Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/14

 it is impossible, and, therefore, that the art which corresponds to such science must possess not only its own inherent imperfections, but those also which belong to the science which illustrates and explains it.

But if even in the exact physical sciences laws are never absolute, how infinitely less so must those be which govern living beings even in their physical conditions and relations, to say nothing of those which regulate their mental and moral existence. The laws of this domain readily elude our intellectual grasp; its problems cannot be precisely defined; within it we are compelled to accept conclusions which cannot be explained, and act under the guidance of experience more than under the control of law. So far as medicine is really a science it does not solicit but commands our belief. It does not permit us to hold opinions about the constitution of the body, nor about the mechanical elements of the various functions, either in health or disease. On the other hand, it leaves us free to adopt whatever judgment reason dictates regarding the cure of diseases. In this department absolute demonstration is impossible, since the physical events in disease are being perpetually modified by a thousand influences which act through the minds of the sick. And, just as we have represented science as commanding assent, so must we speak of faith as soliciting belief. And yet, as the sunshine in the fable cajoled the traveller of his cloak which the storm could not wrest from him, so faith will often exorcise the demon of disease which science had vainly endeavored to cast out.

To determine the limits which should separate science and art is, perhaps, impossible, since the one grows out of the other. Science is the product of art as the crystal is formed in the liquid that holds its substance in solution. Every physician, however humble his attainments, performs a scientific act whenever he compares together the facts of his experience; and he who by generalizing a multitude of facts lays the foundation of a system really does no more. In this process who shall say where art ends and science begins? In truth it is only a question of degree. In the wards of a hospital where the instruction is confined to the elucidation of individual cases, it is just as scientific as in the didactic lectures