The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1885-07-16
The Power of a Physician.

''The art Of the physician can do
much to remove its subjects from dead
~ and dangerous influences, and some
thing 10 control or arrest the effects of
these influences. But look ut the re-
cords of the life-insurance offices, and
see how uniform is the action OF ma
lures destroying agencies. Look at
the annual reports of the death in any
of our great cities, and see how their
regularity approaches the uniformity
of the tides, and their variations keep
pace with those of the seasons. 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 falling
leaf.
The physician watches these
changes as the astronomer watches the
rise of the great river. He longs to
rescue individuals, to protect COM
munities from the inroads OF these de-
| stroying agencies. lie uses all the
means which experience has approved,
| tries every rational method which in
genuity can suggest. Some fol tunate
recovery leads him TO believe he has
| hit upon preventive or a cure for a
malady which has resisted all known
| remedies. His rescued patient sounds
his praises, and wide circle of his pa
TENTS friends joins in 4 chorus of
eulogies. Self-love applauds him for
his sagacity. Self-interest congratu-
lates him on his having found the road
J to fortune; the sense OF having proved
| a benefactor OF his race smoOtns 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 sangulne DISPOSE
ton to believe that he has mastered a
| disease which has bafied all who were
| before his time, and on which his con-
temporaries looked in hopeless impo-
tence, what must be the effect of a
series of such condolences even on a
mind of calmer temper! Such series of
condolences will happen, and they
may well deceive the very elect. Think
of DR.. Rush-you know what a famous
man he was, the very head and front of
American medical science IN his day
and remember how he spoke about
yellow fever, which he thought he had
| mastered.
Thus the physician is entangled in
the meshes of wide conspiracy, in
which he and his patient and their
friends, and Nature herself are in
yolved. What wonder that the his
tory of medicine should be to so great
an extent a record Of self-delusion!
If this seems dangerous conces-
| sion to the enemies of the science and
art of healing, [ will remind you that
| it is all implied in the first aphorism Of
Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine.
Do not draw wrong inference from
the frank statement of the difficulties
which beset the medical practitioner.
Think rather, if truth is so hard of at
tainment, how precious are the results
| which the consent of the wlsest and
most experienced among the healers OF
men agrees Ia accepting. Think what
folly it is to cast them aside III favor OF
palpable impositions stolen from the
records of forgotten charlatanism, or
OF fantastic speculations spun from
the squirting brains of theorists as
wild as the Egyptian astronomer.
Begin your medical studies, then,
by reading the fortieth and the follow
ing four chapters of Rasselas. Your
first lesson will teach you modesty and
caution in the pursuit of the most de-
ceptivc of all practical branches OF
knowledge. Faith will come later,
when you learn how much medical
science and art have actually achieved
for the relief of mankind, and how
great are the promises it holds out OF
still larger triumphs over the enemies
of human health and happiness. y
OLiUer u c3ad5I Holmes, III Juty -AtiGH-