unreservedly by Dr. Creighton in his "Illustrations of Unconscious
Memory in Disease." {67a} Dr. Creighton avowedly bases his system
on Professor Hering's address, and endorses it; it is with much
pleasure that I have seen him lend the weight of his authority to
the theory that each cell and organ has an individual memory. In
"Life and Habit" I expressed a hope that the opinions it upheld
would be found useful by medical men, and am therefore the more glad
to see that this has proved to be the case. I may perhaps be
pardoned if I quote the passage in" Life and Habit" to which I am
referring. It runs:-

"Mutatis mutandis, the above would seem to hold as truly about
medicine as about politics. We cannot reason with our cells, for
they know so much more" (of course I mean "about their own
business") "than we do, that they cannot understand us;--but though
we cannot reason with them, we can find out what they have been most
accustomed to, and what, therefore, they are most likely to expect;
we can see that they get this as far as it is in our power to give
it them, and may then generally leave the rest to them, only bearing
in mind that they will rebel equally against too sudden a change of
treatment and no change at all" (p. 305).

Dr. Creighton insists chiefly on the importance of change, which--
though I did not notice his saying so--he would doubtless see as a
mode of cross-fertilisation, fraught in all respects with the same
advantages as this, and requiring the same precautions against
abuse; he would not, however, I am sure, deny that there could be no
fertility of good results if too wide a cross were attempted, so
that I may claim the weight of his authority as supporting both the
theory of an unconscious memory in general, and the particular