Mr. Balfour is certainly the one great politician of our
day who can make almost any subject he touches interesting ; and on Wednesday he made a most interesting speech on the debt which the general public owe to the medical profession for the great advances it has recently made in relieving the sufferings and extending the span of human life. He quoted a friend'. opinion that, with the new light which medical science is gaining on the causes of disease, and the best modes of relieving it, it might be possible before long to extend the average length of human life to one hundred and twenty years ; but he said that for himself he thought that to prolong a crippled and suffering life is much less the true object of medicine, than to render the life we may all hope to live really useful and effectual, by relieving it of all disabling and paralysing conditions. Doubtless, that is the most attractive of all the undertakings of medical men ; but surely the last way to accomplish it, is to depreciate the duty of prolonging life,—even a suffering life,—wherever it is possible to do so. We do not know any change which would be more revolutionary, more fatal to medical men's influence, than one that liberated them from that great duty, and gave them the sanction of public opinion for trifling with life itself in the speculative use of kill-or-cure remedies. Any change in the appreciation of the great duty of prc- longing life, when life can be prolonged, even though it be a suffering life, would transform dangerously the whole character of the profession, and introduce a kind of gambling into the very heart of the most potent of all moral disciplines.
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