Medical lectures and aphorisms / by Samuel Gee ; with recollections by J. Wickham Legg.
- Samuel Gee
- Date:
- 1915
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical lectures and aphorisms / by Samuel Gee ; with recollections by J. Wickham Legg. Source: Wellcome Collection.
243/426 (page 229)
![tism ]ies in the small capacity of the human mind, unable to accommodate more than one thought at a time, and apt to see all things through the medium of this thought. Which thought becomes a dogma, very likely to be true so far as it goes : the fault lies in making it exclusive; for other dogmas, indeed an infinitude of other dogmas, are no less true. This fault is the source of innumerable sects and heresies. In ancient times the Pneumatic sect stands forth as an instance of the form of dogmatism now under notice. The pneumatists were so called because of the great (unduly great) stress which they laid upon the doctrine of the pneuma or animal spirits. Let me remind you that when any one speaks of being in good or bad spirits, in high or low spirits, he uses terms which imply the dogma of the pneu¬ matists. It would be easy, and wearisome, to accumulate instances of this logical fault of overrating a favourite notion: idols of the cave, to use Bacon’s figurative language. Such an idol has syphilis been to many pathologists, who have seen all diseases through a syphilitic fog. A few years ago an able French](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31355912_0243.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
