CONCLUDING REMARK'S. 305 



similation of all the good that has been done up to, and 

 especially near about, their own time, than to any very 

 startling steps they have taken in advance. Such men 

 will be sure to take some, and important, steps forward ; 

 for unless they have this power, they will not be able to 

 assimilate well what has been done already, and if they 

 have it, their study of older work will almost indefi- 

 nitely assist it ; but, on the whole, they owe their great- 

 ness to their completer fusion and assimilation of older 

 ideas ; for nature is distinctly a fairly liberal conserva- 

 tive rather than a conservative liberal. All which is 

 well said in the old couplet — 



" Be not the first by whom the new is tried, 

 Nor yet the last to throw the old aside." 



Mutatis mutandis, the above would seem to hold as 

 truly about medicine as about politics. We cannot 

 reason with our cells, for they know so much more than 

 we do that they cannot understand us; — but though we 

 cannot reason with them, we can find out what they 

 have been most accustomed to, and what, therefore, they 

 are most likely to expect; we can see that they get 

 this, as far as it is in our power to give it them, and 

 may then generally leave the rest to them, only bearing 

 in mind that they will rebel equally against too sudden 

 a change of treatment, and no change at all. 



Friends have complained to me that they can never 

 tell whether I am in jest or earnest. I think, however, 

 it should be sufficiently apparent that I am in very 

 serious earnest, perhaps too much so, from the first page 

 of my book to the last. I am not aware of a single 

 argument put forward which is not a bond fide argument, 



