SUBJECTIVE MEDICINE.

Every human life has a two-fold aspect, a subjective and an objective one. The first is the view it presents to an individual's self; the other, to those around him. In order that we may have a comprehensive knowledge of any individual, we must enter into both these views. Medicine, which embraces the whole physical life of man in health and disease, is also naturally divided into these two parts, both of which are equally necessary to render the science complete. One part of the knowledge of an individual's physical state, is to be got by the observation of the physician; the other can come only from the revelation of the individual himself.

Now in the latter part, namely, in subjective medicine, the science is as barren and incomplete, as was that of religion or morality, before men began to think for themselves on these matters. Neither in medical works, nor elsewhere, have we anything at all approaching to satisfactory subjective descriptions of disease. Very few medical men have ever thought of allowing their patients to speak for themselves in their reports of cases. Intent chiefly on arriving at physical facts and physical conclusions, they have paid comparatively slight attention to the mental state of the patient, which forms no less integral a part of the disease. Thus, in questioning a patient, they strove as much as possible to bring him to the physical point, checking his digressions, and the outpourings of his suffering heart. It is this want of sym

pathy and value for the mental part of the disease, and the mere attention to the physical, that has proved one of the chief barriers between medical men and the public. But it is no less the physician's duty to embrace in his reverence and scientific attention the mental element, than it is that of the moralist to embrace the physical. Both have suffered equally from the omission, and such a division of labour in so indissoluble a compound as man, cannot but lead to the most imperfect results.

Every one must have felt, in reading medical works, the dull and nechanical tone, which the want of the subjective element imparts. Instead of the intense glow of life and individuality, with which each stamps his own soul's or body's tragedy, in a personal narrative, we have all pruned down to a sober routine list of facts and symptoms,

evidently not designed to interest men generally, but merely the ' cientific few. How many are cheated by such a method! The patient is deprived of the appeasing of that yearning demand for sympathy, which dwells in every human bosom, and which, though it has not yet been fully awakened for physical, as it has been for moral woes, surges in the breast of every sufferer with an agony that increases by resistance, and will yet overwhelm the world. Who can bear to have merely a calm and dispassionately scientific view taken of his fate or of his woes, whicr to him are in themselves an infinite world? But society, too, lose as greatly as the patient. Not only do they forfeit the valuable lesson o! experience, and the deep impression for good, which no dull routine. description that does not reach the heart, can excite, but they lose the power of giving sympathy and consolation, as blessed as the receiving; for we cannot sympathise with that which we do not intimately understand. And the physician himself, and science, lose in as great a degree, not only by the blunting of the feelings caused by mechanical views of living and thinking beings, but also in their insight into the psychology of health and disease, which is as valuable a part of medical knowledge, as any other, and as important for the prevention and treatment of disease, and the advancement of health. Every physical state has its peculiar mental one, and to discover what this is, and what influence on the mind all bodily states from so-called perfect health, to hypochondria, insanity, delirium, or death, is a most essential branch of medical science. This psychology of health and disease is to be obtained only by the study of every individual's mind compared with his bodily condition, and a full knowledge of this is to be arrived at only by his own revelations. We want a whole man to know and sympathise with, not merely a body or a soul.

How few subjective records of physical life are to be found in history! Among the numerous autobiographies that have been written by so many noble human beings, who has given to us any but the most meagre details of his physical life, even though its history may have been the most extraordinary, the most sadly eventful of the twin parts of his nature? Hence do all these men present to us most imperfect pictures. Through all the tissue of their lives we know not what physical threads have been interwoven, and therefore we can pass no satisfactory judgment on themselves or their actions. But how immensely does the world lose by not having the fruits of their physical as well as their moral experiences! Had their penetrating minds been as keenly directed to the physical goods and evils they encountered, as to the mental ones; had they used, each in his own case, the subtle insight which personal experience alone gives, would the world have been in so wretched a physical state as it still is, with so low a physical standard, that health is not health, and that there is a skeleton in every house, and a disease, secret or open, gnawing at the vitals of almost every one of us! Would we be still stumbling on from age to age in the same erroneous tracks, and falling one after the other like sheep, into the same physical pit-falls?

If it be impossible to build a moral world out of objective reasoning alone, it is no less vain to seek to build a physical one with these poor materials.

If we seek for a physical criticism on men of past ages, we must say, "We have not the elements for it; we know them not, they knew not themselves, and their physical motive influences escaped their consciousness.” Shall we be content to remain in the same undeveloped unconscious state; shall we continue still to view ourselves and our neighbours with a spiritual eye only, and thus for ever remain hidden from ourselves and from them? If we will not remain thus ignorant, we must imbue our minds equally with physical knowledge; we must study the language of the body, a language not confined to an age or a nation, but wide and universal as humanity, in order that we may attain to a higher selfconsciousness, and be able to interpret ourselves and comprehend others.

LIFE AND DEATH.

THESE form the two great divisions of human existence. They are the sums of the various forces which are at work within us. The one is the result of all the constructive, the other of the destructive processes. In man's body the two several processes of reparation and destruction, of life and death, go on together throughout the whole of his existence. If it can be said of him that he is living at any moment, it may be no less truly said of him that he is dying; for it is only through constant death that we live; through constant waste of tissues that our forces are supplied. Thus we see that even of life, death forms an integral part; that the processes of destruction are equally necessary and equally valuable to man, with those of construction. If the destructive processes be impeded at any moment, disease is just as certainly produced as if the others be impeded.

But there is always an exact analogy between the body and the mind. There is no bodily truth, which is not represented by a spiritual one; no physical law, which is not reflected in a moral law: as there is no change in the mind without an exactly corresponding change in the brain. Therefore in the moral world also, we find the same powers of construction and destruction balancing each other. These are known under the names of belief and scepticism. Like the parallel powers in the body, these different kinds of moral processes are equally necessary, equally valuable. If the powers of scepticism have not their full and natural scope, if their healthy destructive processes be arrested, man must suffer just as certainly as if the powers of belief were impeded. Death and scepticism are just as essential and as much to be reverenced, as life and belief.

In the body, every particle dies in the very act of living; and so does a truth, as soon as it is conceived, become a falsehood. It has been acutely, said that nothing but what is new is true; and every new truth must to the old be false and destructive.

Nothing can be erected by one process in the body, which will not be destroyed by another; and so nothing can be erected by one part of man's mind which another will not overthrow. Nothing can be affirmed which cannot be denied; nothing believed which cannot be disbelieved. There is a destructive and sceptical tendency in man's mind, just as infinite, just as insatiable, as a constructive and believing one.

As death springs from life, so does life ever arise from death. As denial is evolved from affirmation, so does new belief ever arise from scepticism. Had there been the possibility of arriving at settled truths, by which men could abide, the infinity of nature would not have been recognised; but scepticism for ever prevents the possibility of limiting her domains. Scepticism or destructiveness is therefore the grand power, which nature has given to enable us ever to preserve the sense of infinity. While life gathers together, defines, and bends to its will the elements of our being, death constantly strives to disperse and restore them to their former freedom. It is good for a man that life shall at one time prevail; it is no less good for him that death shall at another time prevail.

One part of man strives powerfully and victoriously for life and belief; another as powerfully and as victoriously for death and denial. But as they not only alternate with each other, but go on simultaneously during the whole course of existence; therefore in our moral nature are truth and falsehood, belief and scepticism, necessarily going on together, whether we recognise this or not. To constitute a well-balanced mind, the destructive and sceptical workings must keep pace with the constructive ones. If the former processes are interfered with, or not sufficiently called into play, the mind will become diseased. Again, if the believing and constructive part of the mind have not equal scope, disease will likewise be produced. The equal claims and necessities for both should be recognised by us.

But hitherto this has been little the case. Instead of feeling the equal value of these two sides of our nature; instead of paying equal reverence to the destructive side, we have striven as much as possible to hide it from our thoughts and sympathies. We have averted our faces from death and scepticism, forgetting that these are as inevitable, and, therefore, as beautiful parts of our being as life and belief. Until ignorance, error, and finiteness, are banished from the world; until life stands by itself and is not inseparably linked with death, throughout our whole existence; until, in short, man have a totally different nature from what he has, so long will every thought, every feeling, every moral and physical act have its necessary amount of sin, destruction, or imperfection. Since this is so, if we avert our faces from sin, destruction, and death, we can know but little of man; we can see but the one half of his being, and our knowledge of that will be radically defective. Man's wishes and thoughts must be in harmony with his nature or he will surely suffer. If we wish to exclude death from our thoughts; if we wish to have absolute life, absolute virtue, or absolute belief, at every point nature will rise in arms against us. Death will overwhelm us with anguish and disappointment; sin, the inevitable, will blind us, clinging to our heartstrings, and clogging our every thought: scepticism, the infinite, the inexorable, will crush to pieces our flimsy beliefs, and fill our bosoms with terror and dismay. If we refuse to recognise them; if we hate the idea of death or scepticism, and do not acknowledge their equal powers; if we impede their healthy destructive actions, disease and misery will most certainly result. But if on the contrary we acknowledge their natural beauty; if we study them and learn to take delight in their