Oration on the guidance of a sound philosophical spirit in the investigations of medical science : Read before the Cincinnati Medical Society, Jan. 4, 1837.

  • Harrison, John P. (John Pollard), 1796-1849.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oration on the guidance of a sound philosophical spirit in the investigations of medical science : Read before the Cincinnati Medical Society, Jan. 4, 1837. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    edge with love of humanity, that our minds be not seized and pos- sessed of a selfish intellectual taste. And we &hould never forget that all our acquisitions are to be made contributory to the good of man, and that the mere accumulation of medical knowledge, aside from its practical applications, does not entitle the possessor to the appellation of a lover of truth. Nor should we merely have the love of truth instigating us to the pursuit of knowledge, nor the love of truth actuating us to apply this knowledge to the cause of afflicted humanity, but we should have the love of truth leading us to com- municate the results of our individual experience at the bed-side, that the science of medicine may receive fresh contributions of facts, and expositions, from our labors. The older members of this society will permit me, I trust, to say a word to them on this behalf. Why is it that so few physicians avail themselves of the opportunity afford- ed by our medical periodicals, of communicating the fruit of their clinical observations to the medical world] Many facts and valua- ble suggestions are kept forever within the very limited circle of many an observant physician's immediate personal intercourse, which if made the thesis of brief written communications might go far to instruct us on many litigated points of pathology and practice. Let them be constrained by the love of their profession lo forego their in. dolence and their aversion to the toilsome process of putting down their thoughts, and arranging the facts of their observation, on paper, and no longer disregard the claims of medical science on this point. Let me direct your consideration to another prominent trait of a sound philosophical spirit in medicine—it is a correct and deliberate comparison and appreciation of the relative importance of the differ- ent branches of medical Science. The terminating point of all our medical studies is the cure of disease. Now there exists on this par- ticular subject, an error.of very mischievous tendency. We see too many physicians, who in their eager and unthinking impatience to reach the goal of all their preparatory inquiries, rush with reckless tread over the whole ground occupied by anatomy, physiology, chem- istry, materia medica, and the institutes or theory of medicine.-- After thus pushing their thoughtless and random steps over those very portions of the entire field of medical investigations, which consti- tute the art of healing a substantive science, no wonder that they for- ever remain the striking monuments of a presumptuous empiricism The practice of medicine must never be disjoined, in unholy and destructive separation, from the science of medicine. It is only un- der the guiding light, and controlling power of a thorough mdoctrm- ation of the mind in the pnecognita-the preparatory branches, and prcemial view,, of the science, that the art of prescribing drugs, can