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.

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    cisely what the uninstructed need. In a vague and soary way, the author who is brilliantly getting over his ground, showing off his own. learning, but who is utterly indif¬ ferent to the state of mind and needs of his uninstructed reader, will say, for example, that a certain treatment may be tried, and that it sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. All of which is quite as instructive as, and far less amusing than, the experiences of Violet, the Quangle- Wangle, and the 600 crusty crabbies. What kind of cases are adapted ? How should the treatment be carried out ? By what kinds of doctors ? Why and when does it fail ? A hundred such questions arise in the mind of the average reader of nearly every page of the patch-work composite book. Still another objection is evident : The learned authors must display an erudition equal to that of the other fel¬ lows ; and thus meaningless omniscience stares at one from pages of mathematic formulas and diagrams for in¬ stance, which not a reader will ever comprehend or get a ray of light from. Colorless abstractions and showy shams are thrown in as if the poor student were as con¬ summate a mental prestidigitator as the great author,—just as poor orators preface their profoundest and strangest bits of knowledge with, “You have all read,” “As all are aware,” etc. All of which is especially true of the big “ systems,” running into shelves-full of dumped-together treatises by a hundred authors, in which the unfilled gaps, the overlap¬ pings, and the contradictions have long been the butts of ridicule of men with scientific and literary training. Such books are good for publishers, but comparatively useless and surely wasteful of the money and house-room of physicians. The only composite books that we judge of use to pro¬ fessional men are those in which the work of individual authors is rigidly wrought over, supplemented and ren¬ dered organically unitary with the rest, by the dominating
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