EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
165 
mitted to its care. The realization of long-deferred hopes, the blighting of 
fairest prospects; the weakness of the once strong man; the almost 
fiendish strength of the bodily-enfeebled maniac; the victory over agonizing 
pain; the humiliation of loathsome malady; the joy of returning health; 
the crushing grief of irresistible disease ; birth, with its labour and sorrow; 
and death, with its repose—are among its familiar scenes. We are daily 
and hourly placed on the threshold of life—on the border-land between the 
seen and unseen. We have constantly before us the great unravelled pro¬ 
blem of humanity. Yague sounds float out to us from those around whom 
disease has thrown the mysterious veil of so-called ‘unconsciousness/ We 
hear them f wandering 5 in the darkness our human knowledge strives to 
penetrate in vain; we feel that it may be light. What questions are we not 
asked by those who stand around, eager to know what relation those objects 
of solicitude, and of long years of love, yet bear to them ! There lies the 
vesture of mortality, scarcely rustling with the breath of life. Can it 
again be placed on common terms with us ? Are there any ties yet left 
unsevered ? Or is it, even now, the cast-off garment, fitted only for decay ? 
We stand appalled before the great facts we can neither doubt nor explain. 
We are conscious of our two-fold being. We can recognise its intense 
reality in the consciousness of others. We are regarded as the interpreters 
of that awful hour; but how to interpret all these circumstances is not 
taught us in pathological treatises; how to act under them finds no place in 
our systematic therapeutics. We have to learn it by the study of ourselves 
and others, and by the experience which time alone can give. 
“ But * thanks to the human heart, by which we live,’ thanks to its nobler 
nature, its common sympathies, c its tenderness, its hopes, and fears,’ the 
suffering man has always found in the medical profession the succour and 
support he needs ; and if, year after year, the scientific advances which are 
accomplished are not such as to satisfy the ambitious inquirer after truth, 
yet the sorrows of humanity are hourly soothed, and the load of life is 
lessened by the unselfish care and kindly offices of that profession, whose 
mission—to use the w T ords of one of its great masters, but recently passed 
away—is to £ cure the curable and comfort the incurable;’ and in whose 
ranks it is our common honour and privilege to take our stand.” 
We confess to have read the brochure with pleasure. We 
like the bold and independent spirit in which it is written; 
but we need hardly say that it is only by comparison, and 
from the relative position in which the two divisions of medi¬ 
cine—the human and the veterinary—stand to each other, 
that we can hope to derive any benefit from it. Science, 
however, be it what section it may, courts investigation, and 
loves not exclusiveness, but, like charity, seeks another’s 
good, and to its votaries says— 
“ That which before us lies in daily life, 
Is the prime wisdom: What more, is fume, 
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence.” 
ADDRESS OF CONDOLENCE TO HER MAJESTY. 
Subjoined is a copy of the Address of Condolence to Her 
Majesty, presented by the Council of the Royal College of 
