276 BACTERIOLOGY. 



' these have not the same significance before the 

 closing of the chain and afterwards, and that 

 again in the case of different diseases, special 

 differences in the value of individual links may 

 exist. 



I choose this comparison in order to make 

 clear at the outset that there can be no cura- 

 tive schema applicable to all cases. The duty 

 of physicians is to treat men suffering from 

 different diseases, not to treat the diseases 

 themselves. Quite apart from the psycho- 

 logical factors which in the exhilaration of 

 exactness are now generally too much neg- 

 lected, it must be acknowledged that medicine 

 has for a long time shrunk from all question- 

 ing about the causes of disease and cure. 



The symptoms of disease were; to be sure, 

 considered after a fashion, and then medical 

 practice entered upon a wild and many-sided 

 activity which generally found its outward 

 expression in prescriptions of large doses of 

 some drug for all symptoms, both great and 

 small. A movement counter to this was neces- 

 sarily provoked. Hahnemann used, for every 

 disease, only one remedy, without reference to 

 the number and succession of symptoms, and 

 observed that better results followed with 

 small quantities of the remedy than with large 

 doses. Then the Viennese school, which Hah- 



