Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/41

 sistent with, safety. They might well be expected to fear that the older remedies, the value of which had been tested by the experience of ages, would fall into disuse, and that practitioners would thus be left comparatively helpless against the incursions of disease, instead of armed with their old and well-tried weapons of defence. The lapse of a few years served to remove all anxiety on this point. It was obviously premature to anticipate any change of the kind from Harvey’s discovery, inasmuch as therapeutics up to that date had never been materially modified by advances in physiology.

We frequently hear it said that our profession neglects the study of therapeutics, and there is, I apprehend, too much truth in the statement. Whence this indifference? It can scarcely be that we underrate the value of the subject, for it is incomparably the most important study comprised in the curriculum of our schools, and without it all medical knowledge is as nearly as possible useless.

May we not regard this neglect of therapeutics as a result of the extreme difficulty attending the prosecution of the study? It can only be scientifically followed by those who are accomplished