Remarks on the narrow limits of so-called rational medicine : read before the South Hants Medico-Chirurgical Society / by J. Stevenson Bushnan.

  • Bushnan, J. Stevenson (John Stevenson), 1808?-1884.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the narrow limits of so-called rational medicine : read before the South Hants Medico-Chirurgical Society / by J. Stevenson Bushnan. 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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    it is not by science principally that he is to treat diseases. And in what is now about to be said, it may appear that in most of the disputes carried on by Medical Men as to the respective merits of science and experience in Medicine there is really no difference of opinion—inasmuch as each party is apt to look at the question in debate from a different point of view. For there are, in truth, but few in the Profession who really act on the assumption that Medicine—meaning by Medicine the treatment of diseases—is for the most part rational. Nevertheless there are some,—and most dangerous instructors they are when they obtain the confidence of the young and inexperienced. But let us turn our attention for a moment to the circum- stances which lead so many members of the Medical Profes- sion, without having imbibed radically erroneous views, to insist that Medicine is essentially rational and scientific. And, first of all, what was said before must be here repeated —namely, that the science of Medicine, in so far as it is a science, or is hereafter to become a science, is the science of therapeutics—and not anatomy, physiology, pathology, or chemistry; that is, that the immediate object of Medicine is to cure diseases; and therefore Medicine is a science, or is rational just in proportion as it affords rules or principles from which a certain method may be deduced of removing any deviation from the integrity of health which may have been discovered to have taken place in the living system. And it plainly is because this immediate object of Medicine is not kept steadily in view, and because the mind naturally runs away with the undoubted fact that several true sciences are subservient to Medicine, that Medicine proper, or the cure of diseases, is rashly pronounced to be in a high degree scien- tific. The true state of the case manifestly is that many most important sciences are subservient to Medicine ; but