practitioner of the healing art, fresh from _curriculum_,
the founder of this institution early realized that the grand
unpardonable sin of the medical profession was the neglect to more
thoroughly study and investigate this class of diseases.

The profession is diligently cauterizing and poulticing the sores which
now and then appear on the surface, but the internal chronic disease, of
which these are merely the external signs, is too often overlooked or
neglected.

Some years ago we devised and put into practical operation a method of

TREATING PATIENTS AT THEIR HOMES,

without requiring them to undergo personal examinations. We reasoned
that the physician has abundant opportunity to accurately determine the
nature of most chronic diseases without ever seeing the patient. In
substantiating that proposition, we cited the perfect _accuracy_ with
which scientists are enabled to deduce the most minute particulars in
their several departments, which appears almost miraculous, if we view
the subject in the light of the early ages. Take, for example, the
electro-magnetic telegraph, the greatest invention of the age. Is it not
a marvelous degree of accuracy which enables an operator to _exactly_
locate a fracture in a sub-marine cable nearly three thousand miles
long? Our venerable "clerk of the weather" has become so thoroughly
familiar with the most wayward elements of nature that he can accurately
predict their movements. He can sit in Washington and foretell what the
weather will be in Florida or New York, as well as if hundreds of miles
did not intervene between him and the places named. And so in all
departments of modern science, what is required is the knowledge of
certain _signs_. From these, scientists deduce accurate conclusions
regardless of distance. A few fossils sent to the expert geologist
enables him to accurately determine the rock-formation from which they
were taken. He can describe it to you as perfectly as if a cleft of it
were lying on his table. So also the chemist can determine the
constitution of the sun as accurately as if that luminary were not
ninety-five million miles from his laboratory. The sun sends certain
_signs_ over the "infinitude of space," which the chemist classifies by
passing them through the spectroscope. Only the presence of certain
substances could produce these solar signs.

[Illustration: Medical Library and Council-room.--Invalids' Hotel and
Surgical Institute.]

So