Research in medicine, and other addresses / by Thomas Lewis.

  • Thomas Lewis
Date:
[1945]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Research in medicine, and other addresses / by Thomas Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of your science—it is better to choose an illustration which may be followed by a corresponding demonstration upon man. Do medical men show unusual discrimination when they come to weigh the pros and cons of a new problem ? Are their explana- tions weighed in the critical spirit which their physiological teachers have tried to instil into them ? Are they unusually acute in assessing the value of evidence ? I do not answer these questions negatively, but lack the assurance to answer them affirmatively. If they are to be answered negatively, does it not mean that there is some weakness in physiological teaching ? for physiology is the chief philosophical subject which they study. And may not this defect, if it exists, in part at least result because they learn to philosophize upon questions which are soon for- gotten in the daily routine of practice ? It matters little to a practitioner whether Ludwig or Heidenhain was in the right; he does not base his treatment on one or other view. An account of many such controversies, and especially those which have led as yet to no final conclusion, might well be replaced by an historical account of those problems which are more vital to the daily needs of medicine, and these problems might equally illustrate processes of argument and thought. With purely physiological hypotheses, we, as pathological investigators, have little or no business. I use the term hypothesis in its true meaning—an assumption intended as a temporary explanation of observations, and put forward in the hope that with extended investigation such hypothesis may harden into conclusion. A published hypothesis is usually in essence a redoubt built by its conceiver; he and his party labour to strengthen it; but its very nature invites, and sooner or later provokes, an attack, and, as with redoubts, it is blit rarely impregnable. The attack and counter-attack may be and often are prolific of discovery, whether the redoubt holds or falls. It is at once conceded that physiological hypothesis is essential to the physiologist; it has not the same value to medicine, it is often dangerous when introduced to medicine. The observations and conclusions of physiology are indispensable to us; but too often, from the inability to weigh evidence, hypothesis and conclusions are confused, and the former becomes the basis of pathological speculation. This is a widespread and regrettable habit amongst pathologists and clinicians. The pathologist or clinician who founds his own assumptions on the assumptions of physiology builds to see the complete collapse of his edifice. He who
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