Perhaps the most interesting phases of Stokes' purely medical work during the first part of his career is his treatment of the subject of consumption. When not quite thirty-three he wrote a treatise on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the chest. His familiarity with the work of Graves and of Auenbrugger gave him command of all the {192} modern methods of physical diagnosis, so that he was able to study tuberculosis to the best possible advantage and with the least possible chance of too favorable judgment with regard to its cure. Notwithstanding the accuracy of his knowledge, however, he insisted that the disease was curable, and that the important point with regard to it was the recognition of it as early as possible, in order that the patient might be given the best chance for life. At that time most physicians considered tuberculosis to be an hereditary disease, without any idea of its being possibly contagious. Acceptance of heredity seemed to set the stamp of inevitable fatality on the heads of victims of the disease. To announce the curability of tuberculosis then was to run counter to all the medical traditions of the time, and Stokes in doing so must have had in support of his teaching many observations of patients who had been cured notwithstanding the fact that they were assured sufferers from this supposedly fatal disease. We know that Stokes was surely correct in his judgment in this matter, and realize too that his method of treatment, which included abundant feeding and long hours each day in the outdoor air, comprised the best elements of the modern treatment of tuberculosis. Perhaps one of the most striking anticipations of what is apt to be considered quite modern in medicine is Dr. Stokes' descriptions of the methods by which he considers certain forms of heart weakness, especially that incident to incipient fatty disease, should be treated. His directions are almost exactly those which have made the names of the Schott Brothers known throughout the world during the last twenty-five years. To have anticipated our modern views with regard to tuberculosis, its curability, and the best methods of treatment shows how thoroughly Stokes had studied his cases of consumption. That the same man {193} should also have been able to work out the details of treatment for heart weakness is a triumph that indicates better than anything else perhaps the genius of the physician not only in the observation of disease, but above all in that more important part of medicine--the proper application of therapeutic principles. Stokes observes, "In the present state of our knowledge the adoption of the following principles in the management of a case of incipient fatty disease seems justifiable: