Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
110/450 page 90
![opens into flower, and flutter away to another when the first has dropped its leaves, and stands naked in the icy air of truth ! Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the head of every column, loudest sliouted by every tri- umphant disputant, held up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable, which has been the patrimony of cheats and the currency of dupes from time immemorial, — Facts ! Facts ! Facts ! First came the published cases of the American clergy- men, brigadier-generals, almshouse governors, rep- resentatives, attorneys, and esquires. Then came the published cases of the surgeons of Copenhagen. Then followed reports of about one hundred and fifty cases published in England, demonstrating the efficacy of the metallic practice in a variety of complaints both upon the human body and on horses, &c. But the progress of facts in Great Britain did not stop here. Let those who rely upon the numbers of their testimonials as being alone sufficient to prove the soundness and stabil- ity of a medical novelty, digest the following from the report of the Perkinistic Committee. The cases published [in Great Britain] amounted, in](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21019745_0110.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
