The debt of science to medicine : being the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on St. Luke's Day, 1924 / by Archibald E. Garrod.

  • Garrod, Archibald E. (Archibald Edward), Sir, 1857-1936.
Date:
1924
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The debt of science to medicine : being the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on St. Luke's Day, 1924 / by Archibald E. Garrod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recognized the earth’s magnetic properties. Of hi: Dryden 1 wrote : Gilbert shall live till loadstones cease to draw, Or British fleets the boundless Ocean awe. This College can also claim amongst its Fellovi one of the most brilliant men of science whom oi country has produced, Thomas Young (1773—1829 whose discoveries in optics, and especially that of tl interference of light, went far to establish the undi; latory theory. He was the first to detect astigmatism and threw much light upon the mechanism of tl eye and upon colour vision. He was also a gre; linguist, and by his work on the Rosetta stone aide materially the interpretation of the demotic text then of. Yet he found time to hold the office of physicia to St. George’s Hospital, and to practise medicine. Amongst other great medical physicists I may reca the name of Luigi Galvani (1737—98), physician an anatomist, who was led to the discovery of currei electricity by his investigations of the electric orgar of certain fishes ; William Charles Wells (1757 1817), who solved the problem of dew ; Julius Maye physician of Heilbronn, to whom is due some of tl credit of the determination of the mechanical equiv; lent of heat ; and, in our own time, Hermann vo Helmholtz. There was a time, towards the end of the seventeent century, when a dominant position in medical thougl was held by a group of so-called iatro-physicists, wh< influenced by the work of Galileo and his follower and by the views on physiological problems of tv great mathematicians—Descartes (1596—1650) an Borelli (1608—79)—endeavoured, but with far le$ competence, to extend them to all physiological prc cesses by the supposed action of forces upon partick of various shapes and sizes. Like the iatro-chemist 1 Dryden, Epistle III, To Dr. Walter Charleton.