The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green].

  • Joseph Henry Green
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    problem or proposition, feels assured that, if all the geometricians in Europe were present to contri¬ bute their aid, the result would be the same,—the evidence no greater. Now, I need not say that this is an advantage that can belong only to the so called abstract sciences, — those which are concerned with the forms of the mind, wholly separate from the changeable materials and objects to which they may be applied. Nevertheless, it remains the ideal stand¬ ard, however great the difference may be in the com¬ parative distance from the goal, however actually unapproachable this may be ;—this is the goal; and to that which we never reach, we may be gradually approximating. The history of all professions gives us proof and illustration. Compare the medical pre¬ scriptions and treatment of the various nations and climes of Asia and Africa, where the science of medi¬ cine scarcely exists, or even those of the different countries of Europe some centuries back, with the practice pursued by all regularly educated men in the present era; and the latter, with all its remaining differences, will appear almost unanimity in compa¬ rison with the strange, capricious, and contradictory ends and means of the former. In this country, and at the present time, this is so true, that the same¬ ness or diversity of treatment of the same complaint by all regular members of the profession, may be taken almost as a criterion of the more or less per¬ fect knowledge of the complaint itself, possessed by the profession at large. In no small proportion of
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