Page:Essentials of the Art of Medicine Stille.djvu/21

21 reasoned myself into the opinion that the use of them and their methods (unless in some sudden and acute diseases) was itself a very great venture, and that their greatest practisers practised least upon themselves or their friends. I have even quarrelled with their studying art more than nature, and applying themselves to methods rather than remedies, whereas the knowledge of the last is all that nine parts in ten of the world have been trusted to in all ages."

If one reads reflectively the professional literature of the present day he will be apt to be a good deal of Sir William Temple's opinion. He can hardly fail of being surprised at the complacency of medical writers to whom their science seems to present no mysteries, and their art no difficulties, so glibly do they expound riddles that have perplexed the wise in preceding ages, and so jauntily do they make light of the nature and cure of diseases which have always defied the maturest skill and which continue to resist the most consummate art, notwithstanding the loud promises and positive assertions of physicians who are too often ignorant of medical history and of the conditions of cure taught by personal experience. They make but little account of that quintessence of wisdom which Hippocrates at the first distilled, and which has come down to us through the ages unimpaired, and is as true to-day as when it was uttered twenty-four centuries ago: "Life is short but Art is long, and the opportunities of learning it are fleeting; for things are often not what they seem, and to judge them is difficult." How solemnly true does this oracular judgment seem to those who have learned the hollowness of the vauntings of science and art which float down the stream of Time as a part of the rubbish that is swept into the ocean of forgetfulness.

An English writer lamenting the deterioration of domestic economy in his own country, which once was famous for the good order, cleanliness, and happiness of its homes, attributes it to the erroneous education of the young, who are crammed with all manner of useless knowledge and at the same time are allowed to remain ignorant of, or unskilled in, the things that make wholesome and happy homes while fitting them to earn their bread by superorsuperior [sic] skill in definite occupations. "There has been," he says, "enough of mere instruction; and our people are fast sinking into cultivated impotence" (London Quarterly, July, 1895, p. 70). Have we no reason to apply this judgment to ourselves? Have we not, in our eagerness to cultivate the science of medicine been guilty of decrying and neglecting medical art? There was a time when either medical schools did not exist or