[Footnote 1: By this I mean that the physician, if forced to choose
between absolute control of the air, diet, exercise, work, and general
habits of a patient, and use of drugs without these, would choose the
former, and yet there are cases where this decision would be a
death-warrant to the patient.]

The active physician has usually little time nowadays to give to the
older books, but it is still a valuable lesson in common sense to read,
not so much the generalizations as the cases of Whytt, Willis, Sydenham,
and others. Nearer our own day, Sir John Forbes, Bigelow, and Flint
taught us the great lesson that many diseases are self-limited, and need
only the great physician, Time, and reasonable dietetic care to get well
without other aid.

There is a popular belief that we have learned this from homoeopathy,
for the homoeopath, without knowing it, made for us on this matter ample
experiments, and was as confident he was giving powerful medicines as we
are that he was giving practically none. "He builded better than he
knew," and certainly his results aided our ablest thinkers to reach the
truth.

I have named one of the most illustrious of physicians, Sydenham, as
among the great Englishmen who brought to their work the clearest
perception of how nature was to be best aided. He will answer admirably
to exemplify my meaning.

Sydenham was born in 1624, and lived in and through the wild periods of
Charles I. and Cromwell, and was himself a stanch republican. He more
than any other in his century decisively taught caution as to mere