Medicine : Present and Prospective 1 9 1 



of thorough cleanliness, has made such notable 

 operative progress. Day after clay the surgeon 

 invades tei-ritory which the physician deemed his 

 own, and saves from pain and death the patient 

 whom medical art was impotent to help. He 

 opens the cerebral abscess, cuts out the cerebral 

 tumour, frees the fettered lung, fixes the floating 

 kidney, cleans out the stone-packed gall-bladder, 

 removes the peccant appendix, yea — rudest raid 

 of all — by cutting away large parts of the sluggish 

 bowel, aspires to cure the obstinate constipation 

 which drugs had failed to cure, had probably 

 aggravated. In face of the bold rectifying opera- 

 tions of his art, it might seem almost a pity that 

 Nature, in its design and construction of the 

 human body, had not the advantage of modern 

 surgical advice. A possible apprehension now 

 is lest in his zeal to put quickly right that which 

 is wrong the surgeon be sometimes tempted to 

 supplant instead of aiding Nature in its constant 

 efforts to put things quietly right. Medicine and 

 surgery are not of course separate arts, but differ- 

 ent functions of one healing art, always in need 

 of mutual aid and instruction, and it will go ill 

 with the patient of either physician or surgeon 

 who ignores this truth in practice. 



While proclaiming praise, I cannot but deplore 

 the present practice of inventing and multiplying 

 portentous words of Greek or Latin or mixed root 

 to describe simple things. One cannot open a 

 medical journal nowadays without being amazed 



