(>48 bourgelat’s introductory lecture. 
who, equally incapable of foreseeing the effects as of judging of 
them, have recourse, vaguely and hastily, to certain substances, 
and then immediately run to something different, he adheres 
to those of which he first, after mature consideration, made 
choice; and he neither varies nor multiplies them but as necessity 
demands, and with the circumspection which the fear of increasing 
the disease or oppressing the patient inspires. He does not 
attempt to provoke the excretions without having given nature 
time to prepare the matter; and then being satisfied when the 
passages are freely and sufficiently opened, he attentively watches 
that they do not operate by any circuitous route; and that, while 
one discharge is augmented, others are not diminished, or remain 
suspended. He neither urges nor retards the critical evacuations, 
except when nature is at fault, and claiming assistance from him. 
He is not ignorant, that if she acts with sovereign pow T er in the 
acute maladies, she is purely passive in chronic diseases; and 
that art can only do mischief if it is intruded at the time when 
the efforts of nature are announced by a gradual return to a state 
of ease and health. He knows, nevertheless, that certain diseases 
exact, on his part, cares more assiduous than others; and he 
gives prompt attention to the events as they arise, and to the 
necessity of obviating or parrying them: he skilfully prevents 
the ravages w T hich the disease might inflict on some weak or es¬ 
sential parts, and adroitly turns those blows on the stronger and 
less capital ones ; he distinguishes the cases in which the debility 
of the patient is favourable from those in which it is proper to 
sustain and recruit the powers; he never suffers his views to be 
thwarted by a ridiculous and fatal tolerance of the non-observance 
of a required regimen; he regulates the abstemiousness of the 
diet according to the character of the disease ; he condemns the 
animal to a rigorous abstinence from all solid food, in every case 
in which this food would be indigestible, and would ferment: 
finally, initiated in the mysteries of his art by frequenting the 
infirmary, he never feels in a new situation, or is at a loss at the 
sight of a patient: nothing escapes him of all the measures 
which he has been taught to pursue under the eyes of his masters; 
and he joins with the remembrance of every remedial maxim. 
