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.
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![of Perkinism. Whether or not the following sen- tences, taken literally from the work of Mr. Perkins, were the originals of some of the idle propositions we hear bandied about from time to time, let those who listen judge. The followmg is the test assumed for the new practice : If diseases are really removed, as those persons who have practised extensively with the Tractors declare, it should seem there would be but little doubt of their being generally adopted ; but if the numerous reports of their efficacy which have been published are forgeries, or are unfounded, the practice ought to be crushed. To this I merely add, it has been crushed. The following sentence applies to that a priori judging and uncandid class of individuals who buy their dinners without tasting all the food there is in the market. '' On all discoveries there are per- sons who, without descending to any inquiry into the truth, pretend to know, as it were by intuition, that newly asserted facts are founded in the gross- est errors. These were those who kneia that Har- vey's report of the circulation of the blood was a preposterous and ridiculous suggestion, and in latter [later] days there were others who knew that Frank- lin deserved reproach for declaring that points were preferable to balls for protecting buildings from lightning. Again: This unwarrantable mode of offering](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21019745_0112.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
