Fragments of medical science and art : an address delivered before the Boylston Medical Society of Harvard University / by Henry Jacob Bigelow.

  • Bigelow, Henry Jacob, 1818-1890.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fragments of medical science and art : an address delivered before the Boylston Medical Society of Harvard University / by Henry Jacob Bigelow. 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.

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    and, in a more limited degree, polar force; the first of course including, among other sciences, hydrodynamics, op- tics and acoustics. In ascertaining, therefore, how far these three forms of force are exerted in the animal economy, unmodified by any other, we shall determine how far the medical sciences are capable of predicting one of another. In anatomy, the valves of the veins and structure of the joints point directly to their uses j and if final cause in medical science be synonymous with function, it is their mechanical final cause which leads us from Anatomy to Physiology. Again, explain to an engineer the sys- tem of the circulation, and ask him wHat will be the ten- dency of obstruction of the aortic valves, he will show you that there must be ‘ backwater; ’ a reflux of the fluids into the channels, which deliver it into the left ventricles. And in fact there is this reflux of blood upon the lungs, producing local congestion, with its symptoms, in many cases of chronic cardiac disease. The optician tells you that the crystalline lens throws an inverted image upon the retina. A medical tyro will infer that opacity of the lens will obliterate this image ; or that perforation of the thorax will be followed by collapse of the lungs. Here physiology points by the aid of mechanical force to pathol- ogy. Again, no man carries in his head the whole extent of auscultatory detail, without the acoustic principles which show why these phenomena take place. Induration ob- scures percussion, and other things equal, conducts sound. Pathology thus directs us to truths of semeiology, still by our knowledge of mechanical force. And in a symp- tom well known as acidity of the stomach, pathology -by the aid of chemical force points to the appropriate therapeutic agent. Surgery abounds in extemporary me- chanical remedies to which pathology directs it. It is ob- vious that these sciences are not independent one of an-