On the class of medical literature most needed at the present day : addressed to medical students / by Horace Dobell.

  • Horace Dobell
Date:
1851
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the class of medical literature most needed at the present day : addressed to medical students / by Horace Dobell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to the consideration of this I will proceed at once. The deficient parts consist of “an ac¬ quaintance with causes and processes,” and of treatment directed to their removal or arrest. I have taken pains to show that the treatment of disease cannot be rightly applied until the causes and processes to which it should be directed are determined. The question, then, as to the order in which the deficient parts should be supplied, is answered in favour of the former. A know¬ ledge of the causes and processes of dis¬ eased changes must be supplied first: an acquaintance with the treatment of them will follow. And now, after a dissertation so long, and I can but fear tedious, I have arrived at the point where the great and. important question with which I com¬ menced may be satisfactorily answered. The question was—How shall we satisfy that ambition which makes us anxious to im¬ prove our profession ? What is the step in improvement which, being directed, we may boldly take ? The answer is—to ap¬ ply our intellects sedulously to inductive reasoning, and to direct this to medicine and surgery. This is the first step, by taking which we may discover the causes and processes of disease. The following question naturally arises in this place : if the necessary parts for the improvement of medical science can be supplied by means apparently so simple, why have they not been supplied by some of the many great men whose names we reverence in the annals of medicine and surgery P It is certainly a question of great interest, for, that such a step has not been taken, would seem almost an argument that it would not be attended with success. But if we enter more carefully into the subject, I believe the difficulty will be ex¬ plained, and we shall rather be disposed to feel more convinced that our conclusion as to the necessities of our profession is correct, from observing how many diffi¬ culties lie in the path of those who strive to supply those necessities; how many insurmountable obstacles have lain before some who wTould otherwise have been most capable of performing the task. I conceive that the first circumstance which has de¬ terred men from proceeding to the step I now point out has been that strong impression, so universally retained, of the little good and the apparent amount of evil, which resulted from the philosophy of the ancients in its application to medical science, and the evil consequences which have so often resulted, in later days, from speculations in these matters. This impression, the correctness of which we are now prepared to judge of, is undoubtedly very general; and as the actions of men’s lives, and the course of their mental career, are guided by the reigning impression in their minds, we are not sur¬ prised to find that theidea of applying philo¬ sophical reasoning to medical science could not attain to a complete development. The second cause is the advance made in a knowledge of the essential conditions of inductive reasoning, and in the extended appreciation of the truth, that deduction, except as a successor to induction, is worse than vain. This advance in knowledge teaches men that it is impossible to reason correctly, or even safely, in physical sub¬ jects, on any other basis than the acquain¬ tance with correct facts. The existence of this cause, why men have been deterred from philosophising, adds strength to the effect of the next, which I believe to be, the incalculable number of facts possessed in medical and surgical subjects. The science of medicine is one of the most com¬ plicated of all the sciences ; it derives facts from so many sources, —from anatomy, from physiology, morbid anatomy, chemistry, mechanics, from disease in the living body, from the effects of treatment, from every possible influence by which man is sur¬ rounded in health or in a state of disease. The number of individuals who follow our science, or rather our profession, and who contribute to the records of phenomena, is greater, perhaps, than in any other sci¬ ence : it is among the oldest of the sciences. Thus we perceive all those circumstances connected with it which are calculated to add most abundantly to the accumulation of facts, and in proportion to the number of course is the difficulty of reviewing them increased. A fourth cause of the effect in question is to be found in the ex¬ treme difficulty of deciding among the numerous observations, which are really worthy of the name of facts, which are well attested, which may be depended upon as elements of inductive reasoning. And lastly, I must call attention to a most im¬ portant consideration, viz. the class of men who follow this science. Who are they, but the physicians and surgeons ? not, as in mathematics, the closet students who may devote hour after hour to following out some cherished idea—to gatherin? the ideas of others, or the phenomena recorded by their predecessors ; not, as in astronomy, men whose days may be devoted to un¬ disturbed study, or to the teaching of sci¬ entific principles, and their nights in quiet, calm meditation in the observatory, with the facts for their induction placed before them with no less brilliancy than the stars ; not, as in metaphysics, men whose duty and whose daily task it is to think upon series of facts, and to teach the results of their
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