Remarks relative to Dr. Paine's commentaries upon the writings of M. Louis / by H. I. B.

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks relative to Dr. Paine's commentaries upon the writings of M. Louis / by H. I. B. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    where there is more intellectual activity at the present time than in any other country. One law is good until a higher one is discovered; when that higher one is found out, the lesser of course is put aside. Louis, in his preface to the work on typhus, says, “ The best book is good only in relation to the epoch at which it appears, and another must be anti- cipated that will be more exact and more complete.” This we pre- sume every reasonable person would admit. Even now Louis would not be satisfied with the want of minuteness of some of his former obser- vations. Moreover, the attention of the scientific world is always more or less strongly bent to one object. Every tyro now has his microscope, and hopes to learn the arcana of the human frame. In a few years this will be supplanted by another method of investigating. If, in the process of time, facts may be elicited which may clash with some of Louis’s results, we ought not to blame him—much less the method by which he arrived at his results. We now approach the most important part of our author’s volumes— for it is evident that Dr. Paine regards M. Louis as the most formidable opponent of medical truth of the present era, and therefore a chapter in the second volume, of more than 100 pages, is devoted to the “ Writings of Louis.” Four of these pages are occupied with quotations from many authors, and such a medley we have never seen or read of before, save, as Shakspeare has it:— “ Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing. ” Our readers may think that we give them an incorrect idea of the matter ; and the quotations, it is true, are most of them extremely good —but their inapplicability to the main subject is what we object to. Plato and Lord Byron, Hippocrates and Cowper, Baglivi and Pope, are all simmering together with Louis and his contemporaries. Our author commences thus heroically and self-cornplacently. “ In approaching the works which we have selected for the subjects of this commentary, we have been actuated by various motives. These will appear, from time to time, as we advance with our undertaking. But we may say now that we have especially in view an exhibition of the ascendancy which false philosophy may obtain, in the intricate science of medicine, at the most intellectual era of man, and to exemplify the inductive and practical results which spring from morbid anatomy when assumed as a paramount guide in pathological inquiries.