Page:The Harveian oration, 1893.djvu/51

 upon disordered physiological functions, but as something external, attacking a previously healthy person, disturbing, and, if not expelled by art, finally destroying him; while any structural changes which were found after death were regarded rather as the effects than the causes of the symptoms during life.

Now, the ambition of every intelligent student—and in Medicine we are life-long students—is to fix upon the most objective, certain, and important of the symptoms of a patient, to follow out this clue, to determine the organ affected and the nature of the affection, so that in his mind’s eye the tissues become transparent and he sees the narrow orifice for the blood-stream and the labouring muscle behind it; or the constricted loop of intestine with violent peristalsis above and paralysis below, the blood-current stopped and congestion passing hour by hour into gangrene; or, the spinal cord with grey induration of a definite