The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1885-08-15
b A PHYSICIANS POWER.
The Uniformity of Natures Destroying
Agencies.

Agencies.
The art of the physician can do much
to remove its subjects from deadly and
dangerous influences, and something to
control or arrest the effect of these in
fluences. But look at the records of the
life-insurance offices, and see how uni
form is the action of natures destroying
agencies. Look at the annual reports
of the deaths in any of our great cities,
and see how their regularity approaches
the uniformity of the tides, and theirya-
riations keep pace with those of the sea-
sons. The foundations of the Nile are
not more certainly to be predicted than
the vast wave of infantile disease which
flows in upon all our great cities with
the growing heats of July-than the
fevers and dysenteries which visit our
rural districts in the months of the fall
ing leaf. N..-
The physician watches these changes
the great river. He longs to rescue in
dividuals, to protect communities from
the inroads of these destroying agencies.
He uses all the means which experience
has approved, tries every rational meth
cd which ingenuity can suggest. Some
fortunate recovery leads him to believe
he has hit upon preventive or a cure
for malady which had resisted all
known remedies. His rescued patient
sounds his praises, and wide circle of
his patients friends joins in a chorus of
eulogies. Self-love applauds him for
his sagacity. Self-interest congratulates
him on his having found the road to for
tune; the sense of having proved ben
efactor of his race smooths the pillow
on which he lays his head to dream of
the brilliant future opening before him.
If single coincidence may lead a
person of sanguine disposition to be-
lieve that he has mastered a disease
which had baflled all who were before
his time, and on which his contempora-
ries looked in hopeless impotence, what
must be the effect of series of such
condolences even on mind of calmel
temper Such series of condolences
will happen, and they may well deceive
the very elect. Think of Dr. Rush,
| you know what famous man he was
the very head and front of American
medical science in his day.-and re.
member how he spoke about yellow
fever, which he thought he had mas
tered!
Thus the physician is entangled il
the meshes of wide conspiracy, il
which he and his patient and thei
friends, and Nature herself are involved
What wonder that the history of Medi
cine should be to so great an extent {
record of self-delusion!
If this seems dangerous concession
to the enemies of the true science and ar
of healing, will remind you that it il
all implied in the first aphorism of Hip
Z pocrates, the Father of Medicine. d.
not draw wrong inference from tn
frank statement of the difficulties whicl
beset the medical practitioner Thin
rather, if truth is SO hard of attainment
how precious are the results which tn
consent of the wisest and most expe
rienced among the healers.o of men agree
,, in accepting. Think what folly it is t
cast them aside in favor of palpable in
, positions stolen from the records of fol
: gotten charlatanism, or of fantasti
: speculations spun from the squintin
: brains of theorists as wild as the EgyE
tain astronomer.
Begin your medical studies, then, b
reading the fortieth and the followin
, four. chapters of Rasselas. Your firs
lesson will teach you modesty ana cat
ton in the pursuit of the most decor
tive of all practical branches of know
!, edge. Faith will come later, when 70
: = learn how much medical science an
! art have actually achieved for the relic
, of mankind, and how great are ii
promises it holds out of still large
:, triumphs over the enemies of huma
: health and happiness. Oliver Wende
8 Holmes in atlantic Monthly.
q IN p Portar cavant1y- fo,1r uaarS