to the cause of disease,--disease was sent by the inscrutable will
of God. No man could fathom that will, nor its arbitrary operation.
As to the treatment of disease, there were believed to be
a few remedial agents of universal efficacy. Calomel and bloodletting,
for example, were two of the principal ones. A larger or

smaller dose of calomel, a greater or less quantity of bloodletting,
--this blindly indiscriminate mode of treatment was regarded as
orthodox for all common varieties of ailment. And so his calomel
pill and his bloodletting lances were carried everywhere with him
by the doctor.

Nowadays, all this is past, in medical science. As to the causes
of disease, we know that they are facts of nature,--various, but
distinguishable by diagnosis and research, and more or less capable
of prevention or control or counter-action. As to the treatment,
we now know that there are various specific modes of treatment
for specific causes or symptoms, and that the treatment must
be adapted to the cause. In short, the individualization of disease,
in cause and in treatment, is the dominant truth of modern medical
science.

The same truth is now known about crime; but the understanding
and the application of it are just opening upon us. The old
and still dominant thought is, as to cause, that a crime is caused
by the inscrutable moral free will of the human being, doing or
not doing the crime, just as it pleases; absolutely free in advance,
at any moment of time, to choose or not to choose the criminal act,
and therefore in itself the sole and ultimate cause of crime. As to
treatment, there still are just two traditional measures, used in