MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 



To indulge doubts as to the healing art, is not to incur 

 the reproach of ignorance. That sort of skepticism is the 

 more warranted because many physicians freely admit that 

 they have no very confident faith in the certainty of their 

 art, and assert its illusions and its inefficiency complacently 

 enough, even when they do not go so far as to deny the 

 possibility of ever constructing a completely scientific sys- 

 tem of remedial methods. The truth is, that medicine may 

 be summed up as the application of certain sciences. When- 

 ever these sciences make advances, that art should do so 

 also, and in as clearly unquestionable a manner. The fu- 

 ture development of the healing art will consist in preserv- 

 ing the balance between the progress of anatomy, physi- 

 ology, pathology, and therapeutics, on the one hand, and 

 that of practical medicine on the other, and in keeping the 

 latter steadily subordinate to the former. Anatomy teaches 

 how the organs are made ; physiology, how they perform 

 their functions in a healthy state ; pathology, how they 

 discharge them in a diseased state ; therapeutics, how they 

 behave in regard to media, that is to say, the modifying 

 agencies of every kind with which they may be brought in 

 contact. These four sciences, as definite and systematic as 

 are all the other branches of natural philosophy, are the 

 arsenals whence the physician takes his weapons for the 

 contest he wages with disease. It is his part to make ad- 

 vantageous use of them, and to gain benefit, by quick per- 



