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/29

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. 15 directly in ratio to the organization-but it can hardly fail to influence treatment.

Another powerful agitator of therapeutic aims is the distinction made between disease and its cause, arising out of the attention paid to morbid germs. I think it wise at present to use the word germ in its widest sense, as meaning either a fragment of organic matter in a state of decomposition, or a fragment capable of resuming vital characters, or a separate individual. The investigation is being carried on by our co-fellows Dr. Beale and Dr. Sanderson with the aid of the highest powers of mind and microscope; and the facts elicited are too widely known to make nccdful more than allusion. But they all combine in leading us to draw a distinct line between the treatment of the disease and the treatment of the cause, between the management of the wound and of the bullet, which our forefathers were apt to pass over in their views of enthetic disorders. Whatever be the etiology of the germ, it is clear that the condition which results from it can be looked upon only as an arrest by obstruction in the life of the tissues where it is inserted.

The becoming conscious of these invisible angels of death, hourly drifting around us, reminds one