THE RELATIONS OF LAW AND MEDICINE. 717 
many stoppages and fluctuations until the eighteenth century, when they appear 
to have gathered into a more unified, intelligible and powerful science. 
However we may look upon the different schools and their comparative 
merits, one can readily assent to the catholic remark of Dr. Payne: "From a 
theoretical point of view, Hahnemann's is one of the abstract systems pretending 
to universality which modern medicine neither accepts nor finds it worth while to 
controvert. In the treatment of disease his practical innovations came at a fort- 
unate time when the excesses of the depletory system had only partially been 
superseded by the equally injurious extreme of Brown's stimulant treatment. 
Hahnemann's use of mild, and often quite inert remedies contrasted favorably 
with both. Further he did good by insisting upon simplicity in prescribing when 
it was the custom to give a number of drugs, often heterogeneous and inconsist- 
ent, in the same prescription." 
And yet we also agree that medicine in its largest sense, while claiming a 
source in an obscured past, and unfolded, amplified and augmented by the 
genius and labor of untold years, is yet looking to the future for its golden day. 
Already it is finding the sphere of prevention as wide and as important as that 
of cure. Before it lie the foes of human life encamped in noxious malaria, fetid 
sewers, lethal contagion and morbific habits of mind and body, and the tre- 
mendous play of spirit upon function and organic life upon the invisible and 
higher nature are problems for medicine some day to solve. 
Into its horizon are drifting great truths and discoveries whose dimensions 
are only vague conjectures, as the curling smoke above the far away white caps 
tells the sailor that yonder goes some sort of steam-driven craft, but whether it is 
a pleasure yacht or the Great Eastern he cannot say. Magnetism, electricity, 
anesthetics, inoculation, imagination and volition, touching the body and giv- 
ing it life or death; how wide is the undiscovered country? 
The profession not only looks back to Hippocrates and Galen but forward 
to the day when, in the words of Sir J. Y. Simpson, as quoted in a brilliant article 
in an English magazine, physicians " shall be familiar with the chemistry of 
most diseases ; when they shall know the exact organic poisons that produce 
them with all their exact antidoces and eliminations ; when they shall look upon 
the cure of some maladies as simply a series of chemical problems and formulae ; 
when medical men shall be able to stay the ravages of tubercle, blot out fevers 
and inflammations, avert and melt down morbid growths, cure cancers, destroy 
all morbific organic growths and ferments, annul the deadly influence of malaria 
and contagions, and by these and various other means lengthen out the average 
duration of mean life." 
The new shall transcend the old and the morning twilight brighten into the 
perfect day. And now if we inquire through what experiences and perturbation 
has the sister profession of the law come during these thousands of years that 
medicine has been evolving its present noble position, we are called to note the 
common history of both, save, as was to be expected the healing art had earlier 
uses and records. 
