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
Catalogue details

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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    njured. But, now that the foundations have been well md.truly laid, the clinical medicine of to-day is able o advance on scientific lines, and the study of the ibnormal can be based upon a knowledge of the lormal. All who have taken part in this work, all those leroes of science and medicine whose names have )een mentioned, may rank as benefactors of this College, both those who were its Fellows and those vho were not, and in commemorating them I may ;laim to have followed Harvey’s first injunction. It is natural, nay inevitable, that as medical science rrows and advances, some of the workers in the field hould elect to follow the path which leads through he laboratory, whereas to others the wards make . stronger appeal ; and thus is taking place a dif- erentiation of medical workers into distinct groups, .nd there is danger that the fission may go too far. rhe worker in the laboratory, wedded to his more ;xact methods, and distrustful of those with which the hnician is often compelled to be content, is tempted o place his bedside colleague in a lower grade or caste han his own. He is apt to look too much at the lisease and too little at the patient, and to forget how greatly the former is shaped by the reactions and diosyncrasies of the latter. We all know that a line of treatment resting upon i strictly rational basis may be useless or even harmful n an individual case. It would be nothing short of a calamity were all he best scientific workers who enter our profession o be diverted from its clinical side to laboratory nvestigation, for of no walk of life is it more true han of the practice of our art that ‘ the multitude of he wise is the welfare of the world \1 1 Wisdom vi. 24.