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ON THE FUTURE OF PHYSIC. 
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us that patience of steady endeavour which trusts for the 
development of the most natural of sciences on the pure 
development of natural knowledge, and have produced 
amongst us separation of interest and galling unbrotherly 
bonds; they have drawn our men of genius for natural re- 
search from the noblest to the commonest work. ... In sug- 
gesting the entire isolation of medicine from the trammels 
of bad legislation, I refer to the separation of science only. 
Present legislation leads to the existence and sustenance of 
rival boards, having rival powers and privileges, that in- 
duces us to make endless, wearing, and useless efforts to put 
down quacks by the power of law as against that of know- 
ledge, and that fosters a stubborn belief in our security as 
a class, which crumbles to the dust whenever it comes in 
contact with the stern realities of life — with the sym- 
pathies, the fears, superstitions, and prejudices that make 
up the soul of human kind. For the future of physic, 
when we have a statesman born to us, he must be a states- 
man of the State, and not a statescraft man of our particular 
craft. ... Of all professions and liberal callings, ours is the 
only one that has failed to produce a State Minister. . . . 
It is so because such of our body as have had the qualities 
and opportunities have trickled aw 7 ay in the miserable gutter 
of medical legislation, instead of plunging into the great 
politics of the nation, and studying the national in preference 
to the professional welfare. In the future we shall have great 
statesmen. We had at one time, and for many a year, a man 
who was as naturally strong as Bismarck, clear-sighted and 
light-hearted as Palmerston, eloquent as Peel, industrious 
and bold as Cavour, and who, but for the professional 
trammels by which he w 7 as held dow 7 n, and the almost mortal 
professional fights in which he engaged, might have rivalled 
any of those Ministers in fame — a man w 7 hose life I will 
depict in my history, be it only to show 7 w 7 hat human strength 
can do, and what ill-judged professional restraint can undo. 
. . . The political, however, is only an accidental source of 
our power; the real source lies in the steady improvement, 
development, and simplification of medicine as a science and 
art. A William Harvey — he whose figure, by our sculptor 
Durham, this year adorns the capitol of science of the capital 
of the nation — reformed medicine more than all the medical 
political preachers that ever lived ; and this reference leads me 
to the leaves of our book that require, not excision, but revision. 
To begin with simple things, the first act required for the 
future of physic is the simplification of the language in which 
we professionally communicate with ourselves and the world. 
