Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    144/196 page 140
    trustworthiness of the most expert contemporary criticism, but it is of infinitely more significance as regards the methods and ideals of literary production. Wordsworth was oblivious of the method of the parrot and the looking- glass, and hence he created hundreds of single lines each worth more than the million books of the mirror-folk of the last or of any year. The reason that the image-literature is of no value is because the souls of the parrots are of no value. Only slaves and toadies and sycophants wheedle a master, and to choose the populace as a millionfold master is not a proof of lessened but of increased stupidity and cringingness on the part of the image worshipper. All this is beside the mark as regards physicians ? By no means ! First, as to medical literature it is entirely as apropos as to the lay variety. Take our medical journals ; what large proportion of writing and of editorials may not properly be called image-literature, posing of authors be¬ fore their own images in the glass ? If not exactly this, how much of it is not slyly looking out of the corner of the eye at the success of the journal ? In our books, what a number are created with the authorial eye on the image— for vanity’s sake rather than in forgetfulness of self and the image, and with sole attention to pure scientific and sanitary progress ? The profession shares the universal habit of ignoring the great and unselfish work, and is too prone to let its earnest, image-ignoring writers and delvers go unthanked, and to wear their lives out unhonored. The keen-eyed editor of the Practitioner recently wrote : It is, of course, in accordance with the general way of this best of all possible worlds that the one officer of the Association who has no share in the butyraceous honors so freely bestowed is the Editor of the British Medical Journal. He is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the world of the Association. But one notes with regret, though hardly with surprise, that there are no compli¬ ments for him, and he must be thankful if he escapes a vote of reduction of salary for refusing to turn the Journal into a literary dustheap where cranks may shoot their rubbish. The whole I
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