Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/132

120 clews to clearer methods of diagnosis and more rational lines of treatment." Recognizing the great gains that have accrued to medicine from the marvelous development of pathological investigation and from anatomy and histology, he added: "If, however, a small fraction of the time and energy given to these branches of medicine had been devoted to the simultaneous study and investigation of the chemical processes of the body in health and disease, I am sure equally important results would have been obtained, and, as a final outcome, a far more satisfactory explanation of many phenomena for which anatomy, histology, and pathology have thus far given only incomplete or unsatisfactory explanations. It is from a judicious combination of the results obtainable by different lines of inquiry that the broadest and most definite, as well as the most accurate, deductions are to be drawn. In estimating the value of the various aspects of the study, it is shown that our knowledge of the composition of the tissues, organs, and fluids of the organism is derived entirely from chemical study and investigation. This is plainly self-evident; but when we consider how far-reaching are the facts thus obtained in promoting our understanding of the laws of growth of the human body, of the relationships of the various physiologically active and inactive tissues, of their development, of the character and extent of their activity, and of all the variations incident to pathological conditions, we see at once the great importance of this knowledge in aiding us to a rightful interpretation of physiological laws. The great progress made of late years in our knowledge of the various digestive juices of the body, of their mode of action, of the character of the products resulting from the digestion of the various classes of food stuffs, of the conditions favorable and unfavorable to ferment action—these and many other things connected with the study of digestion in its broadest sense have all been accomplished as the results of long-continued and laborious experiments—results that have not only helped to give us broader and clearer ideas of the physiology of digestion, but have made possible much of the advance in the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the alimentary tract" Then there are the chemical composition of muscle and nerve tissue and the processes going on in them, with their influence on heat production and on proteid and other forms of metabolism; the broad question of nutrition in general, with its bearing on health and disease—"in great part chemical problems, partial solution of which has already afforded results of inestimable value"; and "the part chemistry has played in bringing about our present understanding of the manner in which micro-organisms act in the animal body, with its bearing upon the whole question of infectious diseases, the discovery of the production of distinct chemical poisons by specific