Epidemiology, or the Remote Cause of Epidemic Diseases in the Animal and in the Vegetable Creation, Vol. 1

Excerpt from Epidemiology, or the Remote Cause of Epidemic Diseases in the Animal and in the Vegetable Creation

Dr. Hecker, impressed with the same fe'eling, has made a powerful address to his professional brethren in Ger many; and as his ideas coincide with my own, and are so very apposite, I cannot do better than quote them on the present occasion. After a few prefatory remarks, on the duties of physicians generally, Dr. Hecker adds Let us consider only the doctrine (or pathology) of diseases, which has been cultivated since the commencement of scientific study. It has grown up amid the illumination of knowledge and the gloom Of ignorance; it has been nurtured by the storms of centuries; its monuments of ancient and modern times cannot be numbered; and it speaks clearly to the initiated in the language of all civi lized nations. Yet, hitherto, it has given an account only of individual diseases, so far as the human mind can dis cern their nature. In this it has succeeded admirably, and its success becomes every year greater and more extensive.