Mr. Owen's rejoinder to Mr. Nasmyth / [Richard Owen].

  • Owen, Richard, 1804-1892
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Owen's rejoinder to Mr. Nasmyth / [Richard Owen]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (Extra Limites.) MR. OWEN’S REJOINDER TO MR. NASMYTH. To the Editor of the Medical Gazette. Sir, In the case of a scientific discovery or theory, enuntiated in simple and intel¬ ligible terms, nothing seems easier to prove than a priority. To ascertain the dates of publication of the respective works—to determine the degree of cor¬ respondence in the definitions or de¬ scriptions in question—are the simple processes by which the case is settled. Whether, besides the undoubted me¬ rit to be awarded to the earlier author, the stain of plagiarism is to be affixed to the later writer, must be a more com¬ plex and difficult question for the up¬ right and just mind to determine upon. It must depend on the degree of corre¬ spondence in the terms in which the discovery is narrated ; on the intellec¬ tual character and pursuits of the later author, with reference to the probability or otherwise of his originating indepen¬ dently the same idea or theory. Lastly, on his known moral character and habits. With respect to the theory of the “ formation of dentine or ivory by cal¬ cification of pre-existing and pre-ar¬ ranged cells in the substance of the pulp,” the right of the author of the memoir communicated to the French Academy, 16th December, 1839, was called in question in two distinct com¬ munications, which appeared in the Gazette and Lancet for June 5th and 6th, 1840; and the priority being as¬ sumed to be proved against that author, his relation as a plagiarist from the earlier one seemed in one of the journals to be taken for granted, and coarse abuse was lavished upon him. It was urged in defence, that, of the works quoted as plagiarised from, the one offering the nearest approach to a correspondence with the new' theory could not possibly have been in pos¬ session of the author accused, being posterior in date to his work ; and it was proved that the passages quoted for the same purpose from the acces¬ sible or anterior works were incorrectly quoted, as well as the professed parallel passages in the work of the accused author. But it was assumed by the accusers that the earlier and later works of the author whose interests they defended were essentially the same, being expo¬ nents of the same views, and, in short, different forms of the same memoir. This assumption led to a demonstration of an important discrepancy in regard to the theory in question, and to the conjecture of the existence of many others, between the earlier and the later forms of the memoir alleged to be pla¬ giarised from. Moreover, the later memoir, quoted as containing the statement “ that the ivory was an organic deposition of ossi- fic matter in the pre-existing cells of the pulp*,” being in the condition of a privately circulated pamphlet, and no copy of it having been transmitted to the accused author, he was compelled to take the best means he could to ob¬ tain a sight of it, that he might com¬ pare its tenour and amount of resem¬ blance with the earlier and only pub¬ lished forms of the (alleged) same memoir. And now, having stated the case in question as it stood after my answ’er to the first charges against me, I may ob¬ serve that my letter to the officer super¬ intending the publication of the Trans¬ actions of the British Association, of which the privately circulated memoir professed to be a part, was a necessary step and consequence of the unfair manner in which I had been attacked— as it were, in the dark. I thought it fair to Mr. Nasmyth to print that letter, and at the same fime, however strongly suspicion might point to his having had a hand in the simultaneous and anony¬ mous attacks, yet the private and alter¬ ed memoir might have come into the possession of a third person, without Mr. Nasmyth having any cognizance of or consent in the abuse, to which he must otherwise have known that the new paragraphs in that altered me¬ moir were to be applied. The least offensive suggestion as to the motive of such alterations was therefore, obviously, that the memoir about to appear should be an courant. And I was g'lad to read the explicit ne¬ gation of any concernment in the at¬ tacks in question, with which Mr. Nasmyth commenced his letter in your number for June 26lh, p. 545 : although many of your readers, like myself, must have been at a loss to un¬ derstand how Mr. Nasmyth’s forbear¬ ance should have been particularly trespassed upon during the operation of * Lancet, June 6. r>. 378.