Outlines of medical proof / by Thomas Mayo.

  • Thomas Mayo
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of medical proof / by Thomas Mayo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    some of our most important generalisations have been effected by the patient inductions of observed phenomena, without any aid from preconceived hypo- thesis. A few words are desirable on that argument by ana- logy, to which I have adverted. This, it must be remembered, is only valuable as a source of proof, when there is truly a point in common between the subject matter, from which it is drawn, and that to which it is applied. A fanciful assumption of some common point may produce a brilliant or witty illus- tration, but nothing will be proved or even rendered more probable. Thus, where Lord Bacon says, that virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed, the mind, pleased with the illustration, simply becomes more retentive of the idea illustrated. When Mr. Herbert Mayo applies Dr. Yelloly's fact of paralysed sensation occasioning, under certain conditions, an apparent but unreal loss of motor power, to the analogous case of the section of a branch of the fifth pair of nerves disabling to appear- ance the prehensile powers of the animal operated on, he converts, what before was an assumption,—namely, the unreality of this latter loss of power—into a proba- bility of the highest order *. I do not mean, by these remarks, to deny the rheto- rical value and beauty of such analogies as I have quoted from Lord Bacon; but merely to point out the fallacy of illustration, when simihes are taken for proofs. * Outlines of Physiology, 3d edition, page 261.
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