148 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 



ciples of law, and the phases of its development, 

 and learns as a judge to balance evidence indepen- 

 dent of emotion. Clergymen, in the individual 

 exercise of their profession, have before them the 

 highest ideal ; but bearing on them is the unhappy 

 fact that in ecclesiastical organizations, as such, 

 abstract truth or error has no locus standi, but every 

 consideration yields to the question of accordance 

 with the laws of the church. As to medicine, I 

 have already touched on the difficulty of being 

 truthful in the practice of the profession ; but, on 

 the other hand, in the search after general laws, 

 authority is now-a-days armed with less persecuting 

 power than formerly, and freedom is enjoyed in 

 scientific inquiry. 



Returning then to the subject of scientific ac- 

 curacy : the physician is set face to face with 

 nature ; and all correct treatment of disease must 

 be founded on an accurate knowledge of patholo- 

 gical changes. If your practice be not so founded, 

 it will be quackery ; and the public and the state 

 are to blame that the opportunities of arriving at a 

 correct pathology are not what they ought to be. 



There are two senses in which pathological 

 anatomy is the foundation of correct practice. In 

 the first place, the profession, as a profession, could 

 have no knowledge at all of any pathological change 



