Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/19

15 find the true connection thoroughly recognized, as that which exists when we place such a state of the system in its true position, and realize the importance of following to the very fountain-head that train of events which has led to those conditions of tissue change which demand the exudation of serous fluid as a necessary complement. Such an inquiry takes us back it may be to the damaged valve of a heart, which again dates its origin to an act of rheumatism; such a sequence may take years for its fulfilment, and each stage, as it were, marks an epoch in the history of medicine. First we find the connection between rheumatism and diseases of the heart becoming recognized; and then, again, the relation which exists between exudation of fluid and certain diseases of the circulatory apparatus. Step by step it brings vividly before us that sequence of events which it is now the ambition of every physician to prevent, by paying the greater attention to the primary evil, during which