the uniformity of the order of being in which we live. Statistics have
tabulated everything,--population, growth, wealth, crime, disease. We
have shaded maps showing the geographical distribution of larceny and
suicide. Analysis and classification have been at work upon all tangible
and visible objects. The Positive Philosophy of Comte has only given
expression to the observing and computing mind of the nineteenth
century.

In the mean time, the great stronghold of intellectual conservatism,
traditional belief, has been assailed by facts which would have been
indicted as blasphemy but a few generations ago. Those new tables of
the law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who
spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs
of half the civilized world. The solemn scepticism of science has
replaced the sneering doubts of witty philosophers. The more positive
knowledge we gain, the more we incline to question all that has been
received without absolute proof.

As a matter of course, this movement has its partial reactions. The
province of faith is claimed as a port free of entry to unsupported
individual convictions. The tendency to question is met by the
unanalyzing instinct of reverence. The old church calls back its
frightened truants. Some who have lost their hereditary religious
belief find a resource in the revelations of Spiritualism. By a parallel
movement, some of those who have become medical infidels pass over to
the mystic band of believers in the fancied miracles of Homoeopathy.

Under these influences transmitted to, or at least shared by, the
medical profession, the old question between "Nature," so called, and
"Art," or professional tradition, has reappeared with new interest. I
say the old question, for Hippocrates stated the case on the side
of "Nature" more than two thousand years ago. Miss Florence
Nightingale,--and if I name her next to the august Father of the Healing
Art, its noblest daughter well deserves that place of honor,--Miss
Florence Nightingale begins her late volume with a paraphrase of his
statement. But from a very early time to this there has always been
a strong party against "Nature." Themison called the practice of
Hippocrates "a meditation upon death." Dr. Rush says: "It is impossible
to calculate the mischief which Hippocrates, has done, by first marking
Nature with his name and afterwards letting her loose upon sick people.
Million