On some points of science and practice concerning cancer : an address, delivered at the annual inaugural meeting of the Midland Medical Society at Birmingham, on November 9th, 1877 / by John Simon.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some points of science and practice concerning cancer : an address, delivered at the annual inaugural meeting of the Midland Medical Society at Birmingham, on November 9th, 1877 / by John Simon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    must be %oell-defined facts ; not fancies of facts, not fragments of facts, not nebulae of facts ; and scientific facts can never be established as such for joint use, except where individual experiences, brought face to face with each other, and acting in check of each other, are rectified to a common standard of description as complete as the knowledge of the time permits, and are expressed with uniform nomenclature and in harmonious methods. With regard to cancer, moreover, it is of particular interest that the two classes of work, which I distinguished as laboratory-work and therapeutical work, should be brought into intimate correlation : that the practising physician and surgeon, who may himself be unable to keep pace with the daily advances of histology and organic chemistry and experimental pathology, should be able to refer to laboratories where such advances are fully represented as well as appreciated ; that the laboratory worker should be able to get from the physician and surgeon, not only the physical thing which he may want to study, but the circumstantial knowledge which may be requisite to interpret it; and that, under joint auspices, representing the best strength of our science in each of the two great branches of work, contributions, which may be turned to universal account, should be sought in all directions, and be made matter of record and publication. Science, says the late Sir John Herschel, is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one! With regard to cancer, as I think on the one hand of the vast quantities of experience, or, let me rather say, of raw materials for experience, which in this country of ours are daily running to almost absolute waste for want of some sort of organisation by which they might be shaped into science; and as I think, on the other hand, what a Society like this might accomplish by such machinery as you could command, I see a contrast which I can only parallel by quoting the familiar antithesis of certain two possibilities of carbon : the smoke which merely obscures our day-time, and the lamp which serves as sun- shine to our night. And here, gentlemen, I conclude. That, from this great city—the birth-place and home of so many strong and wise men, the centre of so many industries, the vigorous representative organ of so much that is worthiest in English life, there may some day come help to mankind in the conflict in which our enemy now prevails against us, is the wish, the very hearty wish, with which I bid you my respectful farewell.