The fundamental and distinctive principles of the eclectic practice of medicine : prize essay / by L.C. Dolley.

  • Dolley, L. C.
Date:
[1854?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The fundamental and distinctive principles of the eclectic practice of medicine : prize essay / by L.C. Dolley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ^IJIxm (I PRIZB !E3 & S -£L T^. THE FUNDAMENTAL AND DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLES OF THE ECLECTIC PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. BY L. C. DOLLEY, M. D. One needs but a limited knowledge of medical history to ob- serve, that from its commencement, every age has teemed with the controversies of those who have made medicine their profession. Revolutions and modifications in the theories and the agents em- ployed have succeeded each other rapidly. The ambitious and the learned have ever been striving to perfect the art of healing, but in no field of labor has the weakness of human wisdom been more manifest than in the cultivation of medical science. Every where during the past, the cotemporaries or successors of those who supposed that success crowned their labors and per- fection their theories, have contested their principles, exposed their errors, and despoiled them of their glory. The versatility of human systems, with few exceptions, has, until the present century, manifested itself in a regular succession of theories ; and since then in many cotemporaneous and widely dissimilar hypotheses. In the past, Galenism with its doc- trines of four elements, four humors, and four qualities of life, was followed by the many incongruities of various Arabian and Europeon writers; most of which were finally set aside by the Paracelsian doctrines and the heroic remedies of that inno- vator. These were followed by the fermentative or chemical doctrines of Sylvius and Willis, and those in their turn gave place to the corpuscularian and mathematical hypothesis of Descartes, and this to the spiritual doctrines of Stahl and others. Hedged in by close and narrow views, the science could but revolve in circles of hypotheses. The facts seen in a single aspect were alternately explained by the principles of fictitious theories (iS-ervC