Medical notes and reflections / By Sir Henry Holland, bart. ... From the 3d London ed.

  • Sir Henry Holland, 1st Baronet
Date:
1857
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical notes and reflections / By Sir Henry Holland, bart. ... From the 3d London ed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    they come to confine themselves to what is safe, or absolutely necessary ; and thus is engendered by degrees a distrust of all that lies beyond this limit. Though such scepticism be less dangerous than a rash and hasty belief, it is manifestly hurtful in practice, and an unjust estimate of medicine as a science, both as it now exists, and as it is capable of being extended and improved. No one can reasonably doubt that we have means in our hands, admitting of being turned to large account of good or ill. Equally unreason- able would it be to distrust the knowledge gained from a faithful experience as to the manner of using these means—and others which may hereafter become known to us—safely and beneficially for the relief of disease. The actual progress of medicine during the last thirty years, in all that regards the principles of the science, as well as the details of practice, is the best testimony for the present and assurance for the future. As respects the two extremes, noticed above, it is certain that there is a middle course, which men of sound sense will perceive ; and to which they alone can steadily and consistently adhere, amidst the many difficulties besetting at once the judgment and the conduct of the physician.1 I am the rather led to these remarks on the nature of medical evidence, and the causes moral as well as physical affecting it, looking at the wonderful advances which have lately been made in all other branches of science; not merely by the addition of new facts, but yet more by new methods and principles of re- search, by instruments of greater delicacy, and by increasing exactness of details in every point of inquiry. The effect of these changes has been (and it is a result the grandeur of which can be understood only by those who have pursued their pro- gress) to bring the plrysical sciences into much closer relation with each other, pressing them on by converging paths towards that unity of principle which is the object and end of all true philosophy. I cannot here do more than allude to the profound researches through which dynamical forces—the phenomena of chemical, electric, and magnetic actions—and those of light and heat—have been submitted in so many cases to common laws ; 1 Laplace happily expresses the middle course here designated: ° Egalement eloigne de la credulite qui fait tout adraettre, et de la prevention qui porte a rejeter tout ce qui s'ecarte des idees re$ues.