Volume 1
A system of medicine by eminent authorities in Great Britain, the United States and the Continent / edited by William Osler, assisted by Thomas McCrae.
- Date:
- 1907-10
Licence: In copyright
Credit: A system of medicine by eminent authorities in Great Britain, the United States and the Continent / edited by William Osler, assisted by Thomas McCrae. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![to the chair of ])hysic in 1714. 'With an unnsually wide general training, a profound knowledge of the chemistry of the day, and an accurate acquaintance with all aspects of the history of the jjrofession, he had a strongly objective attitude of mind toward di.sease, following closely the methods of Hippocrates and Sydenham. He adopted no special system, but studied disease as one of the phenomena of nature. His clinical lectures, held bi-weekly, became exceedingly popular and were made attractive not less by the accuracy and care with which the cases were studied than by the freedom from fanciful doctrines and the frank honesty of the man. He was much greater than his published work would indicate, and, as is the case with many teachers of the first rank, his greatest contributions were his pupils. No teacher of modern times has liatl such a following. Among his favorite pupils may be mentioned Haller, the physiologist, and van Swieten, the founder of the Vienna school. Edinburgh had had very close affiliations with Leyden, and one of Boerhaave’s predecessors was Archibald Pitcairn, who subsequently returned to his native city and had an important influence in building up the university, the medical school of which was not organized until 1726. The Leyden methods of instruction were introduced by pupils of Boerhaave, of whom John Rutherford was the most distinguished. He began to teach at the Royal Infirmary in 1747. I have a manuscript of his clinical lectures delivered in the winter se.ssion of 1748-49, from which we may get a good idea of his plan of teaching. He says: “The method I propose to pursue is, to examine every patient before you, lest any cireumstances should be overlooked. I shall undertake this by a plan which will be the most useful I can think of. I shall give you the history of his disease in general; secondly, inquire into the cause of it, and, thirdly, give you my opinion how the disease is likely to terminate and lay down the indication of cure, or when any extraordinary symp- toms arise you shall have notice of it that you may see the reason of altering my prescriptions.” Those were happy days for the medical student, as a few paragraj)hs later he says: “I do not mean by this that you should all take degrees, for I am far from thinking that a di])loma furnishes a man with medical knowledge. His improvement in this art depends on his own study and industry.” Three, four, and even five patients were shown on the same day, and great care was taken to keep the students informed of the progress of patients who had been seen by them. Weeks afterward a memorandum is given, perhaps, of the postmortem. The history, the symptoms, and the prognosis are very well considered, but one misses the physical examination and an accurate consideration of the pathology and morbid anatomy. Groups of cases were considered together, as illustrated by Ix'cture 23, in which a series of cases of scurvy, that had been “in the hou.se,” were considered together. Directly inspired from Leyden, the Edinburgh sehool .soon outstripped all its compeers. In the main thoroughly practieal and objeetive, as witnes.sed, for example, in the work of Whytt, it illustrated also the speeu- lative nature of the Scottish character in two systems of medicine which had great vogue. Cullen, who was Whytt’s succe.s.sor in the chair of institutes, became the most prominent teacher of medicine in his day in](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24907212_0001_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
