Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/33

 influence beneficially the processes manifestly de- pending upon such contagia. I fear that as yet no results have been achieved that would in any way justify a belief that the antidote has been dis- covered, which will neutralise or arrest an infective process in the body, as we have succeeded in doing external to it. Our treatment in these cases, as yet, consists in dealing with the product of the morbific germ, and in assisting Nature to bear its assaults with more or less impunity. The goal that we or our successors must aim at is to dis- cover a germicide agent, whether to be introduced by the mouth or by injection directly into the blood; so that, to use Mr. Simon's words,* " the bedside practitioner shall be able to apply his counteragents with the precision of one who con. ducts a mere physical experiment."

But if we are still far from a perfect knowledge of the intimate cause of morbid processes, pro- mising as the investigations are to which allusion has just been made, we have greater reason to congratulate ourselves on our recent advances in the determination of the various phases exhibited during the progress of disease. Few appliances during the most recent period of medicine have contributed more to this advance than the ther- mometer, the universal adoption of which might well be adduced in evidence of that Harveian

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 * Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council, 1875, p. 1.