Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/13

9 of disease, with those which were adopted in former times. The use of our instruments of precision, our knowledge, of pathology, all tend to narrow that bridge which must extend as a connecting link between empirical treatment, and treatment depending for its success upon a comprehensive knowledge of the natural history of disease.

Again let us dwell for a short time upon the all-important point of diagnosis, and let us give the word a far more liberal meaning than that usually applied to it.

And I think in doing so we shall gain an insight into the most important advance which medicine as a study has made. And we shall find that our knowledge of disease extends far beyond the mere citation of observed facts, for as to descriptions of disease we shall find it difficult to frame more truthful ones than those left for our consideration by Sydenham. A brilliant portrait it may be lifelike, of disease, is doubtless of great value in assisting us to recognize varieties from the normal B 3