v i PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. 



portant results obtained in the domain of therapeutics by recent 

 investigations, partly because I wish my book to maintain the 

 honorable confidence which it has won for itself among practical 

 physicians ; partly because I regard the happy progress which 

 therapeusis has made, as the most important acquisition of the 

 last ten years. 



This progress I attribute mainly to the fact that, of late years, 

 medical explorers have recognized the only path by which thera- 

 peutic science can be advanced, and have followed it with bril- 

 liant results. My outspoken assertions of ten years ago have 

 come true. I then denounced the error of postponing all medi- 

 cal treatment of disease, until our knowledge of the action of 

 medicines, and our insight into pathological processes, should be 

 so far advanced, that means of cure would be self-evident. I 

 pronounced this ideal goal to be unattainable, and declared it 

 idle to hope for a time when a medical prescription should be 

 the simple resultant of a computation of known quantities. T 

 lamented that physicians, instead of striving to promote the 

 healing art by their own efforts, should seek aid from the insti- 

 tutes of physiology and pathology, or from the laboratory of the 

 chemist, obtaining now and then an ingenious suggestion, but 

 never gaining an idea serviceable in the relief of an afflicted fel- 

 low-creature. I further showed that experiments made with 

 medicaments upon the lower animals, or upon healthy human 

 beings, with all their scientific value, had as yet been of no direct 

 service to our means of treating disease, and that a continuation 

 of such experiments gave no prospect of such service. I finally 

 declared, without reservation, that even the dazzling progress 

 which pathology had made, had been of but little use to thera- 

 peutics ; that, in spite of new discoveries, our present success at 

 the bedside is scarcely more favorable than that of fifty years 

 ago ; nor in the future would pathological investigation promote 

 therapeutic success, unless directed more in accordance with the 

 requirements of general medicine, than has been done hitherto. 



Thus, after showing that therapeusis must expect no aid 



