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/41

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. 27 ing of the Brown Institution for studying diseases of animals.

I have represented designed experiment as the sharpest spur to the progress of rational medicine. But doubtless the guiding-rein is observing experience. And it is by experience alone that we can be led to the answer of the question which I asked at the beginning, namely, whether the view which influences modern therapeutics be true as well as new. Some hint as to the future answer may be gained from the more favorable prognosis we are now enabled to give the several discases whose course is marked and import grave, such as rheu- matic fever, pericarditis, pneumonia, typhus. But the final solution must be found after many years in a continuance of the physical improvement noticeable throughout our native population, in increased length of life and diminished liability to fatal sickness, as witnessed first by increase in the profits divided at insurance offices, and latterly by the lessened mortality of the whole population.

To the court of experience we are one and all of us called as jurors. There are millions of experiments performed daily by observers who can regulate their conditions. But how are we prepared for turning the experiments into account?