The advance of medicine / by Lord Moynihan.

  • Berkeley Moynihan
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The advance of medicine / by Lord Moynihan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/68 page 29
    upon the sympathetic nervous system, for ex¬ ample, might perhaps have been made a generation ago if Gaskell’s and Langley’s work had been more accessible to clinicians. Differences between the results of investiga¬ tions in animals and of operative procedures upon man will, of course, constantly be re¬ vealed. The material of the human body is not the same as that of animals nearest to man, nor subject to the same influences; simi¬ lar functions are not wholly discharged by precisely similar mechanisms; the pressure of environment is not comparable in the two cases; and, above all, the mind of man is in¬ finitely complex in comparison with that of the most intelligent animals. Other reserva¬ tions are also necessary. In physiological experiments upon living animals the particu¬ lar process requiring investigation must be isolated from all other processes. That is the essential requirement for accuracy of observa¬ tion, and for the possibility of bringing to bear upon it those influences whose effect we desire to study. This isolation of one activity from all others is sometimes perfectly achieved, sometimes imperfectly, sometimes not at all. Indeed the necessity for sequestration is not always appreciated, nor is it realized that even if sequestration has been completely secured the process so affected may not behave as it
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