Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/14

10 standard, but for the good of the public we require that the physician should not only recognise the actual existence of disease, but it should be his earnest endeavour to detect those changes, be they only functional, which mark a pre-pathologic stage; a stage antecedent to organic change. And the highest aim of the physician is to gain such knowledge as will assist him in stamping out those evils of the human race which are the necessary concomitants of disease. And it needs no mere believer in an Utopian existence to follow me in this statement. The practical daily work of the physician, and, indeed, still more the study of medical history, cannot but convince the would-be sceptic that a very large proportion of those diseases which we are called upon to treat, are by their very nature to be prevented; and such knowledge should spur on the student with renewed energy to prosecute those inquiries which in many cases will result in the complete banishment of some of our most pernicious diseases.