Proceedings at the opening of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, December 4, 1895.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proceedings at the opening of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, December 4, 1895. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    and considerable apparatus. To secure for the patients the benefits in the way of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment to be derived from these methods of examination, a hospital should be supplied with the requisite facilities. A hospital, and especially one connected with a medical school, should serve not only for the treatment of patients, but also for the promotion of knowledge. Where this second function is prominent, there also is the first most efficiently and intelligently carried out. Herein we see the far-reaching beneficence of a laboratory, such as this one, thoroughly equipped to investigate the many problems which relate to clinical medicine. The usefulness of an investigating laboratory in close connection with a hospital has already been abundantly demonstrated. Chemical studies, such as those relating to metabolism in various acute and chronic affections, microscopical and chemical investigations of the blood and bacteriological examinations of material derived directly from the patient, may be mentioned as directions in which researches conducted in hospital laboratories have yielded important results and will garner still richer harvests in the future. There need be no conflict between the work of clinical laboratories and that of the various other medical laboratories. Each has its own special field, but it is not necessary or desirable to draw around these fields sharp boundary lines beyond which there shall be no poaching. It will be a relief to pathological and other laboratories to have cer- tain examinations and subjects relating directly to practical medicine consigned to the clinical laboratory where they can receive fuller and more satisfactory consideration. The subject-matter for study in the clinical laboratory is primarily the patient and material derived from the patient. Anatomical, physiological, pathological, pharmacological, and hygienic laboratories must concern themselves with many prob- lems which have apparently no immediate and direct bearing upon practical medicine. In the long run their contributions are likely to prove most beneficial to medicine if broad biological points of view, rather than immediate practical utility, are their guiding stars. The clinical laboratory will concern itself more particularly with ques- tions which bear directly upon the diagnosis and the treatment of disease. To the small number of existing well-equipped clinical laboratories