It is possible that the treatment of the ills to which humanity is subject may in course of time be considerably improved, in consequence of the patient investigation that has long been carried out on every form of disease at our hospitals. At present physiology and pathology so entirely occupy the attention of the doctors, that treatment is relegated to the distant future. A French physician spoke the truth when he said, “The object of the scientific practitioner is to make a good diagnosis in life, and then verify it on the post-mortem table.” It is not to be denied that the art of making a good diagnosis has been brought to considerable perfection of late; but whether we are more successful than the doctors of former times in curing these well-diagnosed diseases is very doubtful. Now a general hospital, frequented by thousands of “cases,” is to the inquiring physician what an Alpine valley is to the botanist, or a Brazilian forest to an entomologist. It is there that orders, genera, and species are to be found. Diseases for classification in all their variations are met with amongst the crowds applying for treatment. The great object is to get the crowds; they come for one thing, the doctors for another. Very good and kind and clever at curing folk, no doubt they often are, but primarily the object of calling the crowd together is precisely that which the herbarium supplies to the botanist, and the nest of drawers to the entomologist.
The hospital professor is like Linnæus, who so curiously expressed himself when he had achieved success:—
“God hath so led me, that what I desired and could not attain has been my greatest blessing;
“God hath given me interesting and honourable service, yea! that which in all the world I most desired;
“He hath lifted me up among the mæcenates scientiarum, yea! among the princes of the kingdom, and into the King’s house;
“He hath lent me the largest herbarium in the world, my best delight.
“He hath honoured me with the honorary title of arkiater, with the star of a knight, with the shield of a nobleman, and with a name in the world of letters, etc.”
The only difference being that the great botanist thanked God for his herbarium, while our hospital man of science has generally little thought of God when making up his case book, unless it be to think, with Helmholtz, how much more perfect organs he could have devised had he been consulted at creation.
Elsworth often thought that all their diagnosis and classification did little for the cure of disease; and that, as the labourer said of his landlord’s claret, “You didn’t get any forrarder with it all!”
“Some day we shall arrive at the treatment stage,” they said; “at present all is chaos in that direction. We have not diagnosed enough,” they urge. “We must diagnose a good deal more in every part of the world; then meet in congress, then keep up discussion in a hundred societies, and, in the course of a century or so, we may begin to try to cure people; but it is too early yet. Meanwhile, we can diagnose. And take our fees? Why, certainly!”