Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/17

Rh Galen brought into physiology the notion of Force, as distinct from its object. To Plato's Life of Nutrition, Life of Animal Motion, Life of Volition, he added the idea of the foreign force of Disease. Diseases were foreign forces, foes to the native, and the duty of a physician lay in opposing them. Remedies were to be sought which in a healthy man would produce abnormal symptoms contrary to those of the dis- case. Nobody can deny that this CURE BY CON- TRARIES holds its ground bravely, and will do so till we find sleeplessness not to be alleviated by narcotics, constipation not to yield to purgatives.

Its permanence has been in a great measure due to its openness to accept modifications and reforms. One of the most important of these is an exten- sion of Hippocrates' suggestion that diseases naturally contain their own cure" into Sydenham's designation of their phe- nomena as an EFFORT OF NATURE (Naturæ con- amen). This theory has been so salutary in pro- moting a milder and better treatment of acute ailments, that it too still influences deeply our pathology and therapeutics.

NEUTRALIZATION, by what may be called An- tidotes, is the application of chemistry to the Cure