Page:Essentials of the Art of Medicine Stille.djvu/10

10 up of very diverse and unequal members, and yet when we consider it as a whole, and at the proper distance of time and space, we find that these irregularities diminish or disappear. Did you ever witness an eclipse of the moon and observe the perfectly even outline of the earth's shadow upon its satellite? Not the slightest irregularity is visible. Our Himalayas, and Alps, and Andes, the gigantic peaks which stud the eastern and western continents, cast no shadow there. And so it is with human achievements when we study them from a point of vantage. The mighty men of valor and the puny dwarfs, the philosophers and the fools, the law-givers and the men of renown for all that makes illustrious figures in history—they all shrink down to a common level in the earth from which they sprang, and to which they must sooner or later return again.

Properly considered, medical education is a branch of general education. Its true foundations are in general science, philosophy, and literature. It must, like other edifices, be built up by adding stone to stone, course to course, story to story. A house cannot be built in the air, nor can we create a science or an art unless it rests upon foundations consolidated by time and approved by experience. In vain do we try to detach it from its origin and its history. As well might we expect a tree to bring forth fruit if we uproot it from the ground out of which it sprang. Attempts have never ceased to claim for it an independent existence. But, as I have said, we cannot build a house in the air. We may try to suspend medicine by the balloons of theory, and the vulgar may applaud our ingenious inventions, but sooner or later the gas escapes from them, and the baseless fabric rushes to the ground.

It has been said that every nation in the long run possesses the best government it is fitted for. And it is at least equally true that the social and intellectual condition of a nation represents the best it is at the time fitted to enjoy. It is impossible to create at a stroke, as if by an enchanter's wand, a civilized nation out of barbarous tribes, or without due time for growth; to develop a literary, scientific, or polished society among a people who are struggling to overcome the obstacles set up by nature, and the crude ideas, language, and habits which these material hindrances beget. It is not disgraceful for a nation to be merely ignorant of literature, science, or art; but it is a reproach to any people to remain obstinately attached to its ignorance and errors.

There was a time, and that quite within the memory of the elders