INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
621 
in order to be good practitioners. These branches are 
Diagnosis, and Treatment. Diagnosis consists in determining 
by the symptoms, the seat and nature of diseases; and of 
distinguishing the differences that exist in the varied morbid 
states of the system ; in plain English, diagnosis means 
knowing exactly what is the matter with your patient. If you 
have the discriminative power to find out this, the presumption 
is that you are fairly on the high road to administer your 
remedial measures with safety and certainty. The comparison 
between one who can diagnose well and accurately, and 
one who pursues a blind routine, or is content with merely 
a superficial "observation of symptoms, is as the distinc- 
tion between taking a good aim, and firing quite at random. 
You may hit sometimes even in the latter case, but 
with no certainty, and unquestionably with no credit. 
Moreover, success arising from ignorance leads to no 
further advantage; it does not establish the reputation 
of the practitioner, nor enable him to feel at home in 
his practice ; but it often misleads, and causes him to adopt 
the same mode of treatment for very different conditional 
states of the organism. It is this chance success which has 
probably brought into use many of the panaceas and nos- 
trums that disgrace both the practice of veterinary and human 
medicine, and which are the only resources of the idle, the 
careless, and the incompetent. On the other hand, when 
scientific knowledge is combined with close examination, and 
you are enabled to fix upon the seat and nature of the dis- 
ease, and successfully to administer to the necessities of the 
case, it becomes as a light in your path which shines in two 
directions ; in the first place, it enables you successfully to 
combat with the like forms of diseased action ; and, in the 
second, to select remedies with even greater precision than 
at first. In short it opens your eyes to a world which the 
charlatan never enters, nor would he if he practised a thou- 
sand years, — I mean the world of causes and effects, the 
chosen sphere of all the sciences. This is a world full of 
light and edification ; full of pleasure also to the successful 
investigator and practitioner, and where mere conjecture is 
not only dark, but replete with uncertainty, which is, to say 
the least of it, most unsatisfactory to the honest mind. 
Diagnosis is comprehended in the combination and harmony 
subsisting between anatomy, physiology, and pathology on the 
one hand, and morbid symptoms on the other ; by its aid we 
assign to the true cause the symptoms which are present, 
whether the disease lies in the inward or outward parts of the 
frame. Thus the rational faculties of the human mind are 
80 
XXVIII. 
