DECEMBER 27, 1918] 
structive program. This knowledge can be ob- 
tained only from the biological sciences as ap- 
plied to medicine. 
It is interesting to follow the teachings of 
the brilliant school of French scientists which 
made Paris the rendezvous of the illustrious 
men of the continent. Lavoisier, in his “ Ele- 
ments of Chemistry,” quotes the then recently 
deceased French philosopher, the Abbé de 
Condillae as follows: 
Instead of applying observation to the things 
we wished to know, we have chosen rather to 
imagine them. Advancing from one ill-founded 
supposition to another, we have at last bewildered 
ourselves amid a multitude of errors. These errors, 
becoming prejudices, are, of course, adopted as 
principles, and we thus bewilder ourselves more and 
more. The method, too, by which we conduct our 
reasonings is absurd. We abuse words which we do 
not understand, and call this the art of reasoning. 
When matters have been brought this length, when 
errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one 
remedy, by which order can be restored to the fac- 
ulty of thinking; this is, to forget all that we have 
learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to 
follow the train in which they rise, and, as Lord 
Bacon says, to frame the human understanding 
anew. 
It is readily seen that such a standpoint as 
this, as well as that developed by Lavoisier and 
quoted at the beginning of this paper, would 
affect the ideas of thoughtful medical men. 
The French physiologist Magendie, who lived 
a generation later than Lavoisier and who was 
the founder of experimental physiology, wrote 
in 1836 in his “ Elements of Physiology” the 
following words: 
In a few years physiology, which is already allied 
with the physical sciences, will not be able to ad- 
vance one particle without their aid. Physiology 
will acquire the same rigor of method, the same 
precision of language and the same exactitude of 
results as characterize the physical sciences. 
Medicine, which is nothing more than the physiol- 
ogy of the sick man, will not delay to follow in the 
same direction and reach the same dignity. Then 
all those false interpretations which, as food for 
the weakest minds, have so long disfigured medi- 
cine, will disappear. 
And this same idea was preached by Magen- 
SCIENCE 
633 
die’s most distinguished pupil, Claude Ber- 
nard, when he said: 
The prudent and reasonable course is to explain 
all that part of disease which can be explained by 
physiology, and to leave that which we can not so 
explain to be explained by the future progress of 
biological science. 
In considering science as a factor of human 
knowledge it is necessary to dissociate the 
mind from that provincialism which would 
hold that each country has its own special 
kind of science, a form of pleading which 
Rubner once endeavored to expound. Amer- 
ican students, with their extreme loyalty to 
everything which may be good or bad about 
the educational institution to which accident 
may have attached them, are inclined to be 
narrow enough without accepting such a doc- 
trine as this. The truth is the same whether 
it be in Boston or New York; in London, 
Paris or Berlin. Only the interpretation of 
the truth varies with the education of the 
mind of the individual. The inspiration and 
opportunity for seeking for the truth depends 
also on the human factors involved. 
Before the war medical education in this 
country was rapidly advancing. In all the 
great centers men lived whose primary pleas- 
ure was the search for understanding regard- 
ing the complex processes of life in health 
and in disease. Such work brings joy to the 
worker or he would not do it. I recall a 
talk with my friend, Phoebus Levene. He 
had given a student the problem of findirg 
the formula for chondroitin sulphurie acid 
and a year had passed without result. Levene 
said to his pupil: 
Work another year and then you will have it, 
and when all these men whose names are in the 
papers every day are dead, buried and forgotten, 
some one, long hence, when passing by will see this 
formula and will say of you ‘‘he painted that 
little picture.’’” 
To what extent this doctrine of future re- 
ward may affect the scientific seeker after 
knowledge can not be told, but there is no 
doubt that the chief origin of successful re- 
search lies in the love of it, and the joy of 
