Laennec, his life, labours, and influence in medicine : being the address in medicine delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Cork, August, 1879 / by Alfred Hudson.

  • Hudson, Alfred, 1808-1880.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Laennec, his life, labours, and influence in medicine : being the address in medicine delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Cork, August, 1879 / by Alfred Hudson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and prospects which they themselves could never discover. Living before their age, and being unable to explain observed phenomena by the aid of the imperfect science of the time, they resorted to hypotheses evolved out of their own conscious- ness, which were really not explanatory of dis- eased processes, while their ideas of therapeutics were made to correspond with the imaginary con- ditions. Not that their labours were altogether use- less, for, as has been well said, “ As in the growth and development of the body the daily death of the tissues is in strict relation with the activity of life, so, in the organic growth of thought through the ages, there is a corresponding decay or con- sumption of erroneous doctrines—a death of the false in strict relation with the growth of the true.” The comparison of the growth and develop- ment of science to that of the human body is by no means a novel one, and it is employed by Lord Bacon in terms peculiarly applicable to Clinical Medicine, and a suitable motto for my discourse: — “As young men,” says Bacon, “when they knit in shape and perfectly, do sel- dom grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, is in growth ; but when once it is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be farther polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice, but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.”