Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/15

 in which the attempt is made to present, in a single view, the results of innumerable cases of the same kind in every civilized country, and at every epoch of medical history. Yet we regard clinical medicine as illustrating art, and didactic medicine as representing science. What figure, think you, would the hospital professor make who should come before you with a patient, and be unable to determine with what disease the person was suffering, the organs affected by it, the nature of their functional disturbance, why some functions rather than others were disordered, how these various elements affect the issue of the attack, what that issue will probably be, and finally, what means should be taken to render it favorable? You might be unconscious that the imperfection of his teaching was owing to his ignorance of medical science, but you would feel very sure that it was imperfect and unsatisfactory. Or perhaps you would know that he had not brought the light of scientific generalization to bear upon the obscurity of the case, and you would turn to the instruction you had gained in didactic lectures upon the same subject, and in which all of these relations of the disease were formally considered, illustrated, and explained. In other words, you would endeavor to learn the science of the subject. Having mastered that, you would feel that whether the first example you encountered of that particular disease were more or less like the one submitted by your teacher, you would be able to recognize its nature, anticipate its course, and confidently attempt its treatment. You would also feel that science lifted you upon a height from which you could survey the whole pathological field, and gain clear and accurate ideas unobscured by the details, and the special circumstances of the individual case.

Scientific views, then, are really practical views expanded. To be thoroughly practical in its best, sense is to be most truly scientific; to be most highly scientific is to be most perfectly practical. But, you will say, scientific men are seldom practical, and practical men are not usually trained to scientific methods. To which I answer the greatest men are both at once; men of a somewhat lower rank are able to embrace the abstract elements of science only, feeling