338 THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MEDICINE. 



the public and the medical profession to adopt, than by any 

 of the so-called methods of cure. Such preventive methods 

 consist essentially in providing or supplying that condition, 

 or those conditions, of health, and consequently of increased 

 duration of life, which may happen to be deficient or absent. 

 In like manner, all trustworthy methods of cure, usually so 

 called, consist essentially in providing the conditions of local 

 or general health in the individual — that is, in providing the 

 conditions of recovery. It is with methods of prevention 

 and of recovery, therefore, that our profession has to do. If 

 we make use of the terms "cure" or "remedy," we do so in 

 their fundamental and not in their vulgar sense ; for we do 

 not profess to perform the one or to provide the other in 

 their vulgar sense. What we only undertake to provide 

 are — firstly, the conditions of relief or alleviation of pain, so 

 far as these have been discovered ; secondly, the conditions 

 of recovery, provided these conditions can be restored ; and 

 thirdly, the conditions of longevity, within the limits assigned 

 to the life of man in the present phase of his existence. 



It would be a curious, but certainly not an unprofitable 

 inquiry, to trace throughout the history of medicine the 

 influence which the ever-varying, but always more or less 

 dominant, conception of disease as a real entity has had on 

 physic ; to track, step by step, the change that came over 

 the original conception and purpose of the duties of the 

 physician, — over the conception of that art which, according to 

 Hippocrates, consists in addition and subtraction, or, in other 

 words, in the restoration of that harmony in the conditions 

 of health, the derangement of which constitutes the essence 

 of disease. What if it should appear that a great part of the 

 labour that has been bestowed on the investigation of disease, 

 and in the search after cure, has consisted in fruitless 

 attempts to detect the presence of specific entities, and of 

 counteractive specifics for their control and eradication ? 



