e state of medicine when the Nineteenth Century opened.
It was only three years before that Jenner had announced and
demonstrated the protective efficacy of vaccination against small-pox.
His teaching, in spite of the vehement cavillings of the "antis" of his
day, gained credence readily, and vaccination speedily became recognized
and was constantly resorted to, but hardly any attempt at perfecting the
practice was made until after more than fifty years had elapsed. His
discovery--or, rather, his proof of the truth of a rustic
tradition--fell like a pebble into the doldrums; the ripple soon
subsided, and nobody was encouraged to start another. At the present
time such an announcement would be promptly followed by investigations
leading up to such doctrines as that of the attenuation of viruses and
that of antitoxines. But the times were not ripe for anything of that
sort; medicine reposed on tradition, or at best gave itself only to such
plausibilities in the way of innovation as were cleverly advocated.
Physicians strove not to advance the healing art; as individuals, they
were content to rely on their manners, their tact, and their assumption
of wisdom. In short, the body medical was in a state of suspended
animation, possessed of a mere vegetative existence.

The Humoral pathology, or that doctrine of the nature of disease which
ascribed all ailments to excess, deficiency, or ill "concoction" of some
one of the four humors (yellow and black bile, blood, and phlegm), had
not yet lost its hold on men's convictions, or at least not further than
to make them look upon exposure to cold and errors of diet as amply
explanatory of all diseases not plainly infectious. The medical writers
who were most revered were those who busied themselves with nosology;
that is to say, the naming and classifying of diseases. Wonderful were
the onomatological feats performed by some of these men, and most
diverse and grotesque were the data on which they founded their
classifications. To label a disease was high art; to cure it was
something that Providence might or might not allow. In the treatment of
"sthenic" acute diseases (meaning those accompanied by excitement and
high fever), blood-letting, mercury given to the point of salivation,
antimony, and opium, together with starvation (all included under the
euphemism of "lowering measures"), were the means universally resorted
to and reputed "sheet anchors." Some advance had been made from