r to the great fathers of modern medicine than some of you
imagine. Three of my own instructors attended Dr. Rush's Lectures. The
illustrious Haller mentions Rush's inaugural thesis in his "Bibliotheca
Anatomica;" and this same Haller, brought so close to us, tells us he
remembers Ruysch, then an old man, and used to carry letters between him
and Boerhaave. Look through the history of medicine from Boerhaave to
this present day. You will see at once that medical doctrine and
practice have undergone a long series of changes. You will see that the
doctrine and practice of our own time must probably change in their turn,
and that, if we can trust at all to the indications of their course, it
will be in the direction of an improved hygiene and a simplified
treatment. Especially will the old habit of violating the instincts of
the sick give place to a judicious study of these same instincts. It
will be found that bodily, like mental insanity, is best managed, for the
most part, by natural soothing agencies. Two centuries ago there was a
prescription for scurvy containing "stercoris taurini et anserini par,
quantitas trium magnarum nucum," of the hell-broth containing which
"guoties-cumque sitit oeger, large bibit." When I have recalled the
humane common-sense of Captain Cook in the matter of preventing this
disease; when I have heard my friend, Mr. Dana, describing the avidity
with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of
fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to
their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is
often a return to nature, and seen in this single instance the germ of
innumerable beneficent future medical reforms.

I cannot help believing that medical curative treatment will by and by
resolve itself in great measure into modifications of the food, swallowed
and breathed, and of the natural stimuli, and that less will be expected
from specifics and noxious disturbing agents, either alien or
assimilable. The noted mineral-waters containing iron, sulphur, carbonic
acid, supply nutritious or stimulating materials to the body as much as
phosphate of lime and ammoniacal compounds do to the cereal plants. The
effects of a milk and vegetable diet, of gluten bread in diabetes, of
cod-liver oil in phthisis, even of such audacious innovations as the
water-cure and the grape-cure, are only hints of what will be
accomplished when we have learned