Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/17

13 recall to mind the immense benefits which we can already count as ours—benefits which are due directly to the investigation of disease in relation to its causation. Consider the advance which has taken place in our knowledge relating to those affections which owe their birth to a want of appreciation of those hygienic principles so necessary to the perfect health of a community; and I cannot but think that we owe a debt of gratitude to this University for recognizing among the first, the importance of such studies.

Instructive, indeed, are the lessons to be gained from a study of the History of Medicine, but perhaps none more so than those which point out to us the advantage of studying disease with special regard to its ultimate consequences, rather than with respect alone to its more prominent symptoms. If we pass in review those diseases which come before us, we can with advantage consider them, as indeed we must, when they come before us in practice, first with regard to their single primary effect, and