On scientific medicine, and its relations to, and claims upon, society at large : being an address read before ... the North of England Medical Association ... 1840 / by William Elliot.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On scientific medicine, and its relations to, and claims upon, society at large : being an address read before ... the North of England Medical Association ... 1840 / by William Elliot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    can advance to that which is the next in order.” That such succession is, however, not always necessary to that end, we have splendid proof in the extensive, varied, and nearly complete cate* gory of the physical thoracic signs, partly disco- vered, partly conceived, and entirely wrought out, by the immortal Laennec.—Have any similar ex- amples of acuteness, genius, and disinterestedness, ever been furnished by the ranks of quackery ? Has she ever either accomplished, attempted, or conceived, a connected series of investigations, with a view to throw light on the structure and functions of the human body, or to develope ra- tional modes of preventing or of curing disease ? When did any of her host, at an immense expen- diture of intellectual labour, of time, of pecuniary means, and of health, ever conceive, propound, and succeed in generally establishing, so tran- scendency beneficial a measure, as the substitution of the vaccine for the human variolous fluid, for the purpose of inoculation ?—Never. But if quackery has not, on any occasion, taken the lead in so useful and meritorious a career,—has she ever even assisted, or attempted to carry out, the scientific labours of regular medicine ? In further reference, for example, to vaccination, has she done aught towards the in- vestigation of the origin, affinities, and powers, of cow-pox, or of the utility of re-vaccination, or of the means of renewing the supply from the cow ? Never.—In regard to vaccination, all that she has done has been, according to her usual custom, blindly to take up its practice, without at all un- derstanding its nature. And to the undiscri- minating way in which the various uninstructed.