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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    facets whereby history may be mirrored and seen, and as many connections of past and present,—every word, indeed, is such—to incite the liveliest interest in the dullest pupil or the most erudite investigator. Philology is not language¬ learning. One may be able to speak or write but one tongue and yet be profoundly learned in linguistics. As a method of mental evolution and gymnastics there is no study comparable to it. It has few or no uses; it will not help one to acquire money, fame, or power, but it will help one to understand this world better even than any of the physical and biologic sciences. Neither will it much help one to acquire literary style, except to choose words some¬ what more fittingly, for style is another name for genius, and genius is not taught or learned of man. One of the most curious things is man’s incuriosity,— first, concerning the world in which he lives, and second, about himself. Science began with the study of the stars rather than of the earth, and even now the average person knows more about astronomy than about geology and geography. Man desires to learn about the most distant and objective before he does about things nearer himself. Centuries and cycles go by before he thinks of asking a few questions about himself, and when at last he does so, it is of bones and dead structures he desires to know. Physiology has but recently arisen and the physiologic conception of disease and of cure constitutes a new era in medicine just opening to our view. But even today it is only corporeal physiology that interests us. If it is of history we are eager to learn, it is of kings first, and wars,, and nations,—the history of religion, of commerce, of the people, and of civilization, is the last and least we seek. When science arises it is first of stars, worlds, and stones, and when biology is born, it is at first and for a long time only to morphology that we give attention. So confirmed is the habit of outward looking that much of our modem science is materialistic. The looker denies himself, and the subject denies the subjective, forgetting in this philo-
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