Lights and shadows of medical science : an address, delivered Feb. 27, 1872. / by Ezra M. Hunt.

  • Hunt, Ezra Mundy, 1830-1894.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lights and shadows of medical science : an address, delivered Feb. 27, 1872. / by Ezra M. Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    advantages, and we will consecrate ourselves still more to this noble philanthropy, and show to the world that we will not only contend against the effects, but so dry up the sources of disease as to make the average man, and the average woman, and the average child, of the twentieth century, an improvement upon those of the nineteenth. Our system of development, though it be not Dar- winian, shall bring us nearer back to the idea, In the image of G-od made He him.'7 I know there are those who talk so much about the practical, and even the clinical, as rather to underrate some of the scientific research of medicine, and mean by collateral something very subsidiary, but to learn how, and what to investigate, requires something else than mere presence amid disease, and I am glad to know that the discoveries of the last few years have shown more than ever before the intimate relation between medical science and successful practice. Even when the persons pursuing in this way do not, from lack of time or fondness of study, themselves become skilled or noted practitioners, they are, never- theless, the men who kindle for us the watch-fires, and light the signal- torches, and enable us to use the light and radiance they evolve for insight into disease, and for bringing to the light the hidden things of disease, that that which is turned out of the way may rather be healed. ''The observation of phenomena/' says Cooke, must always be the occupation of the great mass of scientific men. To none does this apply more than