A discourse addressed to the Kentucky State Medical Society at its annual meeting : held in Lebanon, April 18, 1859 / by Joshua B. Flint.
- Flint, Joshua B. (Joshua Barker), 1801-1864.
- Date:
- 1859
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A discourse addressed to the Kentucky State Medical Society at its annual meeting : held in Lebanon, April 18, 1859 / by Joshua B. Flint. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![[10] in the conceited counsel of Dr Rush, who is said to have been in the habit of charging his pupils to kick nature out of the door when ever they enter the room of the sick, yel when grave enough to invoke the interposition of the physician, the common thought is that diseases are to be conquered, extirpated, jugulated, or at least cured by his introduction of some antago- nistic agent from without —and so we have extracted from the plant, or dug from the earth, or compounded in the labratory, our armament for this warfare and victory. Nor is this search for remedial agents in the various kingdoms of nature, to be discouraged. Medicine is under many obliga- tions to her sister sciences for such contributions. But the physician must bear in mind, when he takes the field with this potent and specious array, that, as in all other hostile con- flicts, the peaceful interests of the seat of war may be sacrificed by the desolating struggles of the belligerents, and that the disorder which provoked the contest is often inconsiderable, compared with the ravages inflicted on the battle ground. Not without reason does that eminent physician, Chomel, among the French practitioners of his day, faciljb princeps, introduce one of the noblest contributions to practical medi- cine that the literature of any nation can boast, with the memorable apothegm — the first care of a physician is, that he do no harm to his patients, and then to do them as much good as possible.' Not unfrequently we seem to have overcome morbid pro- cesses and tendencies by the skillful employment of the materia medica; but the result is due only to a fortunate co-operation of these agents with the vis medicatrix. Indeed, my breth- ren, without indulging any transcendentalism of thought or expression, while wielding these agents against disease, we are too apt to forget that the great remedial agencies for physical ailments, like that great remedy provided for moral diseases— the Kingdom of Heaven, are within us—those organic intui- tions and autocracies that are too little studied, and too little respected by the ministers of the healing art. True it is that, in the case of every living being, these natu- ral conservative forces are at last powerless in the presence of the universal doom of humanity. But equally powerless, in that exigency, arc all the vaunted processes of art. The angel](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21119715_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
