The touchstone of medical reform : in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart., M.P. / by 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., M.P. / by Joseph Henry Green. 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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    inanity. And if the inquiring and reflecting under- standing be the faculty of arranging and schematiz- ing the particular knowledges by theory or hypothesis, it is the reason, which either in the discovery of the antecedent law rests from its labours, or consciously employs the intellectual faculties with all the aidances of observation, experiment, hypothesis, and theory, in order to the discovery of that law, which is to supersede or perfect all these. If further evidence of these truths were needed or required, I would direct the attention of the reader to the circumstances and auspices under which, together with or consequent on the Refor- mation, physical and physiological science—with the pure mathematics as its legislative or architectonic principle, and with scientific experience, now as regis- tered obse7'vation, and now as preconcerted experi- ment for its material source — arose, throve, and flourished. We see with, it the growth of a study of medicine, purified from superstition on the one hand, and on the other raised above a mere empiricism by its new and increased bearings on physiological science ; and, with this, ascending jyari j^ftssu a dis- tinct medical profession, the continued advance of which, in the universal estimation of civilized man, has been equally proportioned to the ever closer and closer connection both of the profession with the science, and of the professors with the growth, pro- gress, and expansion of the sciences. If, then, we may assume that in the establishment