The cultivation of medical science and art : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 10th February, 1864 / by John Jackson.

  • John Jackson
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cultivation of medical science and art : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 10th February, 1864 / by John Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/24 page 4
    and upon the operation of which its present condition is dependent, would constitute a subject which might prove interesting to an audience such as the present. To treat such a subject, however, in a complete manner, would be incompatible with the limits of an address of ordinary duration, and would in all probability be wearisome. I therefore preferred to consider it less comprehensively, but, I trust, more in accordance with the tastes of those who are actively engaged in medical practice. Among the circumstances which have impeded the successful cultivation of the science and art of medicine, few have exercised a more potent influence than the habit of substituting a belief in received opinions for the accurate observation of the phenomena of disease and the results of treatment. This is unavoidable, and therefore excusable, at the commence- ment of professional life, but is not so at any subsequent period. It is much more easy, and to some minds much more pleasant, to put credence in the dicta of others than to examine the grounds on which those dicta are based, or to ascertain their accuracy by observation and experiment. Some, indeed, even doubt the evidence of their experience, when it is opposed to the opinions of others. This tendency of the professional mind is amusingly satirized in Moliere’s comedy, entitled “L’Amour Medecin.” In this there occurs a dialogue between a physician and a maid-servant, in which the former pertinaciously maintains that a man, who died on the sixth day of his illness, must be still alive, on the sole ground that Hippocrates had asserted that the
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image