Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/43

 The Harveian Oration. and vice work ruin and infect the very fountains of life.

In what way society should work thus to protect itself may involve considerations of the most delicate and difficult kind; but the object no less remains, and the duty of striving to attain it becomes daily more and more imperative. These remarks apply to all diseases which are common to the social state.

It is now universally acknowledged that the art of medicine is all but powerless in controlling the morbid actions set up in the large class of diseases called zymotic. Spe- cifics will no doubt continue to be sought after, but preventive medicine will more largely obtain the suffrages of the best- informed members of our profession.

There can be no more saddening task allotted to the physician than that of having to prescribe drugs against agents which he knows will work out their destructive effects to the end, in spite of such means. It may be that there do not exist, nor may