
MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 
To indulge doubts as to the healing art, is not to ineur 
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 presery- 
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- 
