But, although, therefore, we are neither hydropathists nor homœopathists, we begin to see, in the very success of these things, some good; and that the "great shadow of the evil" of a conjectural science will one day be replaced by another example of the triumph of an inductive philosophy; that the retiring confidence of the public will induce in us a more earnest and successful effort to give them a more definite science; and that, as Professor Smythe says, the "returning spring will no longer renew the honours of the one," whilst it will gradually evolve the development of the other.
The efforts, too, which the profession are already making, though, as we humbly consider, not in the right direction, will certainly arrive in time at a path that is more auspicious. When we see the hydropathist looking so much to the skin, homœopathy leading people to think of quantities of medicine; when, in the regular profession, we see one man restricting his views to one organ, another to another, a third thinking that everything can be learnt only by examination of the dead, thus confounding morbid anatomy with pathology—a fourth restricting his labours to the microscope, as if the discovery of laws depended rather on the enlargement of sensual objects than on the improvement of intellectual vision; still we cannot but perceive that these isolated labours, if once concentrated by unity of purpose and combined action, would be shadowing forth the outline of a really inductive inquiry.
Hydropathy and homœopathy are making powerful uses, too, of the argumenta ad crumenam. Their professors are amassing very large sums of money, and that is an influence which will in time probably generate exertions in favour of a more definite science. Still, Medicine and Surgery cannot be formed into a science so long as men consider it impossible; nor can there be any material advance, if they will persist in measuring the remedial processes of nature by their present power of educing them—a presumption obviously infinitely greater than any in which the veriest quack ever dared to indulge. Well did Lord Bacon see the real difficulties of establishing the dominion of an inductive philosophy, when he laboured so much in the first place to destroy the influence of preconceived opinions—idols, as he justly called them.
You cannot, of course, write truth on a page already filled with conjecture. Nevertheless, mankind seem gradually exhausting the resources of Error: many of her paths have been trodden, and their misleading lures discovered; and by and by that of Truth will be well-nigh the only one left untried. In the meantime, we fear the science is nearly good enough for the age. The difficulty of advance is founded deeply in the principles of human nature. People know that there are physical laws as well as moral laws, and they may rely on it that disobedience and disease, sin and death, are as indissolubly bound up with infractions of the one as well as the other.
It is true there are many who have (however unconsciously) discovered that the pleasures procured by the abuses of our appetites, are a cheat; and that permanent good is only attained by obeying those laws which were clearly made for our happiness.
Error has, indeed, long darkened the horizon of medical science; and, albeit, there have been lightning—like coruscations of genius—from time to time; still they have passed away, and left the atmosphere as dark as before. At length, however, there has arisen, we hope, a small, but steady, light, which is gradually diffusing itself through the mists of Error; and which, when it shall have gained a very little more power, it will succeed in dispelling.
Then, we trust, Medicine will be seen in the graceful form in which she exists in nature; as a Science which will enable us to administer the physical laws in harmony with that moral code over which her elder sister presides; but, whenever this shall happen, Surgery will recognize, as the earliest gleams of light shed on her paths of inquiry, in aid of the progress of science and the welfare of mankind, the honoured contributions of John Hunter and John Abernethy.
[84] Professor Smythe, Lectures on Modern History, vol. i, p. 74.
[85] See "Medicine and Surgery One Inductive Science" (the so-called Law of Inflammation).