"
If the medical faculty were always satisfied themselves as to the
operation of the various remedies they employ, there might be more
reason in the objection. But it is well known that different schools
disagree widely on this subject, and there are remedies employed with
success the effect of which the most intelligent are unable to account
for. So long as there is a single one of this character to be found, and
while the operations of the vital functions are so concealed from us
that we are unable fully to comprehend the process by which any specific
operates, so long it is impossible to prescribe as a conditon of
patentability, a full explanation of the mode in which any one acts that
is brought forward. It would be still less justifiable to require such
an explanation as would content any particular class of medical men.
Every year new therapeutics are introduced into practice, and not
unfrequently some whose beneficial results are not understood. And as
long as one such may be found, it is not just to make it a condition of
its being protected by a patent, that the discoverer should bring the
scientific world to agree with him in his theory respecting it, nor even
that he should have one.
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