Correspondence and editorial comments on the points at issue between Dr. Tweedie & Dr. Murchison concerning identical passages in their respective works on fever.

  • Charles Murchison
Date:
1863
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence and editorial comments on the points at issue between Dr. Tweedie & Dr. Murchison concerning identical passages in their respective works on fever. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    27/44 (page 23)
    Lastly I have to observe that the remarks in my Preface, whic have led to this discussion, were made, not aggressively, but in self-defence, to protect myself from the imputation of having copied from Dr. Tweedie without acknowledgment. Entne sentences in Dr. Tweedie’s published Lectures are couched m the identical words employed in my previously published essays; so that I was under the necessity of giving some explanation. it seniority in standing is to justify the appropriation of the labours of a junior, a new canon will have been introduced into the code of professional ethics. And, because I have acted in self-defence, Dr. Tweedie has so far forgotten himself as to attribute to me “the most unworthy motives”. I need hardly add that I re- pudiate the imputation. Such language is unusual on the part ot one Fellow of the College of Physicians towards another; while the imputation of motives in all such discussions, is commonly regarded as the sign of a weak cause, or of a failing aigument. Moreover, this remark has been elicited from Dr. Tweedie, not by my Preface, which he allowed to pass for weeks without any public notice, but by the review in your pages, with which I had no connection, whatever. I am, etc. Cttaht.es Murchison. 79, Wimpole Street, W., December 29th, 1862. £Dr. Murchison is under a misconception in supposing that, in the remarks made in our last number, we passed any judgment upon the case. What we did was this: we willingly accepted Dr. Tweedie’s statement as explaining away the charge of plagiarism brought forward in the review. The charge of plagiarism, it must be remembered, was not made by Dr. Mur- chison himself in the Preface to his work on Fevers; but, as we said last week, the statement there made, after comparing the writings of the two authors, led our reviewer to make use of the expression in question. Editor.] VII. DR. TWEEDIE’s VERSION OR THE CASE, PUBLISHED IN THE “MEDICAL TIMES AND GAZETTE,” DECEMBER 27tH, 1862. Charge of Plagiarism against Dr. Tweedie.—We are informed, on the best authority, that the charge of plagiarism from Dr. Murchison, which was made against Dr. Tweedie in last week’s number of the British Medical Journal, could only have been framed by a person who was unacquainted with the relative position of those gentlemen. We are assured that the materials which Dr. Tweedie is accused of appropriating without acknow- ledgment, were in reality drawn up by Dr. Murchison, at the request of Dr. Tweedie, in order to be employed by the latter gentleman in his Lectures at the College of Physicians. This was done at a time when the records of the Fever Hospital were at Dr. Tweedie’s disposal, and when Dr. Murchison could not c 2