INSTITUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 



mechanism is disordered and changed when disease prevails ; 

 and, from a comparison of these two, we see what changes 

 must be produced in order to restore the health that is lost. 

 This gives us what we call our indications ; and the third part 

 delivers the general doctrine of the means by which the indica- 

 tions can be answered. I think it is obvious that, as in physic 

 the whole of our consideration resolves itself into these three 

 subjects health, disease, and remedy, there can be no more. 



" The branch which treats of health has been named the 

 Physiology ; that which treats of disease, the Pathology, by 

 every writer. With regard to the branch which treats of re- 

 medy, there is some doubt in giving it a name, but, without 

 hesitation, I call it Therapeutics. Some of you may observe 

 that this term has been confined almost entirely to the study of 

 remedies, as means employed for curing diseases ; and that the 

 means of preventing diseases have been supposed to constitute 

 another branch. I have told you that there is no art of pre- 

 serving health, but in so far as we prevent diseases by prevent- 

 ing the defects or errors that have a tendency to disease, as 

 they exist only in their cause before they produce their effects. 

 But this is really and truly removing a disease ; and the means 

 of accomplishing it are no other than the remedies we employ 

 in curing them, so that they may be comprehended under the 

 title of Therapeutics. I have omitted the Hygiene as a sepa- 

 rate title, not because it is not an object of the physician's art, 

 but because, as it consists entirely in the pointing out and in 

 the avoiding the remote causes of disease, whether predisponent 

 or occasional, a part of it will be found in the Pathology, and 

 the other part of it in the Therapeutics. 



" With regard to Semeiotics, which has formed one of the 

 five parts into which the Institutions of Medicine have been 

 divided, from the time of Galen to that of Boerhaave, I 

 would observe that this part is no other than a repetition of 

 what is delivered in that part of Pathology which explains 

 the symptoms of diseases, and is therefore termed the Symp- 

 tomatology." 



