Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/17

 can see and apply, by the light of our special knowledge, to explain disease or to essay remedial processes.

We must not seem to undervalue, though we pass quickly over, those modern sources of assistance afforded by microscopical examination or by those chemical discoveries which have explained many of the changes of the fluids of the body in a morbid state. These would have furnished revelations very surprising to the workers of the seventeenth century, and we cannot doubt that by the same means vast stores of knowledge will yet accrue to the students of the present and of succeeding times; but the intellect of this generation is pushing forward with still higher aim even to the discovery of the final law which governs morbid processes, which may by possibility reveal the nature and course of the action of remedies, and which will also explain the introduction and progressive spread of epidemics.

If we review the means which we have in hand to justify the belief that aims so lofty are not beyond our capacity to attain, nay,