lice Evolution of Medical Science. 151 



the race, and brought about as penalties of progress. Prog- 

 ress is not all a blessing. It demands its price, and some- 

 times a very grave one. Comparative anatomy tells us of 

 incurable troubles, and why they are so. It points out 

 weak and dangerous conditions, and shows how to avoid 

 and overcome them. The non-evolutionist physician invari- 

 ably overlooks these conditions, and his patients suifer ac- 

 cordingly. Materia Medica and Therapeutics have become 

 so far generalized in this decade as to show how drugs of 

 certain qualities are composed of molecules having atoms 

 of certain definite weights. The therapeutic qualities of 

 drugs are functions of their atomic weights. Doctors know- 

 ing this laAV have a guide as to the claims of certain drugs 

 in certain diseases. Those who do not know it must risk 

 pure empiricism, without a guide. 



Botany, too, has supplied its aid in showing how thera- 

 peutic qualities of a given type run in veins among allied 

 species and genera of plants. The doctor who knows no 

 botany is misled by pretenders who claim great things for 

 new remedies. Every few months such discoveries are 

 announced. A short time ago it was gleditchine. Shortly 

 before that it was hopine. Hundreds of physicians pre- 

 scribed these humbug remedies. The plants they pretended 

 to come from belong to places in the evolutionary order 

 that indicated positively that they were frauds. In or- 

 ganic chemistry we see similar generalization. Alcohols 

 with similar properties have similar compositions. Chloral 

 hydrate, paraldehyde, and other hypnotics, group them- 

 selves along a certain line. A knowledge of organic 

 chemistry enables a physician to pass a fairly good judg- 

 ment in advance, upon any remedy, and keeps him and his 

 patients from being duped by advertising pretenders. Chem- 

 ists lately have been working along the true lines, and mak- 

 ing wonderful and most valuable discoveries if we really 

 can call them discoveries. When they know in advance 

 what they are going to find by following a certain path, it 

 is scarcely correct to call them discoveries, even if no 

 living being had ever seen them before. Of course, the 

 way they travel is dark to all senses but the mind, and 

 much knowledge, care and skill are needed to tread the be- 

 fore untrodden, but predicted, path, safely. 



Bacteriology has also revolutionized pathology, and he 

 who clings to the ideas of ten years ago cannot do his 



