Volume 2

Rational medicine, a vindication : the address delivered on the opening of the new School of Medicine, Surgeon's Hall, Edinburgh, November 6, 1849 ... by Alexander Wood ... / [Alexander Wood].

  • Alexander Wood
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rational medicine, a vindication : the address delivered on the opening of the new School of Medicine, Surgeon's Hall, Edinburgh, November 6, 1849 ... by Alexander Wood ... / [Alexander Wood]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    4] press the bystanders equally with yourself; for deep interest in the sufferer has in them quickened every perception, and has given to the observing faculties new and increased powers. But to them they are barren, after all! Why do they anxi- ously gaze in your face? Is it not to discover your opinion as to the probable result? But the book you both read from is the same—the help- less sufferer before you; there he lies,—the facts are exhibited to all alike; but the minds which seck to interpret them have been differently trained, and they gaze on you to inquire, not what you see, but what you ¢himk. And all the time you are engaged in pondering evidence, and decide from it, coupled with your former experi- ence, that a blood-vessel has given way in your patient’s brain, and that from this his symptoms arise. And this, too, may be a fact. The rup- tured blood-vessel may be there, the effused clot may have torn the brain, and may now be pressing upon it; butif it is a fact, it is one which all your powers of observation could never have dis- covered ; a mental process has intervened, and you have inferred, from what you see, what is con- cealed and invisible. But, again, what is to be