MEDICAL ART AND SANITARY SCIENCE. 
317 
It is not strange that such credulous ideas prevail when we 
consider the lack of trust in nature shown by many medical men. 
Few have dared or even cared to trust acute disease to the restor¬ 
ative powers of nature. And it is in this form of disease that 
the medical art has been accorded the merit of having exhibited 
its greatest usefulness. The few brave and honest physicians 
who have dared to practice in accordance with convictions, have 
proved to observing and thinking minds that the conservative 
and restorative forces of nature, when attended with favorable 
hygienic and sanitary conditions, are alone equal to removing 
disease and restoring health in nearly all curable cases. 
Many medical men, when called upon to treat a case that ter¬ 
minates in restored health, seem willing and anxious to take the 
credit of having obtained the result solely with their artificial 
remedies. While it may be a pleasing thing for them to receive 
such an undue award of merit and encourage them to favor a 
continuance of the fallacy so generally believed, in regard to the 
wonderful efficacy of artificial remedies, they should remember 
that this same fallacy renders them liable in cases that result 
unfavorably or fatally, to the charge of lack of skill or misappli¬ 
cation of remedies, a charge that might be as undeserved and 
unjust as the undue merit given them in cases that resulted favor¬ 
ably. For our part, we think it important that a just estimate 
should be accorded to the force each exerts. 
If truth demands that the medical art should lower the im¬ 
portance it has claimed for itself, it will also demand that sanitary 
science shall come to the front. And in this useful science medi¬ 
cal men will, and must of necessity act the most conspicuous 
part. The part they are called upon to take in this important 
science will entitle them to all the honor that is due to great 
usefulness in the prevention of pain, misery and death. 
Sanitary science has for its special object the prevention of 
disease, while the medical art has for its special object the curing 
of disease. The two may be considered as branches of one 
grand domain of science, the science of the laws of health. 
In order to form a proper estimate of the importance of sani¬ 
tary science, let us consider briefly the magnitude of its field of 
