ignorance. The anatomists and the pathologists have their place, but
we must look to the living to learn the laws of life, not to the dead.
A wreck shows you where the reef is, perhaps, but not how to manage a
ship in the offing. The men who make it their business to write the
books and the men who make it their business to follow them aren't the
ones for successful practice."

Dr. Leslie smiled, and looked over his shoulder at his beloved library
shelves, as if he wished to assure the useful volumes of his continued
affection and respect, and said quietly, as if to beg the displeased
surgeon's patience with his brethren: "They go on, poor fellows,
studying the symptoms and never taking it in that the life power is at
fault. I see more and more plainly that we ought to strengthen and
balance the whole system, and aid nature to make the sick man well
again. It is nature that does it after all, and diseases are oftener
effects of illness than causes. But the young practitioners must
follow the text-books a while until they have had enough experience to
open their eyes to observe and have learned to think for themselves. I
don't know which is worse; too much routine or no study at all. I was
trying the other day to count up the different treatments of pneumonia
that have been in fashion in our day; there must be seven or eight,
and I am only afraid the next thing will be a sort of skepticism and
contempt of remedies. Dr. Johnson said long ago that physicians were a
class of men who put bodies of which they knew little into bodies of
which they knew less, but certainly this isn't the fault of the
medicines altogether; you and I know well enough they are often most
stupidly used. If we blindly follow the medical dictators, as you call
them, and spend our treatment on the effects instead of the causes,
what success can we expect? We do want more suggestions from the men
at work, but I suppose this is the same with every business. The