On the discovery of leucocythemia, (being a reply to a letter on that subject by Professor Kölliker, in the Monthly journal of medical science for October 1854) / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D.

  • Bennett, John Hughes, 1812-1875.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the discovery of leucocythemia, (being a reply to a letter on that subject by Professor Kölliker, in the Monthly journal of medical science for October 1854) / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    physical knowledge is increasing, credulity is diminishing j3an pass?;. There never has been a period more dominant with delusions than the present, and never one when they were more wild and untenable. Why, wrote a distinguished Dublin savant, holding the first rank in our profession, in a letter to me some years ago, do you not send us something in return for the inflictions of phrenology, mes- merism, homoeopathy, &o. which we put upon you ? We had, at that time, furnished Europe with Thompsonianism; and, since then, we have more than returned the compliment by the various offshoots from legitimate medicine, of indigenous growth; and by our electro- biologies, neurologies, table-turnings, table-talkings, and spiritual rappings. The same causes are at the root of all delusions; and it would seem that there must always be some tub to amuse the whale. Accordingly, these moral epidemics—if they may be so termed— rage for a while, and ultimately sink below the horizon, to be suc- ceeded by others; and, in the lapse of time, by the resuscitation of the former under some new shape, and to pursue a like path. Man- kind must be amused. It would almost appear, that they must be deceived; and it is an apothegm largely admitted, that they have the right to be so if they desire it— quandoquidem popuhis decipi vult decipiatur. These multiform delusions spring from the credulity of man; his love of the marvellous; his unbounded enthusiasm in the prosecu- tion of whatever holds out prospects for improving his general or bodily condition, and for administering to his health and comfort. This credulity unhappily pervades all classes. It causes the same confidence to be placed in the ignorant and mercenary pretender as in the skilful and learned physician ; and levels downwards the dis- tinction between science and empiricism—thus confounding the high- minded cultivator of a noble science with the grovelling pursuer of a low trade. And how is all this to bo rectified? To attempt to strangle empi- ricism by legal enactments would be futile. In the reign of James