce 

 recovery. 



It is evident that all these facts give us very 

 little encouragement that we shall ever be able 

 to cure diseases directly by means of drugs to 

 destroy bacteria, but, on the contrary, that we 

 must ever depend upon the resisting powers of 

 the body. They teach us, moreover, along what 

 line we must look for the future development 

 of curative medicine. It is evident that scien- 

 tific medicine must turn its attention toward 

 the strengthening and stimulating of the resist- 

 ing and curative forces of the body. It must 

 be the physician's aim to enable the body to re- 

 sist the poisons as well as possible and to stimu- 

 late it to re-enforce its resistant forces. Drugs 

 have a place in medicine, of course, but this place 

 is chiefly to stimulate the body to react against 

 its invading hosts. They are, as a rule, not spe- 

 cific against definite diseases. We can not hope 

 for much in the way of discovering special medi- 

 cines adapted to special diseases. We must sim- 

 ply look upon them as means which the physician 

 has in hand for stimulating the natural forces of 

 the body, and these may doubtless vary with dif- 

 ferent individual natures. Recognising this, we 



