Page:The advancement of science by experimental research - the Harveian oration, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 27th, 1883 (IA b24869958).pdf/46

 that there have been epileptic attacks or a tendency to mental affection and insanity; a superadded source of disturbance is given and the resultant of combined forces is manifested. All these causes of change may be yet more diverted from healthy action by the circumstances in which life is placed; not only as regards good food, pure air and the surroundings of civilized life and education, as contrasted with the wretched state induced by poverty and starvation, imperfect clothing, dark and offensive dwellings, but to these may be added an aguish locality, producing miasmatic disease, and having a baneful influence upon the whole being. The clinical observer witnesses the result of these combined morbific forces in a hundred forms, and they produce results which are most embarrassing unless understood.

Almost every advance in science has been made by the direct questioning of nature, whether we go to Lavoisier and trace the wonderful steps in chemical science, or from Bichat we note the progress in Biology. It has been by experimental researches