Historical study of medicine : concluding portion of an address to The Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, March 15, 1878 / by Professor Ferguson.

  • John Ferguson
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historical study of medicine : concluding portion of an address to The Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, March 15, 1878 / by Professor Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    cially true of medicine. If any science, or, rather, any collection of sciences—which medicine is—has had a his- tory, or development to be traced historically, if it has passed through very varied stages, if it has been inun- dated with controversies each of them of all-absorbing importance for the time and of hardly any importance for after days, it is medicine. If you think of the ob- servation of facts, knowledge, and practical skill of Hip- pocrates, the systematic expositions of Galen, the gradual falling off of real scientific observation and exposition and the adherence—the tremendous adherence—to author- ity, during the middle ages; if you think of the curious succession of theories and of systems in medicine Avhich prevailed during the last three centuries, and of the disputes, and quarrels, and recriminations, which took place between rival schools, you must see that if you desire to have a liberal and comprehensive view of your profession, you should endeavour to become acquainted Avith these different stages, and try really to comprehend what have been the influences internal and external which have moulded medicine to its present shape. Medicine is not an isolated study—on the contrary, it is dependent on every improvement in physical, and chemical, and mechanical science—and all these are external influences. No one can look at the apparatus of the physiologist, or of the surgeon, or obstetrician, without seeing how dependent they have been on discoveries in mechanics, in optics, in electricity; and whoever compares the last British Pharmacopoeia, 1877, with Salmon's Nau London Dispcn-
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