Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/73

 principles which science supplies, physic is a noble vocation, calling forth the highest powers of the intellect, the purest emotions of the heart, and all who feel interested in its reputation, must be gratified and elevated in reflecting that, as such is it at the present day, cultivated by a body of practitioners who may vie with any other class of the community in sound judgment, extensive cultivation, varied knowledge, liberal principles, and active benevolence.

But to return to the more immediate purpose of this brief essay: physic, practised as an art, employs its remedies according as they produce effect, either immediately on the physiological functions of the frame, or more remotely on the morbid actions which constitute the disease. The operation of remedies, therefore, may be conveniently distinguished as physiological, or curative, the distinction applying, however, not to the actual operation of the remedies, for this is always physiological, but to our perception of their effect, which in too many instances fails to trace, from the primary impression made by a remedy, the consecutive physiological changes through which the curative effect is produced. It is this distinction which constitutes the difference between what have been called rational and empirical practice; the former applying remedies immediately according to their physiological operation, with a more remote view to their curative effect, the latter regarding the curative effect alone, and taking no account of the intermediate functional energies by which the cure is accomplished. Owing to the imperfect state of our knowledge, the treatment of disease ordinarily pursued by judicious practitioners, partakes of both