208 Medicine : 



organism tries to do, to eliminate or extirpate 

 a morbid element, but to absorb it into its system, 

 growing sympathy being the vital principle of 

 social growth and socialism the apparent creed 

 of the future. The medical man, at all events, 

 can plead his duty to his individual patient ; he 

 is not sponsor for the nation's future ; that he 

 leaves to those whose business it is. Still, a 

 sceptical- minded person — he would be called 

 a cynic — looking to the ultimate issue of such 

 morbid absorptions, might be tempted to exclaim 

 with the prophet, " My people love to have it 

 so, and what will ye do in the end thereof ? " 



To the clear and distinct conception of the 

 body as a complex reflex mechanism, in which 

 there is mutual intelligence of parts with entire 

 community of interests, we have to add the con- 

 ception of it as a vital laboratory of the most 

 complex chemical substances and processes in 

 the world engaged in the most condensed and 

 subtile activities. We easily think of it as a 

 wondrous community of innumerable cells that 

 have undergone various differentiations to form 

 different tissues ; but when scientific imagination 

 goes deeper into the minute subtilties of matter a 

 living cell seems but a gross thing. Concentrated 

 within its little body are subtile and intense forces, 

 continuously and quietly working, which, if let 

 loose in large explosive display, might suffice to 

 blow up the chemist and his whole laboratory. 

 No wonder, then, at the increasing knowledge of 



