60 LECTURES 



the ravages of disease in their fellows, such was the na- 

 ture of their knowledge and the mtagerness of its amount, 

 that in the vast majority of cases the would-be helper 

 was a far greater danger to the sufferer than the disease 

 with which he was afflicted. In truth, it may be stated, 

 that in the day to which I refer the gentlemen of the 

 medical profession were responsible for the destruction of 

 the lives of a greater number of people than was disease 

 itself. The reason is not far to seek, for the constitutions 

 of those attacked by disease had not only to contend with 

 that disease, but, in addition thereto, with the medical 

 man who came to cure them. This is not surprising 

 when we come to think how limited was the then knowl- 

 edge of the laws of sanitation; of the real causes of many 

 of the infectious maladies; and, finally, which is the more 

 important of all, the prevalence of the most erroneous 

 ideas of both the science of anatomy and the science of 

 physiology. 



Since those times biology has grown apace, and both 

 medicine and surgery or, I may say, the profession of 

 medicine in its entirety, has felt the remarkable advances 

 made along the lines I have just indicated. Not only 

 has medicine favorably felt the nature of those advances, 

 but in that most important and practical rield of human 

 endeavor, has been clearly shown the value of biological 

 study. Through such studies alone, it has been proven 

 beyond all manner of doubt that infectious disorders are 

 caused by living organisms, and by combating them, in 

 one way or another, those disorders may be either cured 

 or prevented altogether. An ever increasing knowledge 

 of the structure and physiology of all animals, both high 

 and low in the scale of organization, has, moreover, al- 

 lowed pathologists to trace, in some instances, the more 

 complicated fofms of disease in men to their rudimentary 

 phases in the lower animals. It is clear that by such 

 processes we will in time be enabled to arrive at a com- 

 plete history and knowledge of many of the affections of 

 the various structures of our bodies. And this has come 

 about by the ever increasing biological investigations into 

 the anatomy and physiology of all forms of animal life. 

 Not only have such biological studies been of the greatest 

 importance to man in the way of his own personal wel- 

 fare, comfort and happiness, but they have extended to 

 his material belongings, for the possession of such in- 

 creased knowledge has been of the most unlimited service 

 in the treatment of the infectious disorders and the 

 surgical injuries to which all the domesticated animals 



