see that if universal hygiene, which
gives humanity a guide to physical life, has come from medical
research, then this new science should produce a hygiene which will
give to all men practical guidance in moral life.

And if positive medicine arose in the hospitals, where sick people
were collected by private and public generosity, with charitable
intentions and under the guidance of empiricism, this science should,
above all, concentrate and find its experiences in schools: that is to
say, in the places where all children are gathered together for their
social elevation, and with the empirical guidance of education.

What was the elevated note of scientific medicine which gradually
superseded the empirical method? While empirical medicine believed in
blood-letting and blistering, scientific medicine elevated and
illustrated the ancient principle which had been forgotten, and which
contained all the new wisdom in a synthesis: the medicinal force of
nature, _vis medicatrix naturae_. A natural power of fighting and
conquering illness exists in the living organism, and it is to this
that we must look in order to construct rational medicine; he who
believes that the doctor and the medicine cure the sick is an
empiricist; but he who knows that it is "only the organism" that can
produce the cure, and that therefore we must protect and assist the
force which nature gives for our salvation, is a scientist.

Now the sum of treatments necessary to protect the natural forces of
defense and reorganization in positive medicine, are much more minute
and are diffused in much vaster fields than the old empiricism.

The great number of specialists who replace the single type of doctor
of the last century, is sufficient to emphasize the enormous
difference in practise which the new tendency involves.

It is interesting also to give a glance at the progress which has been
made in medicine; it has begun to cure diseases; and thence it has
gone on to discover the laws of normal physical life, and to show the
healthy how to preserve their health. When it reached this point it
found that the same measures which are necessary for preserving health
are the best for curing disease; because it is the same source of life
which gives health and the _vis medicatrix naturae_. Thus, for example,
the rational diet of to-day is not only a hygienic measure which all
should adopt in order to keep themselves in health, but the most
important factor i