Reply to Dr. McGilchrist's "Remarks" on Professor Bennett's introductory lecture, "The present state of the theory and practice of medicine" / by John Glen.
- Glen, John, M.A.
- Date:
- 1856
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Reply to Dr. McGilchrist's "Remarks" on Professor Bennett's introductory lecture, "The present state of the theory and practice of medicine" / by John Glen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
20/32 page 18
![(ill which belief he is very simple, and may stand alone). He docs not state in what time, but he is sure they do cure it. On Dr Bennett's authority let the statement be denied. The critic himself is not over sanguine of success from the good old treat- ment, for he adduces another argument in a most unhappy man- ner. After all, he says, the favus-patients are only youths and young children. Who, in the world, cares for the diseases of little children! and, besides, it gets well of itself in time [i.e. by the time of puberty], so that three, five, or ten years of dis- figurement, loathsomeness, and disease, from the growth of a vegetable parasite which may be killed in six weeks, are regarded by the critic as a comparative trifle, not worthy of scientific attention! Dr Bennett's third instance is more compound, and, doubtless, in the critic's opinion, more dignified. But just at this point the critic forsakes him, and enters upon a cyclical course of his own. First, he adduces another instance, the treatment of scabies, which Dr Bennett does not during this argument bring forward as a proof, yet in such a manner that most readers would suppose Dr Bennett had adduced it as a proof of the influence of science upon art. Then holding up the treatment of favus which Dr Bennett adduces, and the treatment of scabies which Dr Ben- nett does not adduce, as the choice and only conceivable triumphs of theory, he breaks forth into a ptean over the miserable failures and pretensions of scientific medicine. The pjean is wholly premature, for Dr Bennett's list is not yet exhausted, and it sounds, moreover, far liker a transcript from some unknown spasmodic tragedy, than a cool estimate of the arguments of the Professor. Thence he diverges hither and thither, nor retuitia to Dr Bennett's third instance till he has referred to the doc- trines of Alison on change of type in pneumonia—on the rela- tive importance of this or that theory—on the true history o leprosy and its lineal representative in the present day—on the coming disease—on the impotence of theoretical medicine [ba](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21478168_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
