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/36

22 RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. prosecuting with advantage researches into the genesis of disease by direct experiment.

The most certain way of knowing how a thing is generated is to generate it yourself. The lower animals must of course afford the material on which the bulk of these experiments can be made; and it is, therefore, of the utmost importance to know how their bodies and liabilities to morbid phenomena differ from those possessed by us, so that the necessary allowances may be calculated.

Most opportune to the gaining such knowledge is the prospect before the country of the perma- nent establishment of an institution for the study of the diseases of animals. I am in hopes that the certainty of advancing science, open to the staff of this institution, will make its offices an object of ambition to those among us whose age renders ambition still graceful. They will be able to feel not only that they are promoting the selfish inte- rests of mankind, but that they are repaying in a substantial manner the services of our devoted im- memorial slaves. For it must be understood that the final view of the foundation is distinctly chari- table, and that the cure of animal disease is the end to be attained by its study.

The bulk of these experiments must be doubt-