The shortest system of medical practice
that I know of is the oldest, but not the worst. It is older than
Hippocrates, older than Chiron the Centaur. Nature taught it to the first
mother when she saw her first-born child putting some ugly pebble or
lurid berry into its mouth. I know not in what language it was spoken,
but I know that in English it would sound thus: Spit it out!
Art can do something more than say this. It can sometimes reach the
pebble or berry after it has been swallowed. But the great thing is to
keep these things out of children's mouths, and as soon as they are
beyond our reach, to be reasonable and patient with Nature, who means
well, but does not like to hurry, and who took nine calendar months, more
or less, to every mother's son among us, before she thought he was fit to
be shown to the public.
Suffer me now to lay down a few propositions, whether old or new it
matters little, not for your immediate acceptance, nor yet for your hasty
rejection, but for your calm consideration.
But first, there are a number of terms which we are in the habit of using
in a vague though not unintelligible way, and which it is as well now to
define. These terms are the tools with which we are to work, and the
first thing is to sharpen them. It is nothing to us that they have been
sharpened a thousand times before; they always get dull in the using, and
every new workman has a right to carry them to the grindstone and sharpen
them to suit himself.
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