twelfth century the clergy were prohibited from practising surgery, or performing any operation that required the "drawing of blood," on the pretext that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood." From this date Physic and Surgery, which were before theoretically separated, became practically distinct professions, and have remained so to the present day-the Priests retained possession of the former till the sixteenth century, while the practice of the latter fell into the hands of barbers, cobblers, tinkers, and such like.

After the great political and social revolution of the sixteenth century the study of Medicine began to revive, but the mischievous distinction between Physic and Surgery was still maintained, and became permanent. The Physicians obtained a disastrous ascendancy in England before the Reformation under Henry VIII., having, through their influence with Cardinal Wolsey, procured a charter of incorporation and a monopoly of practice in 1518. They thus became chained, as it were, to Drug superstitions, with all the cruel and destructive practices they involved, and still remain in the same degrading bondage. Drug dealing gradually expanded into a thriving trade in the hands of Apothecaries, who also succeeded in obtaining a sepa rate charter of incorporation in 1617. Thus Doctors and Drugs became established institutions. They obtained a disastrous pre-eminence-prospering on the ignorance and credulity of mankind. Content so to trade, they never dreamed of cultivating Medicine as a Science, nor of seeking in nature for the means of alleviating disease, but were always active in crying, down, with persistent intolerance, all discoveries that exposed their own deplorable ignorance, and promised to be a benefit to mankind.

When it is complained, therefore, that Medicine, as a healing art, has made little or no progress since the days of Hippocrates, it must be remembered that the three-fold division of the Profession was totally adverse to progress. Modern Physicians inherited all the superstitious absurdities and ignorant pre judices of the middle ages, and as the degrading credulity that

attached supernatural agencies to charms, phylacteries, talismans, and relics, gradually died out with the belief in the Philosopher's stone, the elixir vita, vampires, and witches, the famishing ignorance of mankind sought food for its mental depravity in the delusions of Drug Medication. Physicians and Apothecaries had a paramount interest in favouring such credulities, and no desire to see Medicine cultivated as a Science. Changes, it is true, have taken place in medical practice, but it has been from one destructive Drug system to another equally delusive and fatal. Faith in Drugs was, and still is, the guiding principle of the Physician's practice, while natural and salutary agents are despised as frivolous, and repre-sented as useless or pernicious to their ignorant patients.

Besides, Surgery for long ages was treated as a vile and. despised mechanical art, and as such its exercise was in complete subserviency to the authority of ignorant Physicians, totally unacquainted with the organs and laws of the human economy, while without the cultivation of surgery as a science no advance was possible in medical knowledge or practice. After a long and arduous struggle surgery did slowly emerge from the depravity in which it was steeped, but it was not till the commencement of the present century that the surgeons were incorporated in London on their present foundation-nearly three centuries after the Physicians, so great a start had empiricism.

Hence it is that all the inherited evils connected with medical practice still flourish among us,. and that surgery is only now assuming its proper position-under many retarding influences. still-as alone identified with the true science of medicine.*

*The division of the Profession, and the competition of the Licensing Corporations for students and fees necessarily exercise a lowering influence on surgical qualifications, because where all diplomas, degrees, and licences to practice are of equal rank and value on the Register, a minimum of general and professional education must prevail. Should Colleges of Surgeons insist on a high standard of education and qualification their halls would soon be descrted; in self-defence therefore, under the wretched system that prevails, they must regulate their standards by the lowest to compete

Hence also, the deplorable ignorance that generally prevails among the public concerning the profession and practice of medicine. Presumptuous pretensions, without a shadow of reality to rest upon, continue to impose on the ignorant and credulous. Thus a system of delusion is perpetuated which renders improvement difficult and tedious, while it is pregnant with incalculable evil to society. Medicine passes current as a science, and in popular acceptation is identical with Physic. Is then "Physic" a science? So, indeed, Physicians would have the world believe, but let us lift the veil and look at things as they really exist.

Anatomy, says Richerand, is "the science of organization."*. "It deals with the apparatus, the instruments in that laboratory in which the chemistry of life is carried on." Hence the peculiar province of Anatomy is the examination by dissection of the organs of animal life. "Strictly speaking, structure alone is learned by dissection; the vital properties of organic textures, and the functions of organs, are found out by observation." Anatomy, therefore, has a solid foundation, and is truly a science of facts. Consequently, it is the only basis on which sound medical knowledge can rest.

Surgery, in the narrow barbaric sense that prevailed in ages of ignorance, means hand work, and implies the employment of instruments, and the use of topical remedies merely, in the treatment of disease. Such was the ignoble sphere assigned to Surgery during the dark ages of semi-civilization, extending even to the end of the eighteenth century. Its proper sphere will be noticed in due course; at present it is sufficient to obat all successfully. In this way many practitioners figure on the Register as surgeons who are deplorably ignorant of Surgical Science, and Apothecaries, for the most part, duly qualify themselves for general practice by obtaining a surgical diploma !

*

Elements of Physiology, Copeland's ed. Prelim. Dis.

† Surgical Commentaries, by G. Macilwaine, in Medical Press and Circular, July 10, 1867.

Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, &c., by Sir William Lawrence. Seventh ed., P. 44.

serve that, while it is based on a thorough knowledge of Anatomy, general and morbid, it also draws inspiration from whatever tends to throw light on the varied and complicated functions of Vitality. It was by thus estimating aright the true province of Surgery, that the illustrious John Hunter succeeded in raising it "above the servility of a mechanical art, to a science of the highest order."

Physiology is the science of normal or healthy life, and has an intimate alliance with, or rather a necessary dependence on, Anatomy, inasmuch as it deals with the whole phenomena of our organism in its natural state, and with the laws or principles in accordance with which they are manifested, and by which all the functions of structure are governed. Physiology, consequently, has no practical value outside the domain of fact. It has nothing to do with speculative fancies, and it never can err while it keeps within the sphere of legitimate induction from the incontestible phenomena of nature.

Pathology is exactly the reverse of Physiology. It embraces the phenomena of abnormal or diseased conditions, and, therefore, is largely dependent on morbid Anatomy. Skill in diagnoses, or in the art of discerning the distinctions of disease, can only be acquired as the result of observation based on a profound knowledge of Pathology, and the reason why so many fatal mistakes are constantly occurring in practice-misjudging effects for causes, and treating symptoms only, instead of comprehending the true source of abnormal changes, is, that a lamentable ignorance of Pathology is a characteristic of medical practitioners generally.

Hygiene, or the art of preserving health, it will thus be seen, is necessarily based on a correct knowledge of Physiology. A knowledge of the laws by which normal or healthy life is governed, necessarily makes us acquainted with the conditions essential to its maintenance, while we are also led to comprehend how the violations of those conditions cause a disturbance of natural action, which, when manifested in whatever form, or with greater or lesser intensity, constitutes what is commonly

termed disease. Hygiene, therefore, rightly understood in a truly comprehensive sense, includes mind and body, and thus in reality, embraces Biology, or the Science of Life.

Therapeutics is opposed to Hygiene in so far as it contemplates the derangements of natural health. Its perfection consists in properly treating abnormal conditions-in checking the aberrations of disordered functions, and in contributing towards the restoration of natural action. Its chief duty consequently is to aid the vis medicatrix naturæ, or the principle of selfpreservation with which Providence has beneficially endowed. all organised creation. The Healing Art, as it is called, is, therefore, only another name for Therapeutics, but, correctly speaking, "art" never yet healed or cured any disease, while the supposition, absurd and unscientific, that "art" does heal or cure, has been, and still continues to be, a most fruitful -source of error and suffering. All mere "art" can do, at best, though sustained by the most profound medical knowledge, is to remove foreign elements that interfere with normal action, and supply natural aids that may be wanting, and thus assist to re-establish those conditions which sound physiology teaches are essential to health-the vis medicatrix naturæ, the preservative principle of animal life, alone heals and cures.*

*Hence a rational system of Therapeutics can never be based on what is, in any degree, speculative, but must nécessarily rest on a knowledge of facts obtained by the study of Physiology, and accurate observation of the varied phenomena of Nature as manifested in health and disease. Just as the most profound knowledge of Anatomy, though the basis of Surgery, never yet, of itself, made a skilful and accomplished surgeon, so an equally profound knowledge of Pathology, or of diseased conditions, never yot made, of itself, a skilful Therapeutist. The essential condition is, that all theory must be discarded, and Pathological knowledge applied in strict consistency with Physiological truth. This strikes at the very root of all systems of mere Physic which have tortured humanity, because all have been based on speculative and unstable theory-not on the facts of nature. Hence a Physician may be, and often is, a very learned Pathologist, very skilful in Diagnoses, and yet, as a practitioner, nothing more than the servile follower of some empirical mode of treatment—the dupe himself, and unconsciously so often, of false doctrines, erroneous teaching, and imperfect mental training.