The unity of medicine : its corruptions and divisions, by law established in England and Wales, their causes, effects, and remedy / By Frederick Davies.

  • Davies, Frederick
Date:
1870
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unity of medicine : its corruptions and divisions, by law established in England and Wales, their causes, effects, and remedy / By Frederick Davies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    diseases, from the pure physician's office; and by the same authority were consigned to the barber, THE SMITH, AND THE MOUNTEBANK ! And thuS a SeCOnd great corruption, and a first compulsory division of that office, were effected. We cannot be surprised if during this contest, and as long as the Church exercised any control oyer medicine, that the priest- physician, whose iy]T^Hov consisted of tombs and rehcs of saints and martyrs, whose armamentarium chirurgicum was dead men's bones, crosses, and in- cantations, should shun for the exercise of his MIRACULOUS POWERS all the cases above referred to. The gross darkness which had so long covered Europe was, even now, anticipating the full revival of letters; and just in an equal proportion as these narrow streams of light penetrated the darkness, so were all such cases as hy the exercise of the senses could alone test the truth of their miraculous power,* one by one discarded from the merciful care of these would- be pure physicians, and their functions wisely reduced to that standard transferred from the hands of the Church in the sixteenth century.f It may, however, even now be said by some, as it was then affirmed by the priests themselves, that they held their commission from a higher source than Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, or Avicenna, that * Miracles are appeals to oxir senses. See ' Horne on tlie Scriptures,' vol. i, p. 239. t See Chart.
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