396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SOME OF THE LIMITATIONS OF MEDICINE.* 



By STEPHEN S. BURT, M. D., 



PEOFE890B OY CLINICAL MEDICINE AND PHTSICAL DIAGNOSIS, NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE MEDI- 

 CAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL. 



IT is a trait peculiar to some minds to believe too much and to 

 others to believe too little. Between these extremes, however, 

 there are many who, though keenly alive to the limitations of 

 medicine, are, at the same time, able to appreciate the great boon 

 it is to mankind. There may be those who would resent the idea 

 of circumscribing our art, but " truth can never be really injuri- 

 ous, whatever phantoms apprehensive ignorance may conjure up 

 around it." 



The questions have often presented themselves to me why, 

 after so many years of familiarity with disease, is there such a 

 wide difference of opinion regarding its management ? Why is it 

 possible that there are two large schools of medicine opposed in 

 theory if not in practice ? Why the endless and surprising con- 

 sumption of patent remedies ? It would seem that more or less 

 superstition still prevails in reference to disease, as well as much 

 ignorance respecting its natural history. I am not well convinced 

 that illness is a necessary concomitant of human existence ; and 

 to believe that it is unavoidable is to paralyze all legitimate efforts 

 for its prevention. That it will, at any time, be wholly eradicated 

 is too much to hope, and as Utopian as to expect that a high order 

 of knowledge will ever be universal ; nevertheless, great mental 

 attainments and perfect physical health have been realized, and 

 therefore must be accepted as a standard for approximation. Nor 

 is such a realization fortuitous. Long years before our era a wise 

 philosopher of Greece declared that chance was nothing more 

 than cause unperceived by human reasoning. Now, the welfare 

 of the human race suffers in proportion to the survival of a be- 

 lief that chance and not some ascertainable cause underlies the 

 evils that endanger it. We are prone to shift the responsibility 

 for our misfortunes upon others, and slow to take the blame on 

 ourselves, where it commonly belongs. Life is certainly a desira- 

 ble thing under favorable circumstances, and oftentimes we are 

 the makers, or, at least, the modifiers of our environment. As a 

 rule, bad health is the foundation of the greater part of the un- 

 happiness of man. And yet nothing is more positive than that 

 the preservation of good health depends upon a strict observance 

 of the laws of being, which include those of inheritance. Many 



* Read before the Clinical Society of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and 

 Hospital, January 19, 1889. 



