Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/23

19 power of the soul, we may, I think, trace an attempt to explain those subtle changes of nutrition and repair which we now understand as connected in a great measure with the nervous system. These phenomena were as certainly present at the time that Stahl lived as they are now, and we can scarcely feel any surprise that a careful observer should have longed for some explanation. The knowledge of the nervous system was in its darkest state, little or nothing being really known of the function of the nerves, absolutely nothing of that system, the sympathetic, of which it is only in the present day that we are but beginning to appreciate the enormous importance. Such being the case, we cannot feel any surprise at such a theory as that laid down by Stahl.

We might, indeed, with great advantage to ourselves, take one by one those theories which checker the growth of medicine, and in most we should find some truth valuable to the student, though, may be, in its discovery we find it hidden under the mass of