Hints on animal magnetism, addressed to the medical profession in Great Britain / [J.C. Colquhoun].

  • John Campbell Colquhoun
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on animal magnetism, addressed to the medical profession in Great Britain / [J.C. Colquhoun]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/48 page 7
    formed, not upon any reasonable judgment of things, but upon certain extraneous or adventitious circumstances,—- such as the supposed utility of any newly enunciated fact or doctrine, tlieir conformity to some previously assumed or generally acknowledged principle, the character and situa¬ tion of the individual who announces them, &c. without any investigation into their actual reality and truth. The learned, too, have their prejudices and prepossessions as well as the vulgar, and those of the former are quite as obstinate and as mischievous, and perhaps, for obvious reasons, still more inimical to the progress of knowledge, than those of the latter. Nay, there is a sort of fashion in belief, as well as in other matters; for many are incapable of forming any independent opinion of their own, and find it most conve¬ nient to allow themselves to be carried along with the stream. They may acknowledge with the poet: “ Quo me cunque rapit tempestas deferor hospes.” Even the inquiring mind, as a late eminent writer has ob¬ served, 44 seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth; but timidity, or indolence, or prejudice, which is both combined, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss.” Moreover, there are some mental optics which are dazzled and confounded by the full splendour of truth, and whose visual perceptions, consequently, are incapable of comprehending any object beyond the half-way house to real science. Finally, the annunciation of new and extraordinary facts and discoveries in science, affords an irresistibly tempting opportunity for all the Merry-Andrews of literature to exercise their favour¬ ite vocation. Incapable themselves of appreciating serious and important truths, they take advantage of the popular ignorance, and endeavour to throw discredit upon scientific researches, which they cannot comprehend, by representing them to the public in the ludicrously distorting light of the
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image