Disease an Unit, or Medicine a Science (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Disease an Unit, or Medicine a Science

That there is nothing in the present Empirical State of Medicine - nothing in the doctrine that pathological phenomena are produced by distinct, specific causes, and therefore not capable of connection - which forbids the conclusion that all may be produced by a common cause, is seen in the fact that Astronomy was once in a state of Empiricism that Astronomical phenomena were once thought to be produced by distinct, specific causes, and therefore not capable of connection.

That there is nothing in the Diversity of pathological phenomena which forbids the conclusion that disease is a unit, is seen in the fact that quite as great Diversity in what are called physical phenomena, have been reduced to a common Law.

Complex and obscure as the laws of the material universe may appear to the superficial observer, surrounded by difficulties and lost in the maze of phenomena around him, he might be tempted, like the philosophers of old, to refer every effect to its own peculiar cause; a cause innate to theosub stance, essential to it, and animating like a soul. Far otherwise are the con elusions arrived at by him who, patiently investigating the appearances of the material world, is guided by the inductive reasoning of the Baconian school; he traces effects to their proximate causes, and generalizing these, is led to the discovery of a few simple laws, obeying which, atom unites to atom, and mass to mass, to form a World, rolling in its appointed sphere around the centre of our system, the great source of light and heat; he soon discovers that, in the beautiful simplicity of Nature's laws, the apparently' most insignificant, and the most gigantic effects are frequently produced by one and the same cause; he discovers that the very law which presides over the motions of the luminous orbs which roll in space around him, causes the' scattering of flour from the edge of the mill-stones, and of drops of water from the wet revolving carriage-wheel. That the law regulating the falling of an apple towards the earth, is identical with that which retains the moun tains on their broad basis, and the planets in their spheres. Nay, more, he learns that with such consummate wisdom have cause and effect been related.

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