much pathology there is yet in front of us, if the future is to be disentailed of its heritage of disease, and how difficult it must be to acquire the information necessary to enable us to bring the aid we would to sick humanity.
The outcome seems clearly to be: Experiment, and ever more experiment. W e come, indeed, back to Harvey’s teaching—to search out the secrets of Nature by such means. But, to that word “experiment” attaches no narrow meaning, and it is to humanity at large that I would now say, that it is quite as much your duty, as far as in you lies, as it is that of special scientific inquiry, to search out thus, by way of experiment, those secrets of nature that are seemingly so elusive.
Look a little closer into this matter, O man of the world! To give an illustration that may appeal to you. To touch effectively that liver of which we are all so tenderly conscious, and regard with such blind solicitude, we have to deal with an organ that is occupied in coining the energy of its life out of elements, organic and inorganic, that are for it, as yet, outside life. The continuity of life, therefore, itself becomes an experiment. Will this grouping of substances, this biochemical combination, come off, or will the individual atoms fail to synthesize, and fall back again into the sea of odds and ends, still waiting for their purpose to appear?
Will the action, whatever it be that may be done by you, help it, hinder it, or be quite inoperative and unsuited to the end? Who can tell? The vitality and activity of the organ are pioneering on the outskirts of the origin of life, where their very existence is always at stake, and where the requisites are quite unfamiliar to you and me.
Clearly every single dose of medicine, every act
