General therapeutics and materia medica: adapted for a medical text book (Volume 1).

  • Robley Dunglison
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General therapeutics and materia medica: adapted for a medical text book (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ignorance is bliss, but how fearful the responsibility of such igno- rance! Views, like these, have given occasion to legislative enactments—which are every where too inoperative—to protect the public against the ignorant, the mercenary, and the—too often —unprincipled pretender. The curriculum of study, required in the different Medical Colleges, has been suggested by a wise care for the lives and the health of the public, and such a period of attendance upon the lectures that constitute it has been prescribed, as may enable the industrious—even if not highly gifted—to qualify themselves for entering upon the broad field of observa- tion, and of extended usefulness into which their avocation may carry them. It is within collegiate walls, that the student ac- quires the. prominent facts of his profession, and the great prin- ciples appertaining to its practical administration. He there learns the theory on which all sound and rational practice is based. Too often, amongst the uninformed, the theoretical and the prac- tical pursuit of a calling are placed in unworthy contrast. In no art can sound practice exist without theory. Theory is the mental process, which binds observed facts together; compares them with each other, and deduces appropriate rules of practice. Very different is this from the hypothesis that emanates from assump- tions not proved. It is to theory—as above defined—and as it is now understood every where amongst the scientific, that we are indebted not only for full practical usefulness, but for every science. Facts are, doubtless, the elements of science, but the science itself does not exist, until these facts have been brought together, sifted and compared, and great general principles deduced therefrom. In such sifting and comparison, a multitude of miscalled facts have to be discarded. In the science of medicine—in every science —those that merit the epithet false are numerous, and many of them rest on the authority of the heedless observer, who arrives at his conclusions without due examination. The theoretical investigation of science renders a man cautious even to scepticism. Very few, therefore, of the mass of recorded facts originate with him: he has little to do in accumulating the chaff that envelopes the grain. The records of the Patent Office of every country tend to elucidate this matter. It has been properly observed, that every patent is a speculation. Who, then, are the great speculators? Not the theoretical men, in the sense in which we have used the term but what are called practical men,—men, who narrow themselves' down to observed facts in their own profession or call in?, and who, in consequence of their ignorance of theory, soon find that their inventions are no important additions to existing knowledge. A writer on this subject asserts, that he has made a rough esti- mate of the number of scientific persons who have published works relative to new inventions in arts, and he finds that in Europe they did not exceed two hundred during the whole of
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