AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE TO CONSERVE HEALTH AND TO CURE DISEASE: Medicine is still pursuing a scientific solution of this problem, which has confronted it from the first. The present state of medical practice suggests that a solution is still far to seek. During its advance through the centuries, however, medicine has always been driven into action and from numberless ventures in the realm of empiricism has gained useful information. Though furrowed and overturned by all manner of systems so evanescent that, one by one, they have disappeared, it has none the less carried on research, acquired ideas and piled up precious materials which in due time will find their place and meaning in scientific medicine. To-day, thanks to the great development and powerful support of the physico-chemical sciences, study of the phenomena of life, both normal and pathological, has made progress which continues with surprising rapidity. It is therefore clear to all unprejudiced minds that medicine is turning toward its permanent scientific path. By the very nature of its evolutionary advance, it is little by little abandoning the region of systems, to assume a more and more analytic form, and thus gradually to join in the method of investigation common to the experimental sciences. In order to embrace the medical problem as a whole, experimental medicine must include three basic parts: physiology, pathology and therapeuties. Knowledge of causes of the phenomena of life in the normal state, i.e., PHYSIOLOGY, will teach us to maintain normal conditions of life and to conserve HEALTH. Knowledge of diseases and of their determining causes, i.e., Pathology, will lead us, on the one hand, to prevent the development of morbid conditions, 'See Cours de pathologie expérimentale (Medical Times, 1859-1860).—Leçon d'ouverture du cours de médecine du Collège de France: Sur la médecine expérimentale (Gazette médicale. Paris, April 15, 1864;—Revue des cours scientifiques. Paris, Dec. 31, 1864.) |