Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/23

 now disturb the minds of many as to the accuracy of the principles on which those admirable improvements are at present based.

It harmonises with the subject now before us, that I should congratulate our profession and the public on a new feature in the duties which we accept as belonging to our calling. Physicians have never been so impressed as of later years that the noblest of their avocations is to prevent or avert disease. They now perceive that this is at least as much their duty as to subdue or relieve the sufferings which attend it. It might, perhaps, be thought a humiliation, that our efforts seem to be less directed to curative measures, as compared with the energetic struggle to withstand the approaches of fatal epidemics; but we shall none of us disdain to acknowledge that the predominance of scientific aim does and ought to tend in this direction, though at the same time we strenuously deny that the therapeutic portion of our work is in abeyance. Whatever may carry to the great mass of our fellow-creatures the largest amount of comfort and relief must be our proper work;