Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/15

11 In every age in which we may study the history of medicine, we cannot fail to be impressed by the one dominant idea which appears to have possessed the minds of those who have made medicine their peculiar study; I allude to the search for specific remedies against disease. There are undoubtedly those who profess to believe that we have but to search with sufficient acuteness, to find a remedy specific in its action against any disease which we may be called upon to treat; such a belief may be considered almost akin to the search for the philosopher's stone of old. It has had certainly an evil effect upon the growth of the practice of medicine, for we may constantly find those who, while deploring their own want of exact knowledge in the absence of those remedies which are known to have a specific influence, deny their patients the means of relief, which doubtless originating in empiricism, prove themselves to be of advantage in the daily treatment of disease.

A large amount of progress has taken