What
medicine does. What nature alone does.]
(2.) It is often said by women, that they cannot know anything of the
laws of health, or what to do to preserve their children's health,
because they can know nothing of "Pathology," or cannot "dissect,"--a
confusion of ideas which it is hard to attempt to disentangle. Pathology
teaches the harm that disease has done. But it teaches nothing more. We
know nothing of the principle of health, the positive of which pathology
is the negative, except from observation and experience. And nothing but
observation and experience will teach us the ways to maintain or to
bring back the state of health. It is often thought that medicine is the
curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of
functions, as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs. Neither can do
anything but remove obstructions; neither can cure; nature alone cures.
Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to
cure, but nature heals the wound. So it is with medicine; the function
of an organ becomes obstructed; medicine, so far as we know, assists
nature to remove the obstruction, but does nothing more.
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