"The relation of physiology to practical medicine is a subject which has been brought prominently into notice by the address of Dr. Burdon Sanderson ... at the recent meeting of the British Association. That address may be considered as the first authoritative and public announcement made in this country that IT IS THE AIM AND INTENTION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF THOUGHT and work to separate themselves more and more from the school of practical medicine; no longer to consider themselves auxiliary to it except as other sciences--for instance, chemistry and botany--may be considered auxiliary to it, but to win a place in the public estimation for their science as one which shall be cultivated FOR ITS OWN SAKE... "The teaching of experience is more reliable than physiological theories and opinions.... The history of the advance of the cure of disease is in the history of empiricism, in the best sense of that much-abused word. The history of retrogression in the art of curing disease is that of the so-called Physiological Schools of Medicine... Physiological theory, based on experiments on dogs, wishes us to believe that mercury does not excite a flow of bile; but here the common sense of the Profession, educated by experience, has refused to be led by physiological theory.... Modern physiological science has taught us little more than the necessity of pure air, water, and food, good clothing and shelter, moderation in eating and drinking, and regulation of the passions--things, in fact, which are as old as the Pentateuch. We may safely assert that all the experiments made on luckless animals since the time of Magendie to the present, in France, America, Germany, and England, have not prolonged one tithe of human life, or diminished one tithe of the human suffering that have been prolonged and diminished by the discovery and use of Jesuits' bark and cod-liver oil."[1] [1] Medical Times and Gazette (Editorial), September 7, 1872.