IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. 65 



whicli it was told as a great event, tliat somebody 

 down on " the Cape " had died of " a consumption." 

 This story does not sound probable to myself, as I 

 repeat it, yet I assure you it is true, and it shows 

 how cautiously we must receive all popular stories 

 of o;reat changes in the habits of disease.* 



Is there no progress, then, but do we return to the 

 same beliefs and practices which our forefathers wore 

 out and threw away? I trust and believe that there 

 is a real progress. We may, for instance, return in 

 a measure to the Brunonian stimulating system, but 

 it must be in a modified way, for we cannot go back 

 to the simple Brunonian pathology, since we have 

 learned too much of diseased action to accept its con- 

 venient dualism. So of other doctrines, each new 

 Avatar strips them of some of their old pretensions, 

 until they take their fitting place at last, if they 

 have any truth in them, or disappear, if they were 

 mere phantasms of the imagination. 



In the mean time, while medical theories are com- 

 ing in and going out, there is a set of sensible men 

 who are never run away with by them, but practise 

 their art sagaciously and faithfully in much the same 

 way from generation to generation. From the time 

 of Hippocrates to that of our own medical patriarch, 

 there has been an apostolic succession of wise and good 

 practitioners. If you will look at the first aphorism 



* See Brit, and For. Med.-Chir. Eev. for Oct., 1860, p. 239. The last two 

 paragraphs were in type before I had seen the article here referred to. 



