The present tendency of investigation in medicine : an address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society at its second anniversary meeting, Boston, March 28, 1851 / by Samuel Parkman.

  • Parkman, Samuel, 1816-1854.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The present tendency of investigation in medicine : an address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society at its second anniversary meeting, Boston, March 28, 1851 / by Samuel Parkman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    sneer, or with some word of reproach or slight, as if it were opposed to the practical treatment of a subject. The practical man says he has no time for scientific speculations, and takes credit to himself as being occupied with something tangible and real, while the other is wandering in the mazes and doubts of hypothesis and vain theory- In reality, however, science is eminently practical—without it we must be reduced to the vainest empiricism. There is an imagined opposition between science and art—an opposition falsely charged by those claiming to be the sole promoters of the practical and useful. The two are co-laborers in the same great field. Art sur- veys the ground, takes cognizance of the labor to be undertaken, and the ends to be accomplished, and then asks of its co-adjutor, science, the means by which these purposes are to be effected. No rule of art can be made without the aid of science. All knowledge must be first tested by this standard, and its purity ascertained, before it can pass current for any value. Science may employ itself in the study of subjects, the practical importance of which may not readily be perceived, and which possibly may not exist; but if art is desirous of effecting any thing useful and permanent, of acting clear-sightedly and distinctly, it must follow the laws which science prescribes, and must be willing to acknowledge the assistance received. It may, however, well happen, that before science can have fully mastered a subject, it may be neces-