Dr. Russell's address at the second Congress of homoeopathic practitioners.

  • Russell, John Rutherfurd, 1816-1866.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Russell's address at the second Congress of homoeopathic practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    opening of public hospitals, it is of the utmost consequence that excelling them in our special method of treatment we should equal them in our general attainments. We cannot over-estimate the value of our hospitals ; not only nor indeed mainly on account of the statistical evidence they are calculated to afford, but as presenting a field of observation to enquirers. For medical statistics are generally very fallacious. It is a common error to transfer the certainty of numbers to the things they indicate but do not represent. Numerals are simple unchangeable substantives, and never vary in their material relations. Two is and always must be equal to two. But when they become adjective then this no longer holds true. Two men are not necessarily equal to two men. It is a common error to suppose that because calculation is so valuable in ascertaining the probable duration of life, some similar process may be applicable to questions regarding the treatment of disease. This essential difference is overlooked, that in the former case the elements of the calculations are extremely simple, and in the latter just the reverse. We know that within a given space of time all now alive shall he dead. It is no very difficult problem to find the probable term of each life. Although all we can even here determine is the aggregate, not the individual period of death. But it is altogether different with disease. Disease is not a thing, it is an abstract term for a combination and series of changes occurring in a living person. And if two men are not equal to two men, much less are two sick persons equal to two other sick persons, though all are ill of the same disease. When we speak of two cases of brain-fever, we mean two individuals differently organized originally, subjected from their birth to different influences which have modified and increased their primary dissimilarity, and who have into the bargain a morbid action going on in an important organ, and which probably still more exaggerates their natural unlikeness. Thus they may differ in every other respect and agree only in this, that their brain is inflamed. And yet all these enormous differences are overlooked, and they are secured as so many equal atoms to he exposed to an endless process of multiplica- tion and addition, aud from data thus imperfect are drawn