On the past progress and the present aspects of medicine in relation chiefly to therapeutics : an address delivered before the North of Scotland Medical Association, July 25, 1874 / by Alexander Harvey.

  • Harvey, Alexander, 1811-1889.
Date:
1874
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the past progress and the present aspects of medicine in relation chiefly to therapeutics : an address delivered before the North of Scotland Medical Association, July 25, 1874 / by Alexander Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by the profession ! They gathered up and gave completeness to what before lay scattered abroad and was inaccessible to the aggregate of our body. For them, Alison’s Outlines embraced pathology only; and they were deep, condensed reading, as Butler’s Analogy is. Watson’s Lectures embraced practice also—were copious, brilliant, fascinating. The publication of these lec ures marked, I have said, a new epoch in medicine, strictly so-called. It supplied a want long felt. It gave a vast s imulus to workers in this particular field; and while—improved on each revision—these Lectures still hold their ground as firmly as at the first, they have tended greatly to the advancement of pathology and practical medicine. And here let me just note in passing, under this head of systematic medicine, that within these few years the United fctates, in the person of Dr Austin Flint, have given us a work of equal excellence with Sir Thomas Watson—a work which has already gone through four editions; and that, last year, Dr Frederick Roberts, of London, has given us a work on Practice of Medicine of singular excellence. It does not lie to my hand to speak of the progress made in surgery, midwifery, and medical jurisprudence. It must suffice for me to remark that they have in no degree lagged behind. As far as principles are concerned, and in as far as they stand related to those of physiology, patho¬ logy7, and therapeutics, they have advanced with the sister branch of medicine proper. And now, to come to the mam part of my address. What we have specially gained in pathology and prac¬ tice since Sir Thomas Watson came on the stage, thirty years ago, and as well in surgery as in medicine, is the thorough working out of THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISEASES. This is a term never heard of in my student days forty years ago. Yet it is a happy one. We now know, as we did not know fifty years ago, the whole habits or habetudes of diseases, their causes, and the operation of these, the course or progress of diseases, the modes in which they terminate, whether favourably or unfavourably, in death or recovery; the modes, too, of dying, and the modes of healing, and all this as occurring spontaneously. A great gain this has been and is. It is so especia Jy in relation to the proper subject of my address—to the scientific and rational treatment of diseases. Dr Flint well remarks that “the know¬ ledge of the natural history of diseases is the true point of departure for Therapeutics.” But this is not the only gain we have made since the days of Cullen We have acquired j us er notions ofwhat disease is—of what diseases are—and of the relation in which they stand to health. Dr Cullen, as I have said once and again, by sweeping away the rubbish of antiquity, and in other ways besides, did more for our science than any that went before him. Yet he did not a little to retard it also, and especially by the publication of his Nosology in 1785. But how ? This work, admirable in itself for the clear, concise, accurate definitions it gives us of diseases, served, not indeed to create, but to keep up
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