1 96 Medicine : 



accepted truths may not after all be true, he 

 would do a real service to medical science. 



For the adoption of requisite measures to ward 

 off disease and nip it in the bud the medical man 

 does not get full and fair opportunities. Sum- 

 moned to the bedside of one actually ill, the 

 disease having got its hold, he sees the sick man 

 for the first time when, being sick, he is not his 

 true self. Ignorant therefore of the patient's con- 

 stitution and habits, of his temper of body and 

 mind, all which count for much in the prescrip- 

 tion of sound rules and directions, he is not so 

 qualified to counsel wisely as if, called in before- 

 hand to advise against sickness, he possessed 

 the necessary elements of comparison between the 

 sound and unsound man to instruct treatment. 

 For it is a diseased person, not an abstract 

 disease or absurdly called morbid entity, which 

 he has to handle ; and in most persons, I imagine, 

 there is present the weak organ or tissue which is 

 liable to fail in function under strain, and in the 

 end begins to die first. To treat the same disease 

 in the same way in all persons is to do much like 

 the tailor who supplied all his customers with 

 clothes made to the same measure, without taking 

 their particular measures. If doctors give physic 

 but seldom take it — as the old gibe is — may not 

 that be because, knowing something of their own 

 constitutions, and of the causes and beginnings of 

 disease, they adopt timely measures of precaution 

 and a system of treatment sorting with their habits 

 and temper of body and mind ? 



