Page:The Harveian oration, 1893.djvu/57

33 researches would not have been better spent in directly therapeutical inquiry. To both these questions I take leave to answer, No. Anatomy must precede Physiology, whether in the normal or the diseased state. The humoral physiology of the ancients did infinite mischief (mischief not yet exhausted), because it lacked the sound basis of Anatomy; and Experimental Pathology, necessary and important as it is, and valuable as even its first endeavours have proved, was impossible without previous knowledge of the anatomy and histology of disease. As to Therapeutics, while professing full faith in the ultimate value of such laborious chemical and physiological researches of the laboratory as those which were the subject of the recent Croonian Lectures, I hold that for the successful cure of a patient it is far better that his physician should have a thorough and extensive knowledge of Morbid Anatomy, than that he should be acquainted