future medical generations. Those of us who have practiced medicine forty years or more can recall certain treatments, such as the cold-air cure for pneumonia, indiscriminate ovariotomy and the toilet of the peritoneum in cases of general peritonitis, all of which have been discarded. It is probable that the removal of tonsils, doubtless the commonest operation today, will be much modified in time to come, and some of the shotgun vitamin therapy so popular today may seem absurd to our medical successors.The doctor of 1791 lacked the advantages of the modern diagnostic and therapeutic armamenta-rium; he was obliged to depend almost entirely on symptoms for diagnosis and prognosis, and was a most careful observer, as attested by current medical literature. Yet he was a resourceful person, and I wonder how some of our Class A medicalschool graduates would fare today if obliged to depend on their five senses as our medical forebears were.
South State Street